Building Gateways Through Admissions Redesign: Spotlight on Riverside County Office of Education
This is the third post in our “Building Gateways Through Admissions Redesign” series. Please make sure to also check out our recent spotlights on Washington and Tennessee.
Throughout most of modern history, college admissions processes have operated as gates by keeping students out. On one side of the gate, a limited resource – seats in a freshman class. On the other side of the gate, an abundant resource – hopeful high school graduates. Over the last ten years, however, this balance of supply and demand has flipped on its head. College-going rates continue to hover just above 60%, and the American high school graduating class is projected to shrink by 13% over the next 15 years. In response, states, systems, and institutions have begun to reimagine college admissions processes – and all of their component parts. The goal is to directly reduce the burdens they place on students and families.
In August of 2025, Lumina Foundation announced a second phase of its Great Admissions Redesign challenge, a nationwide grant program investing in the country’s most innovative ideas for transforming admissions. As Lumina prepares to fund a fresh batch of projects in 2026, the “Building Gateways” blog series has highlighted a handful of voices from the field. Situated in vastly different contexts, squaring up against dozens of unique obstacles, these practitioners are leading a movement to transform college admissions from a gatekeeper to a gateway.
Spotlight: Riverside County Office of Education
In 2024, approximately 17,000 high school students in Riverside County, California received offers of direct admission from ten different schools in the California State University (CSU) system. Riverside County’s 23 school districts – which already boasted some of the most advanced data-sharing capabilities in the country – presented a promising testing ground for the CSU’s first direct admissions pilot program. Eligible students were identified through California’s state-funded college and career advising platform, CaliforniaColleges.edu. The same platform now delivers notifications of direct admission directly to students, guides students through their financial aid options, and facilitates the smooth transfer of credits to the CSU campus of their choice.
The pilot program produced undeniable results. Compared to the previous application cycle, the CSU system saw a 15% increase in applications and a 9% increase in enrollments among students from Riverside County. The Riverside County story spurred momentum for statewide legislation earlier this year; SB640 cements the CSU Direct Admissions program into statute, and provides a backdrop for the program’s expansion to include every K-12 district in the state as well as 6 additional CSU campuses.
Distinct from many other admissions redesign experiments, the CSU program collaborated with and relied heavily upon the involvement of school counselors in Riverside County. CaliforniaColleges.edu produced weekly reports containing updates on every student’s eligibility and engagement with their direct admissions opportunities. Counselors leveraged these reports to conduct targeted college application workshops during the school day, and even hosted inaugural events like “Discover CSU Days” and “College Signing Day.” In ESG’s reporting on emerging themes from the admissions redesign movement, the importance of trusted adults – “the ground game” – has been emphasized over and over again. Below, find reflections from two Riverside County counselors who have been champions of admissions redesign in their own communities.
Practitioner Q&A
| Melina Gonzalez has been a school counselor for more than 20 years, and currently supports AVID students at Heritage High School (Menifee, CA).
Dr. Delfina Rawlins-Gomez has been a school counselor for more than 25 years, and currently serves as Perris Lake High School’s (Perris, CA) lead counselor. Note: “CCGI” refers to the California College Guidance Initiative, a team of data experts and education professionals managing the CaliforniaColleges.edu platform. |
How has the introduction of new tools, like CaliforniaColleges.edu, impacted your ability to support students with college and career planning?
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Melina Gonzalez: I’ve been actively involved in the evolution of CCGI. Every year, it becomes more student-friendly. Now, not a single day goes by where I don’t use CCGI. We get students started in ninth grade; we want them to begin building habits as early and quickly as possible. Over time, they start to recognize CCGI as a one-stop shop for checking in on their academic progress and journey towards graduation and beyond. Dr. Delfina Gomez: Ten years ago, we were working with tools that left much of the synthesis and sense-making work to counselors. If counselors didn’t do the work to translate the data, it was completely inaccessible to students and families. CCGI is an absolute game-changer – for counselors, of course, but also for students. It gives them an opportunity to take ownership over their readiness for graduation. We pair the capabilities of CCGI with career profiling tools, so that we can help customize each student’s interface to their unique goals. Once a student can connect the dots between their academic progress and their long-term “why,” they have a reason to put in the work. At the same time, the platform helps us minimize the likelihood that students fall through the cracks. As recently as 2023, my colleagues and I funneled an inordinate amount of time and energy into slow-moving, one-off opportunities to expose kids to our college and career readiness curriculum. Today, I can go in on the back end of CCGI and identify students who appear to be falling behind. The platform allows me to make proactive, specific recommendations to students who are on the cusp of meeting their graduation requirements and earning an offer of direct admission. |
Give us a peek into some of the conversations you’ve had with high school seniors in the wake of the Direct Admissions program announcement.
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Dr. Delfina Gomez: Affordability is the bottom line for most students. For the last couple of years, two-year colleges have been so creative in cutting down costs; they’ve presented a really compelling option for students. But CSU Direct Admissions – and its connections to the Degree with a Guarantee program – has students looking at the four-year pathway in fresh light. And it’s important not to understate the impact of the application fee waiver. Melina Gonzalez: The Direct Admissions program impacts different students in different ways. For my AVID (Advanced via Individual Determination) kids, the opportunity to submit free applications to the CSU is a huge push. As counselors, we take advantage of this; we sit them down and say, “There’s no excuse. You’re going to submit your applications right now.” For non-AVID kids, the program sparks an arguably more impactful change – the realization that college is an option and that they can apply for free is a double whammy. There’s a real feeling of excitement. |
As more states and universities introduce direct admissions programs, what can they do to support school counselors?
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Melina Gonzalez: You know, this isn’t just about the counselors. At our school, we make sure that every staff member – the entire counseling staff, the career center, teachers – is aware of which kids we’re really focused on during college application season. I’m pulling data every week sending updates, making the staff feel like they have a stake in the game. This has to be a schoolwide priority. Dr. Delfina Gomez: Social media and marketing campaigns are important of course, but I view them as supplemental to the in-person work that must happen. This Fall, we hosted a handful of college visits. They cost a lot of money, but they give students real places and people to think about in their college-going decision-making processes. Interacting with campus representatives produces invaluable light bulb moments. Sparking the light bulb for every student requires time, investment, and partnerships between school districts and college campuses. |
