San José State University Offering Guaranteed Admission to South County Students

As efforts expand across California to boost college access and enrollment, San José State University is making it easier for high school students in South Santa Clara County to attend.

The university is launching a new guaranteed admission program in partnership with both Gilroy and Morgan Hill Unified School Districts. All graduating seniors who meet California State University education requirements will be offered acceptance into San José State, one of the most popular schools in the system.

“This is about your future, your potential and your power to shape the world,” Anisha Munshi, superintendent of Gilroy Unified, told a group of dozens of students gathered for a launch event this week at Christopher High School in Gilroy. “We are so proud of you, and we cannot wait to see all that you will accomplish.”

Cynthia Teniente-Matson, San José State’s president, said the partnership helps the university reach its goals of equity and inclusiveness, and helps South County students open doors to more possibilities, such as careers in Silicon Valley. According to a recent report from the Public Policy Institute of California, workers in the state who had a bachelor’s degree in 2023 earned 61% on average more than those with just a high school diploma.

“They have an opportunity to pursue things that they might not have experienced in their upbringing. We have a lot of first-generation students that are here in Gilroy Unified School District. We have a lot of families where English is not their first language,” Teniente-Matson said. “We want to be more available to them to know San José State is their home, and we want them at our institution.”

The new program is set to go into effect next fall. Students who have maintained a minimum 2.5 grade point average, and have held a C average or better across CSU-required courses in math, literature, science, language and arts classes, will be proactively notified that they are eligible to be admitted to SJSU.

The letter will include information about how to formalize their application online and claim their spot, and will also direct students and their families to financial aid applications, officials said.

Just getting the letter in the mail that lets a student know they have a spot waiting for them at a university can significantly boost the likelihood they’ll enroll, said Melissa Bardo, the director of government affairs for EdTrust-West, an Oakland-based organization working to remove racial and economic barriers in the state’s education system.

“Thinking about this from the perspective of a high school senior who is completing their courses in high school, maybe they are unaware that they completed all the courses that are necessary for them to enter college,” Bardo said.

“But let’s say you get a letter in the mail, and it says, ‘Congratulations, you met all the requirements, and you are conditionally accepted to the university.’ It can make those next steps of applying for financial aid and figuring out how to get enrolled, and doing so with the support from the institutions that reached out to you, a lot less daunting and more approachable.”

Bardo said direct admissions programs are a proven strategy to increase enrollment and opportunity, and have shown success in states like Idaho, Minnesota and Hawaii, as well as a pilot program in Riverside County that began last year. Cal State East Bay has also set up similar programs with schools in Hayward, Oakland and San Leandro.

Gov. Gavin Newsom recently signed into law SB 640, a bill that expands the pilot program from Riverside County to school districts across the state, opening up 16 of the state’s 22 CSUs for guaranteed admission to many more students.

State colleges that are impacted, meaning they receive more applications than they can accept in certain programs, including San José State, don’t fall under that law currently.

Programs like the ones San José State is rolling out now will help all students, Bardo said, but are especially helpful for students who have traditionally been underrepresented in state colleges.

“It benefits all types of students from all types of backgrounds, but it is also conscious of the fact that we need to close equity gaps for students of color, for students from low-income backgrounds, and for first-generation students,” she said.

One study cited in EdTrust-West’s Black Minds Matter 2025 report found that students who were “randomly assigned to receive direct admissions letters were four times more likely to apply to the institution and 30% more likely to also apply to another college.”

Both Morgan Hill and Gilroy schools had lower percentages of students who met the CSU entrance requirements than the average for all schools in Santa Clara County from 2020 to 2024, according to state education data.

Gilroy also had significantly higher percentages of students who were English learners, foster youth or eligible for free or reduced-price meals than the county average over the past five years.

Jenny Lee, a senior at Christopher High and the student body vice president, said she thinks the program will be a big boon for students.

“I think it could be really helpful for the students that want to go to college but might have felt discouraged based on financial situations or just not feeling like they could be enough,” Lee said. “I think this eases that and might motivate more people to get their college education and continue just leveling up to their highest potential.”

San José State will also offer dual enrollment courses to South County students, where high school students can take courses that earn them college credit ahead of time.

Teniente-Matson told students at the launch rally in Gilroy that the partnership is about making sure they know they all have a “clear, supported and guaranteed pathway to our university,” though she noted the school has become more popular in recent years.

“It is actually quite difficult to get into San José State University, particularly in certain programs like engineering, animation and design, psychology, kinesiology; these are some of our top-ranked programs,” she said. “So our ability to create this partnership means a lot about our commitment to you.”

Andrew Wright, head of enrollment management at SJSU, said every student in the program who meets the basic requirements will be able to nab a spot at the school, but if they apply to more impacted programs, such as computer science or nursing, and don’t have the “competitive marks” to get in, they would likely be admitted as an undeclared major, or to other programs.

“So we’re not telling them that they can’t. All it’s doing is giving them an opportunity to explore other options,” Wright said. Students admitted to the university could then take courses in the impacted programs to earn a spot in those majors, he said, with help from advisors.

Still, Bardo from EdTrust-West said plenty of other barriers to college success exist. While tuition costs can be partially addressed through universal statewide requirements to check for financial aid eligibility, challenges affecting many Californians, such as the rising cost of housing, food, transportation and childcare, can often play a big role in determining a student’s success in college.

Lee, the senior at Christopher High, agreed, saying tuition and housing fees are some of the biggest weights on seniors’ minds.

“I know a lot of people get stressed out about loans. Even in my government class, my teacher showed us a video kind of warning students about loans and how you can fall down into a deep hole and to explore all your options,” she said.

Direct admission programs like SJSU are pursuing are “one of the puzzle pieces” the state is putting together to try and make college more widely accessible and affordable, Bardo said.

“We need to develop innovative ways to reach out to students and let them know that college pathways are still available,” she said.