When Cal States started to fall under the name of impaction, more seniors started to second guess applying due to low acceptance rates.

Cal States Fullerton (CSUF), Long Beach (CSULB), San Diego (CSUSD), San Jose (SJU) and San Luis Obispo (SLO) have fallen under the title of impaction. Impaction in universities or colleges is when the school has no more room for any more students, thus lowering the acceptance rate.

These campus’ are going through what is called campus wide impaction, where the campus has exhausted its enrollment capacity because of too many applicants.

Students that wish to attend an impacted program or campus now must file in specific admission dates.

This has proven a problem to many seniors like Melyssa Montoya.

Montoya recently applied to CSULB and was unfortunately denied. Though it is unknown why she wasn’t accepted, impaction could be the leading reason.

“They shouldn’t let people apply in the first place. It’s a waste of my fee waiver,” Montoya said.

Long Beach is impacted all around, from programs for freshmen to under-graduate and majors like nursing to computer science. The said colleges all have the same problem.

But Montoya didn’t show any remorse for not being accepted to CSULB, seeing as she has been accepted to Cal State Channel Islands (CSUCI) and Cal State Northridge (CSUN).

College Counselor Linda Zimring, explains that with rising high school graduate rates, impaction won’t be going down anytime soon. The schools have no room to expand and the state doesn’t have enough money to add campuses.

“The best solution for students is to achieve high grades in strong challenging classes and score well on the SAT or ACT test,” Zimring said in an email.

Zimring also stated that students are better off applying as undecided when applying to an impacted CSU, seeing as it would be harder to get into one with a major in mind.

Applying to CSU’s is now changing into a whole different ball game. Students are going to have to be more careful when applying to these said colleges and should do their research.

Zimring encourages applicants to make a list of colleges that are impacted or non-impacted and private schools so they can understand their options.

“The stronger the applicant is academically, the better the chances are for being admitted to colleges,” Zimring said.