UC · CSU · California Private · Entering freshmen · 2023–24

Parental College Experience

California's four-year universities, ranked by the share of entering freshmen who are not first-generation — freshmen whose parents attended college. A higher score means fewer first-generation students and more parental college experience. #1 enrolls the class with the most parental college experience; last enrolls the least.

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Read this as a directional proxy. The first-generation figures are the best each campus publishes and are not uniformly defined — some count "no parent has a bachelor's," others "no parent attended college at all," and cohorts range from entering freshmen to all undergraduates. Cells marked ^† are lower-confidence (approximate, older, aggregator-sourced, or a stricter definition that understates the true share); ^‡ means no first-generation figure was published, so that school cannot be ranked and is listed last. Treat the order as indicative, not exact.

Turn a sector off to rank inside the rest — the numbers renumber from 1, with each school's place in the full 60 kept underneath. Click any column heading to re-sort. Bar width and color always reflect the index value on one 0–100 scale, so a CSU-only view stays comparable to a UC-only one.

#	Institution	Sector	Parental College Experience index (higher = fewer first-gen)	First-gen %
1	Scripps College	Private	90.7	9.3%^†
2	Pitzer College	Private	86	14%
2	Occidental College	Private	86	14%
2	Cal Poly San Luis Obispo	CSU	86	14%^†
5	Loyola Marymount (LMU)	Private	84	16%
6	Caltech	Private	83	17%
7	Santa Clara University	Private	82	18%
7	Pepperdine University	Private	82	18%^†
9	Westmont College	Private	80	20%
10	Harvey Mudd College	Private	79.5	20.5%^†
11	Claremont McKenna College	Private	79	21%^†
11	Stanford University	Private	79	21%
11	Chapman University	Private	79	21%
11	Biola University	Private	79	21%
15	Point Loma Nazarene University	Private	78	22%
16	San Diego State	CSU	77.1	22.9%^†
17	Pomona College	Private	77	23%
17	Dominican University of California	Private	77	23%^†
19	USC	Private	75	25%
19	University of San Diego	Private	75	25%
21	Saint Mary's College of California	Private	74	26%
21	UC Berkeley	UC	74	26%
23	Concordia University Irvine	Private	72	28%^†
24	UCLA	UC	71	29%
24	Sacramento State	CSU	71	29%^†
26	UC Santa Barbara	UC	70	30%
27	CSU Fullerton	CSU	68.5	31.5%^†
28	San Francisco State	CSU	67	33%^†
29	Cal Poly Humboldt	CSU	65.9	34.1%
30	UC Santa Cruz	UC	65	35%
31	UC San Diego	UC	63	37%
32	Azusa Pacific University	Private	62	38%^†
32	California Lutheran University	Private	62	38%
34	Whittier College	Private	60	40%^†
35	UC Davis	UC	59.2	40.8%
36	University of San Francisco	Private	59.1	40.9%
37	San Jose State	CSU	56	44%
38	UC Irvine	UC	55	45%^†
38	University of La Verne	Private	55	45%
40	UC Riverside	UC	54	46%
40	University of Redlands	Private	54	46%
42	CSU Dominguez Hills	CSU	53.7	46.3%
43	Sonoma State	CSU	53	47%^†
44	CSU Monterey Bay	CSU	51	49%
45	CSU Chico	CSU	50	50%^†
46	CSU San Marcos	CSU	48	52%^†
47	CSU Long Beach	CSU	46	54%^†
48	Cal Poly Pomona	CSU	45	55%
49	Fresno Pacific University	Private	43	57%
49	Cal State LA	CSU	43	57%
51	Mount Saint Mary's University	Private	42	58%^†
52	CSU Bakersfield	CSU	40	60%^†
53	CSU Channel Islands	CSU	38.6	61.4%
54	UC Merced	UC	38	62%
55	CSU East Bay	CSU	37.1	62.9%
56	Fresno State	CSU	36	64%
57	CSU Northridge	CSU	30	70%
58	CSU San Bernardino	CSU	22	78%
59	Stanislaus State	CSU	19	81%
—	Cal Maritime	CSU	n/a	n/a^‡