Fresno State partners with Central Valley schools on new ‘guaranteed admissions’ program
Fresno State unveiled “Bulldog Bound,” a new guaranteed admissions partnership with Fresno Unified and several other districts in the central San Joaquin Valley that could help thousands of students in the region of California with the lowest percentage of bachelor’s degrees.
“I believe, in my heart of hearts,” Fresno State President Saúl Jiménez-Sandoval said at a news conference Wednesday, “that this is the gold standard on how to recruit, how to retain, and how to graduate students.”
Starting in ninth grade, students in participating districts will receive a Fresno State ID, email address, and access to the campus library.
In the following years, students will work with counselors to ensure they’re meeting minimum requirements for entry into the CSU system — including the required A-G courses. They’ll have access to multiple tours of Fresno State’s campus. Their parents will also receive financial literacy resources to prepare for the cost of attending college.
“So if you’re a first-generation college student,” said Fresno Unified Superintendent Bob Nelson, who also spoke at Wednesday’s news conference, “the responsibility is not solely on you to explain to your family what the heck it is that you’re trying to do.”
He added that the program is meant to benefit first-generation students but said that “every single person” at Fresno Unified needs a “warm hand-off” to their next educational institution.
Nelson, who teased some details of the program in an early April interview with The Bee, elaborated Wednesday on his hopes that the program will boost Fresno Unified’s college-going rate.
Fresno Unified is “the largest single feeder” school to Fresno State, according to Nelson. This fall, the district is sending over 2,000 students there.
But the reality, he noted, is that only around half of the district’s graduates each year finish high school meeting the requirements for entry into a CSU.
“This opportunity and this partnership,” he said, “changes everything around that. Because we’re declaring, in ninth grade: That’s my school. Just north on Cedar, that’s where I’m gonna go to college.”
Nelson told The Bee’s Education Lab in an interview following the news conference that the program will help bring about a closer collaboration between Fresno Unified’s counselors and Fresno State’s moving forward.
That will help ensure high school students are taking the right courses — or, through dual enrollment, even gaining transferrable credits toward a Fresno State degree before they even start college.
Other districts Jiménez-Sandoval named who have signed on as partners include Central Unified, Visalia Unified, Fowler Unified, Sanger Unified, Parlier Unified and University High.
Jiménez-Sandoval, as a first-generation college student himself who grew up in Fowler, said he remembers the anxiety of wondering if he was even “going to make it to college.”
“This is going to build a bridge,” he said of the program, “that directly leads (students) to say to themselves: I’ve taken a college class. I know how to speak to a professor. I know how to interact with my fellow college colleagues. And now what am I going to do? I’m going to go to college.”
The Education Lab is a local journalism initiative that highlights education issues critical to the advancement of the San Joaquin Valley. It is funded by donors. Learn about The Bee’s Education Lab at its website.
This story was originally published May 10, 2023 at 12:29 PM with the headline "Fresno State partners with Central Valley schools on new ‘guaranteed admissions’ program."
