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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#1 — Scripps College

Scripps College tops the ranking: just 9.3% of its entering freshmen are first-generation — the most college-connected intake of any California university here, the highest share of students whose parents attended college. At the other end, Stanislaus State ranks last among ranked campuses at 81% first-generation. First-generation marks a family new to college — so this ranks classes from the most to the least parental college experience.

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.

UC (9) CSU (23) Private (28)

Click any column heading to re-sort. The bar color always reflects the index value, wherever a row lands.

#	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^‡