Signed into law on Oct. 6, California Senate Bill 640 will extend existing transfer pathways to the California State University and build a new path for high school seniors.
The bill establishes a brand new CSU Direct Admissions Program, allowing high school seniors who meet coursework and grade requirements to gain near-automatic admission into one of the 16 CSUs participating in the program.
To determine eligibility, the Direct Admissions Program will utilize the statewide Cradle-to-Career Data System that includes data from hundreds of high school districts.
Beginning in the fall of 2027, eligible high school seniors will receive a letter early in the academic year explaining how they can launch their application. Because their application automatically populates coursework and grade data, students just have to answer a few remaining questions and select their top campus choice.
“It should be as easy and seamless to go from 12th grade to college as it is to go from 10th grade to 11th grade,” bill author Senator Christopher Cabaldon wrote on his website. “SB 640 seals the cracks through which too many students fall and gets a coveted letter of admission to thousands of qualified students.”
SB 640 also contains provisions requiring high schools to promote the Direct Admissions Program early on. The same proactive communication will now also be required of community colleges when promoting the Dual Admissions Program, also known as the Transfer Success Pathway, which SB 640 renewed until the 2035-2036 academic year.
The Transfer Success Pathway was originally established in 2021 through Assembly Bill 132, allowing first-time community college students guaranteed admission to a CSU if they complete their associate’s degree within three years or less.
While San Diego State University participates in the Transfer Success Pathway, it will not be participating in the Direct Admissions Program due to its impacted status.
“San Diego State, Long Beach, Fullerton, San Luis Obispo, San Jose and Pomona are not part of this program currently, because at the first-time freshman level, they receive too many applications from qualified students,” said April Grommo, CSU’s vice chancellor for strategic enrollment management. “Any student who gets a direct admissions mailer, they can still apply to those campuses if they wish … We’re really trying to be proactive and communicate that you have a spot in the CSU at one of these 16 options.”
However, SDSU does have local admissions partnerships with nearby Hoover High School and the Sweetwater Union High School District in Chula Vista.
Third-year aerospace engineering student Vance Halverson attends SDSU as a result of this partnership, titled the Compact for Success. The compact is exclusive to Sweetwater students who were enrolled in the district for all four years, so Halverson is hopeful about the expanded opportunity SB 640 may bring.
For Halverson’s year, SDSU’s direct admission requirements included a 3.0 GPA, 4.0 citizenship (behavior) grade and successful completion of two AP classes.
“It’s fairly accessible,” Halverson said. “There’s a wide range of AP classes you can take. There’s the sciences, there’s the maths, there’s the Englishes. So I think, in general, pretty much anyone who wants to be in the program and would apply themselves could find a class that they could take and get a good enough grade to put them over that threshold at a 3.3.”
Because of the program, Halverson only applied to his dream school, the University of California, Los Angeles, and SDSU.
“[SDSU] was so safe that I knew I was getting in no matter what. So I did try to get into UCLA, but because of the fact that I got waitlisted, I put more of my effort into making sure that I just had everything settled here, dorms, moving in, classes registered, all that,” Halverson said. “It was really nice to have a safety net, in the sense that I knew exactly where I was going if I didn’t go to UCLA.”
However, Halverson was classified as a commuter due to his proximity to campus, and securing on-campus housing was not ideal.
“It was a little bit of a hassle to get a dorm,” he explained. “There were people who were guaranteed dorms, because, let’s say you come from out of state, you’re not going to commute. So what I got was whatever was left over after everyone else was situated in dorms.”
Campus housing has been a big concern across the CSU, with demand exceeding supply and costs at an all-time high.
While there is no current plan to expand on-campus housing as a result of the Direct Admissions Program, Grommo said that they will continue to communicate with students and work towards increased state funding.
“As we move this program statewide, and we start to see demand in specific areas, it will help us work with the state to make sure that we are receiving enrollment funding and be able to use that funding strategically at specific campuses to support growth,” Grommo said. “As far as housing goes, many of our campuses have received funding from the state, and are currently working on expanding the housing that they have.”
Currently, the focus is on proactive communication and getting the program off the ground.
“The student is going to go through that process to determine which campus is best for them, what’s a good fit from a housing perspective,” Grommo said. “Maybe it’s their local campus because they want to be a commuter student and save money. So it’s really just about proactively communicating to students, because a lot of first-generation low-income students don’t even realize that they’re CSU eligible.”
Grommo herself worked directly with Sen. Cabaldon to workshop the bill and take lessons from the fall 2025 direct admissions pilot program in Riverside County.
“We’re really excited that we were able to work with Senator Cabaldon’s office and get the bill passed, and that it really is an important milestone for both the CSU and for California in expanding access to higher education and making sure that students know that attending a CSU is something that they can achieve.”
