A reputation score built on exclusivity would rank colleges by how many students they turn away. The UCD Score does not work that way, and the proof is in the schools that clear its bar without rejecting anyone. 122 four-year universities that admit at least 80 percent of applicants still score Strong, 70 or higher on a 0-to-100 scale. The highest of them, Cal State Fullerton, admits 91 of every 100 applicants and posts an overall score of 83.5, ahead of schools that reject most of the people who apply. It earns that number on value and affordability, with a selectivity sub-score of 20. The score rewards what a school delivers, not how hard it is to get in.
How Can an Open-Admission School Score Strong
By winning the sub-scores that have nothing to do with exclusivity. For four-year colleges the UCD Score blends four inputs, outcomes, value, affordability, and selectivity, and a school can score Strong on the first three while the fourth stays near the floor. Across the 122 open-admission schools that score 70 or higher, the selectivity sub-score averages 31.5, the lowest of their four sub-scores, while value averages 83 and affordability 64.9.
The Open-Admission Schools That Score Strong
Each school below admits 80 percent or more of its applicants yet scores Strong on the UCD Score. The overall number comes from blended sub-scores, so the low selectivity column sits beside high value and affordability columns that do the work.
| School | State | Admit rate | Overall | Value | Afford. | Selectivity |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cal State Fullerton | CA | 91% | 83.5 | 98.5 | 89.2 | 19.9 |
| San Jose State University | CA | 85% | 81.8 | 93.7 | 67.9 | 33.4 |
| UC Merced | CA | 91% | 81.6 | 92.8 | 89.2 | 19.8 |
| UW Tacoma | WA | 83% | 80.3 | 97.5 | 79.1 | 37.7 |
| Michigan Tech | MI | 92% | 80.3 | 93.1 | 48.0 | 45.6 |
| George Mason University | VA | 87% | 79.6 | 86.3 | 52.0 | 52.2 |
| Truman State University | MO | 84% | 79.0 | 87.5 | 47.4 | 56.6 |
| Cal State Fresno | CA | 95% | 78.4 | 98.3 | 93.7 | 9.4 |
| Cal State San Bernardino | CA | 94% | 78.0 | 99.2 | 94.9 | 12.4 |
| University of Mississippi | MS | 97% | 77.5 | 81.1 | 51.7 | 31.5 |
Strong scores from schools that admit almost everyone
Overall UCD Score, top six universities with an 80%+ admit rate
The selectivity column tells the real story. Cal State Fullerton scores a 19.9 there, near the bottom of its peer group, and still lands at 83.5 overall. Its value sub-score of 98.5 and affordability sub-score of 89.2, against a net price near $6,600 and median earnings around $62,900, more than cover the gap. The same shape repeats down the table: a low selectivity number sitting next to value and affordability numbers in the 80s and 90s.
What Actually Carries These Schools
Value, in nearly every case. Break the 122 open-admission Strong schools down by which sub-score is highest, and 96 of them are led by value, 20 by outcomes, and 6 by affordability. Not one is carried by selectivity. The input that the prestige instinct treats as the headline is the input doing the least work here.
This is the design working as intended. The UCD Score percentile-ranks each school within a peer group on outcomes and cost, then folds in selectivity as one input among four for four-year schools. A school that sends graduates into solid earnings while charging a low net price scores well regardless of how many applicants it admits. To be clear, selectivity is not penalized or ignored, schools admitting under 25 percent of applicants average a 79.5 overall, ahead of the open-admission tier's 62.4. The claim is narrower and more useful: a high score does not require a low admit rate, and the schools that prove it are public universities most prestige rankings never surface.
How We Measured This
The UCD Score is a peer-group percentile ranking from 0 to 100, computed across all 3,839 colleges. Four-year selective schools form one peer group, scored on four sub-scores: outcomes, value, affordability, and selectivity. Each sub-score is a percentile rank within the peer group, and the overall score curves those ranks so the median lands near 65. For this finding the set is every four-year school in that peer group reporting a positive earnings figure and a positive net price, with an admission rate of 80 percent or higher, then filtered to those scoring 70 or above. Admission rates and earnings come from the federal College Scorecard. The full method and source vintages are on the methodology and data sources pages.
What the Numbers Do Not Say
The score is a ranking of measured inputs, not a verdict on fit. A high value sub-score reflects earnings against net price across a whole student body, so a specific student in a specific major may see a very different result than the campus average. Earnings 10 years after entry also capture who enrolls, not only what a school teaches, so two campuses with identical scores can serve very different populations. And the selectivity sub-score applies only to four-year schools, so the open-admission leaders here are not being compared against two-year colleges on the same axis. A Strong score means the measured outcomes and costs are good. It does not mean the school offers the program, setting, or path a given student wants.
What This Means for Students
Read the sub-scores, not just the overall number. A school can reach Strong on a low admit rate or on a strong value-and-affordability profile, and those are very different schools to attend. If your shortlist skews toward hard-to-enter names, add two or three open-admission schools that score Strong and put them side by side in the Compare tool to see where the overall numbers actually come from. The pattern here is the same one behind selectivity barely moving earnings: below the very top tier, what a school costs and what its graduates earn separate the field far more than its admit rate does.
What This Means for Parents
A low admit rate is a measure of demand, not of what a degree returns. Several of the highest-scoring open-admission schools pair median earnings in the low-to-mid $60,000s with a net price under $10,000, which is what drives their value sub-score past 90 while a selective school carrying a $20,000 net price scores lower on the same axis. Before treating selectivity as a proxy for quality, run a Strong open-admission public and a more selective name through the ROI Calculator to see what the premium actually buys. The numbers behind a Strong score are often most generous at exactly the schools a prestige list leaves out.
