Where can your student actually get into criminal justice?

• 44 colleges in California offer a bachelor's criminal justice program: 43 awarded the degree in 2022-23 (federal IPEDS completions); 1 more carry program earnings in federal outcome data but no 2022-23 degree count under these program codes.
• Largest programs by graduates in 2022-23: California State University-Sacramento (536), California State University-Northridge (436), San Diego State University (402).
• Hardest reported gate into the program (only the UC and the CSU publish one): California State University-Long Beach — Criminal Justice, Fall 2025: 3,544 applied, 1,101 admitted (31.1%).
• Highest reported admit rate into the program: California State University-Fresno — 95.5% (779 applied, 744 admitted, Fall 2025).
• Highest median earnings four years after the degree: Sonoma State University, $66,892.
• Lowest average net price with aid: San Diego Christian College, $992 per year.

A college with no first-year row here is not reporting its admissions by major, so the campus admit rate is the number to plan around and the department's own requirements are worth asking about directly. Where a Cal State does report the major, the major is its own gate, and San Diego State admitted 35.5% of first-year applicants to criminal justice for Fall 2025. Admits are not enrollees. At most UC programs students are admitted to the campus, not the major. This page as JSON → · All 1043 colleges nationwide →

Every college, one row each

Colleges with a reported gate into the program come first, hardest first; the rest are sorted by earnings, then by graduates. Degree awarded is the program the college conferred bachelor's degrees in during 2022-23, with the number of graduates (federal IPEDS completions). 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); IPEDS Completions ↗ (bachelor's degrees conferred by 6-digit program, 2022-23, first major); 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/criminal-justice?state=CA, then open each college profile it links to. Build a reach / match / likely list for a criminal justice applicant in California 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 criminal justice list needs campuses from both ends of that range, since the same degree name can admit 31.1% of first-year applicants at one Cal State and 95.5% at another. Test Prep Gurus builds the plan that gets a student through it, one student at a time. prepgurus.com · 949.229.5359