Where can your student actually get into kinesiology?

At a glance · California

• 36 colleges in California report a bachelor's kinesiology program in federal outcome data or a kinesiology admit rate in the UC/CSU data.
• Hardest reported gate: California Polytechnic State University-San Luis Obispo — Kinesiology/Physical Education, Fall 2025: 2,162 applied, 262 admitted (12.1%).
• Highest reported admit rate into the program: California State University-Monterey Bay — 97.7% (910 applied, 889 admitted, Fall 2025).
• Highest median earnings four years after the degree: Chapman University, $75,108.
• Lowest average net price with aid: California State University-Los Angeles, $3,967 per year.

A missing first-year row belongs to a track, not to the whole major: Fresno State admits freshmen into kinesiology itself, and it is the narrower exercise physiology track there that reports admissions on the transfer side only, so a freshman starts as a kinesiology major and applies into exercise physiology later. Where the gate is real it shows up in the major's own first-year row, 12.1% at Cal Poly SLO and 33.5% at San Diego State, against 97.7% at Cal State Monterey Bay. Admits are not enrollees. At most UC programs students are admitted to the campus, not the major. This page as JSON → · Show all 608 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/kinesiology, then open each college profile it links to. Build a reach / match / likely list for a kinesiology 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 kinesiology 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 kinesiology list needs one or two campuses where the major itself is the hard part, several where a freshman is admitted straight in, and an honest answer about what the degree is meant to lead to. Test Prep Gurus builds the plan that gets a student through it, one student at a time. prepgurus.com · 949.229.5359