A lot has to be said about San Diego State’s new freshmen class. The school itself is calling the class the “highest-achieving in SDSU history.” So what does this mean? I’m a freshman, so of course, our brilliance is not being debated. But there might be more going on here that’s worth bragging about — facts that could ease the annoyance of some upperclassmen.
SDSU is quickly becoming a competitive school for admissions. Last fall, it received a record-breaking 77,959 applicants striving to get into this esteemed establishment. As the number of applicants increases, the acceptance rate dwindles down.
SDSU is giving University of California campuses a run for their money.
This may not hold true for all California State Universities, but SDSU is uniquely rising to the occasion and holding their students to a higher standard.
While most UC schools tend to have higher GPA requirements for their applicants, the competitive acceptance rates are closing the gap of prestige.
According to California Colleges, SDSU is tied with California Polytechnic State University and CSU, Long Beach at the lowest CSU acceptance rate of 31 percent. There is a stigma of UC schools being harder to get into than state schools — this misconception is especially strong in academically competitive areas.
Because of a spike in applicants, SDSU has a lower acceptance rate than UC Irvine (35.4 percent), UC Santa Barbara (36.1 percent), UC Davis (40.6 percent), UC Riverside (56.7 percent), UC Santa Cruz (56.9 percent) and UC Merced (64 percent). We even have a lower acceptance rate than our neighbors, UC San Diego at 33.4 percent.
This should make you all proud to be Aztecs and should make the rest of California understand UC schools aren’t harder to get into. I know during the season of college applications (also known as hell) the overbearing buzz in high school is the pressure to apply, and get admitted, to a UC.
Looking back on my own experience as a recent high school graduate, I didn’t apply to any UCs because it wasn’t the experience I was looking for.With the recent relevations of SDSU’s success, I’m glad I didn’t research acceptance rates because I might have applied to UCs to heighten my chances of admittance. Higher acceptance rates aren’t expected of the stereotypical UC reverence, but numbers don’t lie.
Not only is SDSU extremely selective of who they admit, but it’s also a university on the academic rise. According to United States News & World Report’s annual ranking of America’s best colleges, SDSU has been deemed one of the top “Up-and-Coming Schools” in the country, climbing in rankings faster than any other college during the past three years.
Just to soothe the agitation of upperclassmen, these rankings prove SDSU has been on the prestigious track for a while — long before us “high-achieving” freshmen arrived.
The overwhelming number of applicants and decreasing acceptance rates could be occurring for a number of reasons. We have state-of-the art facilities, renowned research programs, a diverse population, study abroad excellence, perfect weather and as other rankings have proved, we know how to have fun.
So if you’ve ever felt less qualified than your UC friends, or felt as though you got admitted into your safety school, think again. SDSU’s selectivity is unlike other CSUs. So much so, we’re statistical outliers in the stereotypical grouping of state schools. With the decreasing trend in acceptance rates and uphill track on national records, our future as Aztecs looks promising.
