Where can your student actually get into political science?

At a glance · California

• 52 colleges in California report a bachelor's political science program in federal outcome data or a political science admit rate in the UC/CSU data.
• Hardest reported gate: University of California-Berkeley — Political Science, Fall 2025: 4,295 applied, 477 admitted (11%).
• Highest reported admit rate into the program: California State University-Monterey Bay — 100.0% (20 applied, 20 admitted, Fall 2025).
• 1 CSU campus report political science on the transfer side only: freshmen enter as a pre-major and apply into the program later.
• Highest median earnings four years after the degree: Claremont McKenna College, $96,520.
• Lowest average net price with aid: California State University-Los Angeles, $3,967 per year.

At the UC, admission at most programs is to the campus rather than to the major, so the number next to political science mostly tells you how hard that campus was to enter. A campus with no first-year row is not closed to freshmen: the CSU reported the major on the transfer side only, which means a freshman enters as a pre-major and applies into it later. Admits are not enrollees. At most UC programs students are admitted to the campus, not the major. This page as JSON → · Show all 609 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/political-science, then open each college profile it links to. Build a reach / match / likely list for a political science 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 political science list is really a list of campuses, so it needs enough range that the same major is realistic at more than one of them. Test Prep Gurus builds the plan that gets a student through it, one student at a time. prepgurus.com · 949.229.5359