What exactly defines a safety school?

[Data10]

@theloniusmonk

@Data10

“The applicant sees that 4.0 GPA + 1600 was above the EI stat index for 2019, so he”

For 2019, the EI for CS was 4825,

The EI for freshman CS as listed at https://www.sjsu.edu/admissions/impaction/freshmen-impaction-results/index.php are below. 2019 was 4675. 2020 was 4825.

2016 – 4550
2017 – 4500
2018 – 4725
2019 – 4675
2020 – 4825

Anyway, that’s not typically how it works for CSUs, you list three majors, Applicant 1 would list say CS, Software engineering, Math and gets into SJSU with second major.

It depends on which CSU. Some CSUs will not accept students in to alternate majors, and some CSU applicants do not list alternate majors. It’s my understanding that SJSU admits primary major applicants first, then admits alternate majors if there is space left over in the selected alternate major. In the link above, they state:

@SJSU

SJSU admits applicants to their alternate major only if there is additional capacity beyond those admitted as a primary major. This means that you might meet the threshold for your alternate major, but because there is no additional enrollment capacity to admit applicants to alternate majors, your application was withdrawn as unaccommodated.

I expect software engineering (or nearly any major with high EI threshold) doesn’t tend to have a lot of space left over for alternate majors, after the primary major admits. And many prospective CS students do not want to be assigned to the less popular non-tech fields that do have space left over. If the student does not want to choose the alternative major, then it doesn’t work well as a safety.