By Marlyn Rodriguez |Opinions Editor|
CSUSB signed a contract giving automatic acceptance to high school students who maintain regular attendance satisfactory grades and meeting the A-G requirements.
These changes will be implemented with the graduating class of 2015.
The San Bernardino Sun reports that the San Bernardino Unified School District signed a memorandum with President Dr. Tomas Morales granting local students acceptance on Friday April 11, 2014.
Superintendent of San Bernardino Unified Dale Marsden states, “Collaboration is a core value for us, as we enter into this historic agreement.”
Similar deals have already been signed by CSUSB with Chaffey, Colton and Rialto Unified School Districts.
These deals are seen as a benefit for the university as it will , in turn, raise the qualification requirements, which will then make it harder to be admitted.
Camille Cicotello, a student accounts representative, noted the new system would give local students greater priority.
“It’s a good thing because we should cater to local students,” said Cicotello.
Currently, the university admissions rate has declined by three percent, which is one of the reasons San Bernardino Unified made the deal with CSUSB.
“As long as we do not exclude students that are not local but exceed the requirements, there should be no problem with this new deal,” said Cicotello.
There has been a 29 percent increase in applications over the past five years, according to The San Bernardino Sun.
A school is impacted when the number of applications received from fully qualified applicants during the initial filing period exceeds the number of available spaces.
However, according to calstate.edu, the only CSUSB majors impacted are Criminal Justice and Nursing.
“Just because students are accepted, it doesn’t mean they are going to enroll and choose this as their school,” said Maria Ocegueda, a CSUSB student and accounts representative.
There are universities in the Cal State system that are impacted in all majors, such as Fullerton, Long Beach, San Diego, San Jose, and San Luis Obispo.
“The school has already implemented a limit of the amount of students they can accept, so it won’t affect the impaction. However, it will affect the demographics of the university,” added Ocegueda.
Statistics on collegeboard.com state that less than half of the students who apply to CSUSB are accepted.
Less than half of the students that are accepted end up enrolling.
Local students are considered for admission with at least 2.0 GPA versus a 2.75 for a student who resides out of the area.
“The benefits outweigh the potential downsides. They are making an attempt to localize the university and give local students a higher opportunity to stay within the region they are comfortable with,” said Janae Koger, a student assistant in the Admissions office.
These qualification requirements are likely to go up with the new implementations that are taking place.
“The gap between high school graduation requirements and the requirements for admission is wide enough already,” added Cicotello. “We don’t want to make that gap any wider and end up hurting ourselves as a university.”
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