Where can your student study philosophy, and what does the degree pay?

At a glance · California

• 30 colleges in California report a bachelor's philosophy program in federal outcome data or a philosophy admit rate in the UC/CSU data.
• Hardest reported gate: University of California-Los Angeles — Philosophy, Fall 2025: 863 applied, 86 admitted (10%).
• Highest reported admit rate into the program: California State University-Stanislaus — 100.0% (10 applied, 10 admitted, Fall 2025).
• Highest median earnings four years after the degree: California Polytechnic State University-San Luis Obispo, $98,592.
• Lowest average net price with aid: California State University-Los Angeles, $3,967 per year.

San Francisco State reports its Philosophy and Religion major on the transfer side only, so a freshman there starts in another major and applies into it later. Every other UC and CSU campus that reports a philosophy rate reports one for first-year applicants, so the program admit rate beside a college is the figure for students applying out of high school: 86 admitted out of 863 applicants at UCLA, 122 out of 126 at Cal State Sacramento. A college listed without a philosophy rate is not an easier door; it means no separate philosophy figure is published for it, so the campus decision is the one to plan around. Admits are not enrollees. At most UC programs students are admitted to the campus, not the major. This page as JSON → · Show all 130 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/philosophy, then open each college profile it links to. Build a reach / match / likely list for a philosophy 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

Because the campus is the gate for this major, a philosophy list is worth building on the reported first-year rate, the price after aid, and the median earnings four years out, written next to every school on it. Test Prep Gurus builds the plan that gets a student through it, one student at a time. prepgurus.com · 949.229.5359