Due to the increase in impacted programs, schools now have to use means of bias to choose which applicants should be accepted.

Pete Moye’
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According to the Counseling, Research and Planning, and Public Affairs departments, for the fall 2010 term, only 14 Cerritos College transfers were admitted to Cal State Fullerton.

As the years have passed, the acceptance rate from community colleges has steadily decreased.

Cal State Long Beach’s Institutional Research and Assessment showed that from 2007, when 61.3 percent of Cerritos College students who applied to CSULB were accepted, to the fall of 2010, when a mere 21 percent were admitted.

Universities are also requiring higher standards for Cerritos transfer students, such as CSUF requiring a GPA of 3.7 as opposed to a 2.0 GPA for local area students in the fall of 2010.

Similarly, CSULB required a 3.5 GPA for Cerritos students and 2.0 for those in the local area.

The raised GPA is directly proportional to the California budget cuts for Cal States.

Because of the impacted majors and lack of funding, the universities are continually raising the standards for out of area students to cut some of the competition.

According to Megan Conley, from Admissions and Records at CSUF, the only way to increase a student’s chances of admittance is to meet the GPA requirement for that semester.

“We look at the school where you obtained most of your classes. If your GPA does not meet the requirements, you should apply for a University where you qualify for local area priority with the lower GPA requirement,” Conley said.

Based on the statistics from the Cerritos College Transfer Center, there is about a 15 percent advantage for local area admissions priority students.

According to the Counseling, Research and Planning and Public Affairs department, because of these down-sloping acceptance rates, Cerritos College is seeking to be included in the local service area for CSULB and CSUF.

One of the reasons for the low acceptance rates is because of the high level of impaction, universities are giving priority who colleges and high-schools within the local area admissions priority.

Cerritos College is about nine miles away from CSULB and 11 from CSUF. Despite the fact Cerritos College is not too far from either college, it is still not accepted as local area.