Impaction

Competitive Admission Process (Impaction)

Admission to San José State is competitive in all majors because SJSU continues to have more qualified applicants than available new student spaces. This situation is called "impaction" and it means that meeting the minimum California State University (CSU) requirements does not guarantee admission to SJSU. 

San José State gives preference in the competitive admission process to “local” applicants. For freshmen, you are considered a “local” applicant if you will graduate from a high school in Santa Clara County. For transfer applicants, you are considered a “local” applicant if you will earn the majority of your transferable units at a college located in Santa Clara or Santa Cruz County.

For a list of available majors for Fall 2025 applicants, please consult our Steps to Admission [pdf].

Impaction Criteria for Freshmen

For the Fall 2025 admission cycle, SJSU will not consider SAT/ACT scores in our review for admission. Freshman applicants who meet the CSU minimum academic requirements will be ranked in each major and admitted to meet the enrollment capacity of their chosen major. In order to be eligible for impaction consideration as outlined below, applicants must first meet the minimum academic requirements.

In addition to the preference given to local applicants, SJSU will consider additional factors in the impaction process. Specifically, additional consideration will be given to applicants who qualify for the Cal State Apply application fee waiver, are the first to attend college in their family (first-generation), and/or are a U.S. veteran. These factors will be considered during the impaction evaluation - they will not be considered when evaluating minimum CSU eligibility.

Freshmen applicants to programs in the College of Engineering will be ranked using a modified eligibility index that will take into consideration applicants’ math GPA in addition to the factors listed above.

See specific impaction results for freshmen

Impaction Criteria for Transfers

CSU eligible transfer applicants will be ranked in each major based on their self-reported GPA (as reported in the required SJSU-specific Supplemental Application). For each admission cycle, some programs will give preference in the impaction process to transfer applicants who have completed program-specific preparatory courses. For these programs, applicants will be ranked for admission to major based on a combination of self-reported GPA and successful completion of approved program-specific courses.

See impaction results for transfer applicants

Supplemental Application Requirement - Transfer applicants only

Transfer applicants will be required to complete an SJSU-specific Supplemental Application including grades for work completed at the time of submission. Information about the supplemental application will be posted to applicants' MySJSU accounts in late December for the fall term and in early September for the spring term. We plan to assign the supplemental application to your MySJSU "To Do List" in early January for the fall term and in mid-September for the spring term. Students will have several weeks to complete and submit the application. Applicants who do not submit this application by the deadline posted to their MySJSU "To Do List" will not be considered for admission. SJSU's Supplemental Application requirement is in addition to any updates made to your Cal State Apply application.

Choose Your Major Carefully

It is important to understand that though all majors are impacted, the admission threshold for each major varies, depending on the capacity of the major to take new students, and the number of students applying for that major in that term.

We encourage you to apply for the major in which you intend to earn a degree. Change of major is prohibited during the application and admission process. After you are admitted, change of major is never guaranteed and is by petition only. Your mandatory orientation, advising and registration will all be based on your choice of major.

In addition, we encourage you to look at the admission thresholds by major at SJSU for recent terms, and to apply to an alternative campus that offers your major.

You must enter an alternate major on your application to SJSU. We will consider the alternate major for those applicants who did not meet the impaction threshold to their first choice major. We will only admit to alternate majors if there is additional capacity for new student enrollment in that major. For Spring 2025, the evaluation process to determine which majors have the capacity to admit applicants to alternate majors will continue through the beginning of November.

View a complete list of degrees, including graduate degrees and credentials.

Have questions? Ask us! admissions@sjsu.edu