Where can your student actually get into a design program?

At a glance · California

• 28 colleges in California report a bachelor's design program in federal outcome data or a design admit rate in the UC/CSU data.
• Hardest reported gate: University of California-Davis — Design, Fall 2025: 1,079 applied, 211 admitted (20%).
• Highest reported admit rate into the program: California State University-Monterey Bay — 97.8% (180 applied, 176 admitted, Fall 2025).
• Highest median earnings four years after the degree: University of Southern California, $89,022.
• Lowest average net price with aid: California State University-San Bernardino, $4,564 per year.

A college with no applied and admitted count did not report design as its own line, which is not the same as an open door; at those schools the campus decision is the one that applies and what the program itself asks for is a question for the admissions office. Where a CSU does report a rate it is selecting students into that specific program, while at UC Davis and UC San Diego the row shows what happened to students who named design on the application rather than a decision made by the design department. Admits are not enrollees. At most UC programs students are admitted to the campus, not the major. This page as JSON → · Show all 293 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. 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/design, then open each college profile it links to. Build a reach / match / likely list for a design 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 design list needs the rate for the exact program name rather than the campus, because one college can report 47.9% for graphic design and 67.9% for industrial design in the same year. Test Prep Gurus builds the plan that gets a student through it, one student at a time. prepgurus.com · 949.229.5359