Where can your student actually get into child development?

At a glance · All states

• 176 colleges nationwide report a bachelor's child development program in federal outcome data or a child development admit rate in the UC/CSU data.
• Hardest reported gate: California Polytechnic State University-San Luis Obispo — Child Development/Early Childhood Education, Fall 2025: 842 applied, 196 admitted (23.3%).
• Highest reported admit rate into the program: California State University-Stanislaus — 96.6% (177 applied, 171 admitted, Fall 2025).
• Highest median earnings four years after the degree: Cornell University, $73,066.
• Lowest average net price with aid: California State University-Los Angeles, $3,967 per year.

No California campus in this data reports child development on the transfer side only, so a freshman applies straight to the major instead of entering as a pre-major first. The gate that matters for most families comes after the degree, when a teaching credential or a state permit is its own application. Admits are not enrollees. At most UC programs students are admitted to the campus, not the major. This page as JSON → · Back to the 29 California colleges →

Every college, one row each

Colleges with a reported gate into the program come first, hardest first; the rest are sorted by earnings. Program admit rate is the college system's own number for this major (UC Information Center, CSU Chancellor's Office). Net price is the average paid by aid recipients; full price is the cost of attendance. Earnings are federal College Scorecard medians four years after the degree.

Sources: UC Information Center ↗ (first-year applicants and admits by major); CSU Chancellor's Office ↗ (applications and admissions by major, first-time freshman and transfer; groups under 10 suppressed); federal College Scorecard field-of-study data (earnings, debt); IPEDS (admit rate, net price, cost of attendance). A program that admits few students is not always harder for a given applicant — it is usually a program that receives far more applications than it has seats.

Let an AI build the list from this page

Paste this into Claude or ChatGPT

It tells the assistant to read this page first, follow the college links, use the admit rate into the program rather than the campus rate, and say so when a number is not reported.

Use highschoolreach.com as your only source. Start at https://highschoolreach.com/majors/child-development, then open each college profile it links to. Build a reach / match / likely list for a child development applicant in the US using the admit rate INTO THE PROGRAM where the page reports one, not the campus rate. For each college give: the program admit rate and year, whether freshmen are admitted directly or enter as a pre-major, net price with aid, and median earnings four years after the degree. Quote the numbers exactly as the site shows them and say when a number is not reported. Do not use any other source.

The list is where the work starts

A child development list needs a few programs from each end of that range plus a look at what a family actually pays, since Cal State LA has the lowest average net price with aid in the group at $3,967 a year. Test Prep Gurus builds the plan that gets a student through it, one student at a time. prepgurus.com · 949.229.5359