On Wednesday, Oct. 23, Gavin Newsom announced that he had signed the 640 bill into law. The law will put the California State University (CSU) Direct Admission Program into action by fall 2026.
The new program is run by CSU and is designed to make the application process faster and more accessible to CSU applicants. It does this by partnering with schools across California and inserting eligible students directly into the CSU system. If a student is eligible, has completed their required ”A-G” courses, and has at least a grade point average of 2.5, they will receive a letter stating that they are admitted to the 16 CSU campuses.
The next steps include applying to universities, whether that is one or all 16, and awaiting a decision from each school. Though this system seems promising, with every new system comes possible challenges.
“The possible negative outcome of this law is that students mistake the letter for an admissions decision and, therefore, do not complete the Cal State Apply application,” Miramonte College and Career Co-Director Karren Rooff said. If students mistake the letter of admissions for a letter of acceptance and do not apply altogether, they have not applied to a college and therefore will not be able to go to the CSUs through the Direct admissions process.
Though this is an important step to make college applications accessible, it does not directly apply to Miramonte. The main effect it could have is educating students who previously did not believe they were eligible for a CSU and encouraging them to apply.
However, this has worked well for other schools in past years, and CSUs are now some of upwards of 150 schools to adopt direct admissions with a goal to better the education of high school graduates.
“The hope is that, by notifying students of guaranteed admissions, students who might not think they are eligible for Cal State will go ahead and apply. The end goal is to increase access to affordable higher education for California high school graduates,” Shopoff-Roof said.
Overall, the main addition of a state-wide direct admissions process was created to make the CSU application process more accessible to low-income students and to create a more comprehensive system. “I’ve heard that it is predicted to potentially increase college attendance rates by showing students the colleges that they could get into, which makes me excited for the future,” said junior Micah Murdock.
When a student is notified that they have been admitted and they qualify for fee waivers, their application fee is waived for up to 4 schools. This makes the process easily accessible to low-income students, allowing them to apply for schools that they may now have been able to apply to previously because of expensive applications.
CSU’s Direct Admissions will not directly change the application process at Miramonte, but it is still an important step to provide education for high school graduates and students from low-income backgrounds. The program begins in 2026 and will continue from there.
