Lots of high schools have overworked GCs who have little time to spend on the nuances of more selective college admission, or learn about admission policies at colleges “off the beaten track” for that high school.
Also, many colleges where different majors or divisions have different admission selectivity are opaque about how different admission selectivity is, unlike SJSU.
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
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:
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.
Re: second choice major at SJSU
On https://www.sjsu.edu/admissions/impaction/freshmen-impaction-results/index.php , majors listed with ^ are those which did not have capacity to admit those listing it as an alternate major. For 2020 admissions, it looks like all majors that had EI thresholds of 3100 or higher (including software engineering) were marked as such, while most (but not all) majors with EI thresholds of 3000 or lower were marked as such (applied math computational had an EI threshold of 3000 but did not admit alternate major applicants).
There are quite a few majors listed as having capacity to admit alternate major applicants, but none that I’d expect to be popular choices among primary major CS applicants. This is especially true for students who are looking for a field with a high early career salary, without additional degrees. A list is below:
SJSU Majors with Additional Capacity to Support Alternate Major Applicants
–Anthropology
–Art (not including digital media)
–Behavioral Science, Communicative Disorders
–Earth Science, Geology, Environmental Studies, Meteorology
–English, Journalism
–Ethnic Studies (AA Studies, Chicano Studies, Sociology in ethnic field…)
–Foreign Languages (Chinese, French, …), Linguistics
–History, Global Studies, Geography
–Hospitality, Public Relations
–Humanities, Liberal Arts
–Justice Studies
–Nutritional Science
–Packaging, Organizational Science
–Performance Arts (Music, Dance, Theater)
–Philosophy
–Recreation
Back to the 4.0/1600, he or she is in for CS if they live in Santa Clara County (EI of 5000) or if not in SC, then one honors course in 10th or 11th will also do it.
However, since SJSU determines thresholds competitively every year, anyone who wants to reasonably consider it a safety needs to have an EI well above any historical threshold for his/her major. CS has had such high historical thresholds that there is very little headroom above them.
The post mentioned the applicants were SF residents (SF is not in Santa Clara County) and implied it was a 4.0 recalculated GPA, rather than 4.0 UW GPA. That said, yes there are different thresholds for different groups, even within the same major. The 2020 results could instead be the following.
SJSU CS Applicant 1 – SJ resident with 3.9 UC GPA* + 1500 SAT – Does not meet EI threshold and is Not Accepted
SJSU CS Applicant 2 – SF resident with 4.0 UC GPA* + 1600 SAT – Does not meet EI threshold and is Not Accepted
SJSU CS Applicant 3 – NYS resident with 4.0 UW + all courses honors + 1600 SAT – Does not meet EI threshold and is Not Accepted
*Recalculated UC GPA prior to Santa Clara county bonus, UC GPA has maximum of >4.0 with eligible honors classes
The point is even near perfect stats that are far beyond the stat range of the college does not guarantee acceptance at SJSU, which is a public college that uses stat based admission and had a >60% admit rate in the most recent CDS. Rather than look at the overall admit rate and overall stat ranges, one needs to consider the chance of admission for a particular student. At SJSU, both choice of major and residency are important influences that can make a particular student’s chance of acceptance dramatically different from the overall averages for the college. A similar statement could be made at many other public colleges.
@Paul1234567890 We recently received a similar question and wrote this article to cover the topic in depth. This article might help you to have a broader understanding with regards to safety schools. You can read more at this link: https://insights.collegeconfidential.com/searching-for-safety-schools
“The point is even near perfect stats that are far beyond the stat range of the college does not guarantee acceptance at SJSU, which is a public college that uses stat based admission and had a >60% admit rate in the most recent CDS.”
You keep changing the applicant profile on this, anyway, none of those three would look at SJSU as a safety. The kids thinking of SJSU as a a safety have a UC gpa well over 4, as they have taken honors courses,live in Santa Clara county and 1500 or better. The naviance data for kids like this are all accept, the high school’s acceptance rates are around 80-85% for all majors because the hs are located in SC county.
The SF residents in the two posts were the same applicant – with the same stats, same major, and same residence. I expanded the example to include applicants from other locations besides just SF and more explicitly stated UC GPA instead of UW GPA in response to your comment. The original post explained how this applicant could consider SJSU as a safety. Quotes are repeated below: