Where can your student actually get into religious studies?

• 36 colleges in California offer a bachelor's religious studies program: 31 awarded the degree in 2022-23 (federal IPEDS completions); 2 more report a religious studies admit rate in the UC/CSU data; 3 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 Baptist University (18), University of California-Santa Barbara (18), Vanguard University of Southern California (15).
• Hardest reported gate into the program (only the UC and the CSU publish one): San Diego State University — Religious Studies, Fall 2025: 58 applied, 40 admitted (69.0%).
• Highest reported admit rate into the program: San Francisco State University — 90.9% (11 applied, 10 admitted, Fall 2025).
• 2 CSU campuses report religious studies 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: University of California-Davis, $59,448.
• Lowest average net price with aid: California State University-Bakersfield, $5,652 per year.

Two CSU campuses report the major on the transfer side only, so freshmen there start in another major and apply in later. This page also counts Christian studies, Jewish and Talmudic studies and Islamic studies, because the federal data files them in the same family, and several of the largest programs in the country are yeshivas. Admits are not enrollees. At most UC programs students are admitted to the campus, not the major. This page as JSON → · All 479 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/religious-studies?state=CA, then open each college profile it links to. Build a reach / match / likely list for a religious studies 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 religious studies list is usually short in California and long out of state. Take the campuses that publish a rate, add the ones that do not, and check the price at each: in California it starts at $5,652 a year after aid at Cal State Bakersfield. Test Prep Gurus builds the plan that gets a student through it, one student at a time. prepgurus.com · 949.229.5359