csu freshman coursework entry guide

College Coursework

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Requirements

Enter all of the coursework you completed at all US and English Canadian colleges or universities attended. Note the following:

• Reporting coursework accurately is your responsibility. Since credit values, grade values, and course subjects vary widely from school to school, your programs need some type of standardization so they can accurately compare applicants. This standardization is achieved by using your coursework to create a standard set of GPAs, ensuring you are compared to other applicants fairly and equally.
• Complete the Colleges Attended section before entering your courses.
• Report all courses on your transcripts, not just prerequisites. Be sure to include courses from which you withdrew, repeated courses, ungraded labs, test credits, gym courses, orientations, or other non-graded courses.
• Use official copies of your transcripts. Coursework must exactly match your official transcripts; don't use an unofficial version, like a printout from your school's website. List your courses under the correct term, year, and class level. Department prefixes and course numbers must precisely match those on your transcripts.
• Enter courses under the institution where you originally took the course, exactly as they appear on the original school's transcript. Don't list courses under the school in which the credits were transferred. You may need to go back to your Colleges Attended list and add a school to enter the transfer credits for.

Additional Documents

2023-2024 Application

• If you are a freshman applicant for the 2023-2024 cycle, review the 2023-2024 Cal State Apply Freshman Application Guide for detailed instructions.
• If you are a transfer applicant for the 2023-2024 cycle, review the 2023-2024 Cal State Apply Transfer Application Guide for detailed instructions.
• If you completed dual enrollment courses, review the 2023-2024 Dual Enrollment Coursework Guidance document.

2024-2025 Application

• If you are a freshman applicant for the 2023-2024 cycle, review the 2024-2025 Cal State Apply Freshman Application Guide for detailed instructions.
• If you are a transfer applicant for the 2023-2024 cycle, review the 2024-2025 Cal State Apply Transfer Application Guide for detailed instructions.
• If you completed dual enrollment courses, review the 2024-2025 Dual Enrollment Coursework Guidance document.

Enter a Term

• Click Start to begin entering courses for a college or university.
• Add a semester, quarter, or trimester depending on the term system you selected in the Colleges Attended section.
• Select a term.
• Select a year. Options are based on the time spans you selected in the Colleges Attended section.
• Select an academic status. Academic status refers to your status during the term you are inputting, not your current status. Refer to the list of Academic Status definitions below for more information.
• Select a completion status. If you're entering courses for a term that is currently in progress or planned, select In Progress/Planned .
• Click Save .
• Continue adding terms, as needed.

Academic Status Definitions

• Dual enrollment courses (college courses taken during high school) are considered Freshman and should be listed under the college where you took them. Do not report these courses again as transfer credits at your undergraduate institution.
• Post-Baccalaureate: Applies to undergraduate-level courses taken after your first bachelor's degree is earned. If you earned a second bachelor's degree, that is considered post-baccalaureate.
• Graduate : Applies to master's degree- and doctorate degree-level work only, regardless of whether the degree was earned. Work such as that taken in pursuit of a Ph.D., MD, PharmD, JD, JurisD, LL.D, DC., etc. are considered doctorate degree-level.

Enter a Course

Enter courses for a completed term.

• Click Add A Course under the appropriate term.
• Enter the course code. Department prefixes and course numbers must exactly match what appears on your official transcript. Some courses may populate from a drop-down that appears as you type the course. These are pre-loaded courses from ASSIST. If your course does not appear on the list, please complete the entry with the course subject and number as listed on your transcript.
• Enter the course title. You can abbreviate it if it does not fit in the text box.
• Select the course subject area. In most cases, it corresponds to the course subject code. This field does not default with a value. Make sure to select a subject for each course line. The system will not let you save the page without a subject identified for each course. If you are unable to find a similar subject, select the closest related subject if available. If there is no corresponding subject, select Special Topics.
• Enter the course credits exactly as they appear on your transcript. See the Course Credits section below for more details.
• If your grades are listed as "BA," "CB," or "DC," you must list them as "AB," "BC," and "CD" in order for the system to recognize them.
• If your grades are listed as numbers (e.g., 93), enter them exactly as they appear on your transcript. They will automatically convert to the equivalent CAS letter grade.
• The CAS Grade populates automatically. This allows us to standardize your coursework for all programs and cannot be edited.
• Click Save All .
• Continue adding courses, as needed.

Enter Courses for an In-Progress or Planned Term

You should enter any courses that you are currently taking or plan to take in the near future. This is not required, but is strongly recommended, as some programs require it. Note, however, that any term containing In Progress/Planned courses cannot be marked as complete; the entire term must be marked as In Progress/Planned. Contact your programs to determine if they require planned or in-progress coursework to be listed. Once you complete in-progress courses, you can update them in the application.

• Make sure that you selected In Progress/Planned for the term you're listing the course under. This alerts the system that you aren't required to enter a grade for this course.
• Enter the course code.
• Select the course subject. If you're unsure, make your best guess.
• Enter the expected course credits. Depending on the format of your credits, you may need to convert them. See the Course Credits section below for more details.

Once you have added all your courses, select Yes under the Have you completed entering your transcript? question.

Enter Narrative Transcripts

If your institution uses a narrative transcript, enter your coursework as described above. If the transcript lists "suggested" credits and/or grades, be sure to enter those as well; otherwise, list the course credits as "0.0" and the grades as "Pass."

Your programs will see the list of classes you took, along with a copy of the official narrative transcript that you submit.

Enter Repeated Courses and Academic Renewals

For admission purposes, the CSU honors the grading policies of the institution where credit was earned by accepting official transcript entries, including those reflecting academic renewal, repeat, and incomplete grades.

If you have repeated coursework, enter your coursework as described above and:

• If the original attempt is excluded from the transcript GPA and you have a grade for the repeated attempt, enter "RP" for the original attempt's grade.
• If the original attempt is excluded from the transcript GPA, but your repeated attempt is in progress, enter the original attempt's grade.

If your college offers academic renewal, enter your coursework as described above and enter "AR" for courses listed as academic renewal on the transcript.

Course Credits

Semester, trimester, and quarter credits.

If your course credits are mostly in "3.0," "4.0," or "5.0" format, then your transcript is listing normal semester, trimester, or quarter credits and no conversion is necessary. Enter the credits exactly as they appear on your transcript.

There are two box values for credit. The first is the whole credit value. The second box is for fractional credit values and defaults to 00. To change this, select a value from the drop-down. For example, a course that is 3.5 credits would have a value of 3 in the first box and then .5 in the second.

If credits automatically populate from the Course Code drop-down, double-check the values match what is listed on your transcript.

Unit Credits

If all of your course credits are listed in "1.0" or "0.50" format, then your transcript is listing credit units and you need to perform a conversion. Check the back of your transcript for a conversion ratio, which will say something like "1 unit is equivalent to 4 semester hours."

If there is no conversion on the back of your transcript, contact your registrar's office to determine the conversion ratio. Then, convert the credits by multiplying the number of units listed on your transcript by the conversion factor. For example, if your conversion is 1 unit = 4 hours and your transcript lists 1 unit for a course, you would enter 4.00 credits on your application. If 0.50 is listed, you would enter 2.00.

Review Cal State Apply Grade Value Charts to view some Canadian institutions' unit conversion ratios.

Lab Credits

If your transcript lists labs separately, you must list them as separate courses on your application as well. Record the labs exactly as they appear on your transcript. If your transcript combines lab and lecture courses into one course, list it as one course on your application.

Test Credits

You can only list test credits if they were awarded by one of the schools you attended and they appear on your transcript. Test credit types include Advanced Placement (AP), International Baccalaureate (IB), CLEP, DANTE, Regents, and courses you "tested out of" at college or university. List these credits under your first term at the school that awarded you the credit and enter "CR" as the grade. If no course prefix or number appears on the transcript, enter "N/A" for Not Applicable.

Transferable

For each course, you must identify if the course is transferable by checking the box at the end of the course entry row. The course numbering system on the back of the transcript or in the course catalog often indicates college level- or bachelor degree-applicable courses. California Community College students can use ASSIST.org to view CSU transferability. College preparative, remedial, or vocational coursework are not transferable. If you are uncertain, check with a transfer counselor at your college. Courses entered with data populating from ASSIST will have the box checked automatically. It is important to make sure you have all courses correctly classified since transferable courses are used to calculate admission GPA.

Transfer GPA

Calculations of transfer GPAs include all transferable units attempted at all colleges or universities attended and are part of the transfer admission requirements.

Your Transfer GPA will be available on the College Coursework page. Once you add new coursework, click Recalculate to refresh your GPA and confirm that it is correct before submitting your application.

Calculating Your GPAs

Cal State Apply uses the information you entered in the College Coursework section to calculate several GPAs, including GPAs for each institution you attended. To calculate these GPAs, each A-F or 0-100 grade you entered in the Grade field is first converted to a Cal State Apply numeric grade value, then multiplied by the attempted credits. The resulting product is Quality Points.

Your total Quality Points are then divided by your Attempted Credits to determine your GPA.

Non-graded credits are not included in your GPAs. Non-graded credits are earned credits for which you did not receive actual letter grades (e.g., advanced placement credits, "pass" or "satisfactory" credits, college board AP exams, courses taken as pass/fail, etc.). Note: a grade of WF (i.e., equivalent of a withdrawn with penalty, withdrawn failing, etc.) is factored into GPA calculations as an F.

Cal State Apply calculates all GPAs in semester hours. Courses that were completed in quarter hours are converted to semester hours. The conversion ratio is 1.0 quarter hour = 0.667 semester hours.

Once you have entered your coursework, you can view your GPA in your full application PDF.

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• Sep 28, 2022

Applying to a Cal State University in 2023

Updated: Sep 23, 2023

The California State University (CSU) is a public university system made up of 23 college campuses across the state of California​.

Whether your student is applying to one or four of the CSU colleges, they will still apply via the Cal State Apply Application .

Here’s what you need to know for the 2023-24 admissions cycle.

How do students apply to the CSUs?

The application opens Oct. 1 and has "phased deadlines," meaning some campuses will have earlier deadlines than other campuses. Eight campuses will close on November 30th, including Cal Poly San Louis Obispo and San Diego State University. You can verify deadline dates on each campus's website or look it up here.

What is admission based on?

Since 2022, the use of ACT/SAT scores in the admissions process has been suspended for all of the CSU campuses.

As a result, the 23 CSU campuses have implemented a multi-factor review to determine admission eligibility, which includes a combination of:

Completion of the 15-unit comprehensive “A-G” pattern of college prep courses with a qualifying GPA of 3.0 or higher for non-California residents

Supplemental factors

The GPA minimums and the weighting of supplemental information used may vary by campus.

Some CSU campuses are impacted or have programs that are impacted – meaning the number of applications received from qualified applicants is greater than the number of available spaces. These campuses may use a higher GPA minimum in their admissions process.

For example, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo gives extra consideration when students take beyond the minimum number of semesters required in some of the “A-G” subject areas, such as math, lab science, or language other than English. San Diego State University, in addition to considering all of the college-prep coursework students have taken during high school, also considers the performance and the number of units taken in courses most relevant to their intended major (see "Preparation Towards Indicated Area of Study").

The main section of the CSU application asks students to report the average number of hours they participated in extracurricular and/or leadership over the most recent 12 months, as well as the average number of hours they worked per week over the most recent 12 months. Note, students are not asked to list out the activities or work endeavors themselves, simply the amount of time spent engaged in them.

Insider Tip

Students applying to Cal Poly may also be given extra consideration if they indicate they have held a leadership position in any of their extra-curricular activities, or if 25% or more of their work experience is related to their chosen major.

Does CSU consider 9th-grade year grades?

The majority of the CSU campuses use a GPA derived from “A-G” coursework taken in 10th and 11th grades only. Cal Poly San Luis Obispo continues to be the only CSU campus that will also include 9th grade in their GPA calculation.

Will CSU consider test scores, if submitted?

The CSU has made it clear that “in no case will standardized test scores be utilized in making admissions decisions for applicants. There will still be a section on the application where students can submit SAT and ACT scores, alongside AP and IB scores, but the test results will be used only for college-level math and English course placement for admitted students.

Will CSU count “credit” or “pass” pass grades?

Yes! The CSU campuses will consider course grades of “credit” or “pass” as fulfilling “a-g” requirements for those courses completed from the spring 2020 term to the summer 2021 term. Grades of credit/pass or no credit/no pass will satisfy eligibility requirements, but they will not be included in the calculation of high school GPA.

Is an essay required?

Although the CSU campuses will be looking at coursework and non-academic variables such as the hours spent in extra-curricular activities, the CSU system does not require any essays or personal statements and remains as objective as possible in making admissions decisions.

Do I need to submit my transcript or Letters of Recommendation?

Students will self-report their courses and grades in the application and do not submit letters of recommendation.

Where can I learn more about the CSU campuses?

Each CSU campus offers its own events. Find the campuses here and link to their admission events website pages. You can also visit with specific campuses in October:

Where can I learn how to navigate Cal State Apply Application?

Several resources are available to students throughout the admissions process:

Read the Cal State Freshman Application Guide

Read the Cal State Admission Handbook

Students can sign up for a virtual application workshop here . Be sure to scroll down to the very bottom of the page to "other ways to explore" and click on schedule .

Students can also wat ch Cal Poly's series of application videos.

Cal State Apply Coursework Entry Guide

Freshman Admission Requirements

Out-of-State CSU Eligibly Index

Do you have questions about college admissions? Let's talk!

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If you've studied at another college or university and now want to transfer to the California State University, this is the place to learn what you need to be admitted and to start your application.

Select a Term to Apply For Fall 2024 Summer 2024 Apply

The fee to apply to the CSU is $70 per campus. Some students may qualify for an application fee waiver .

See Application Dates & Deadlines

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There are four types of transfer students:

CSU Transfer Planner

The CSU Transfer Planner is an online tool that empowers California Community College students to explore and plan a successful transfer to any of the 23 California State Universities. With the CSU Transfer Planner, you can:

• Learn more about any of the 23 California State Universities, their programs and transfer-admission requirements.
• Save degree programs of interest to your online account so you can access all of them in one place.
• Log your community college coursework to track general education progress and compare your current GPA against the transfer-admission requirements.
• Receive helpful tips about how to successfully transfer to your chosen CSU campus as efficiently as possible.

Whether you’re already on track to transfer to a California State University or just thinking about transferring in the future, don’t wait! Create an account or log in to your CSU Transfer Planner account now!

CSU Transfer Planner   Download Brochure ​

Choosing a Campus

• CSU Campus Match
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• Degree Search
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• CCC-ADT Admission Requirements ​
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• Upper-Division Transfer Admission Requirements
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Paying for College

• Financial Aid

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