Glenn Connelly / Photo Editor

Throughout the past two weeks, thousands of high school seniors and community college students received acceptance letters from San Diego State. More than 15,000 applicants received acceptance letters out of the approximate 61,800 students who applied.

Last November, SDSU’s new admissions policy received criticism from the San Diego Unified School District Board of Education and local families. Now, however, SDSU is admitting its most academically prepared undergraduate class, according to the university.

“Because of this reduced enrollment capacity, students had to meet higher academic requirements to be admitted,” Assistant Vice President for Academic Affairs, Sandra Cook, said.

In this case, higher academic requirements include an average GPA of 3.78 and an average SAT score of 1148.

“Given our limited enrollment funding, we are providing an opportunity to those students who are best prepared to succeed at the university level,” Manager of Media Relations at SDSU, Gina Jacobs, said.

The incoming undergraduate class is also expected to be the second most diverse class, racially and ethnically, to be admitted to SDSU since the university has been keeping track. It was thought by some that these students would be excluded by the new admissions policy. Jacobs said that the undergraduate class is so diverse because of SDSU’s community outreach programs.

The Educational Opportunity Program helps to support low-income, first generation college students. SDSU spends several millions of dollars on outreach programs for the local communities. Other outreach programs, such as Super Sundays and Compact for Success, also help prepare students to apply to SDSU.

Although thousands were accepted, about 1,740 California State University-eligible first-time freshmen students were denied admission to SDSU, according to Jacobs.

“We want to be a place where our local students can go to a university,” Jacobs said. “Unfortunately, under these really tight enrollment and tight budget system, we cannot provide access to everyone who wants it.”

The university has implemented a new Transfer Admission Guarantee for students who were not accepted for Fall 2010. The traditional Transfer Admission Guarantee promised students admission to SDSU after completing half of their transferable coursework at a local community college and meeting the GPA requirements for their major. Now, students must complete all of their transferable units at a local community college in three years. Students only have to meet the requirements for this year instead of the requirements for the year that they apply.

After the change to the admissions policy, local transfer students became SDSU’s top priority because there is little for transfer students to do after they have completed their coursework at a community college, Jacobs said. She added that SDSU is sometimes the only option for local transfer students who want to attend a four-year university, because many students are place-bound. “Place-bound” refers to those students that, because of fewer financial resources and other circumstances, cannot leave the local area to attend school. According to Cook, students have three years to complete their coursework at a community college because many will have to take remedial classes before taking college-level courses. To further assist students in completion of the Transfer Admission Guarantee requirements, students at local community colleges can take one class per semester at SDSU for $10 if there is space available.

Cook says the university expects to receive the majority of intent to enroll letters from incoming freshmen and transfer students next month, but many students wait until the last minute to respond.

SDSU has 6,158 undergraduate slots. The university expects to have 3,534 new freshman and 2,624 transfer students next year.