Is Soka Right For Me?

The spacious Soka campus is located in Aliso Viejo, California, one of the safest cities in Orange County. Five world-class beaches are a short drive away, and the famous cities of Los Angeles and San Diego are a one hour-drive from campus. The weather here can be summed up in one word: sunny! Go to interactive map.

Soka students are do-ers, passionate mobilizers, intellectuals, peace-keepers, pioneers and socially minded citizens. Our students know the importance of service to others and want to use their lives as agents of change to make a difference in the world. Students from more than 30 countries make up our community, and our faculty and staff are fully involved with student development.

Soka classrooms are centers of dialogue and discussion, emphasizing seminar course settings. Students work in small teams and the faculty role is one of mentor. Students have opportunities to work alongside faculty on research projects, and with peers in residence hall learning activities. To keep the student at the center, Soka deliberately works hard to maintain a student-faculty ratio of 9:1 with an average class size of just 13 students.

Soka doesn’t just encourage international study, we require it! All Soka juniors must study a language and complete a Study Aboard/International Internship seminar. Students work closely with their study aboard advisor and can select from nine different countries and 25 cities. Plus, the cost has already been built into the tuition.

Each year you are immersed in an international residential community with students from many cultures. When you live at Soka, you find more relevance between the classroom, residential life and the world around you. At Soka, you just don’t study cultures from a book. You interact, learn, live and work with people from all over the world.

Soka accepts 125 students each year. Admission is highly selective. Our average GPA is 3.8.

Students may take either the SAT or ACT. The SAT II is not required but encouraged. The average combined SAT score on critical reading and math is 1170. The average writing score is 572. The SAT Essay is required and the average score is 9.

Students may choose to take the ACT in place of the SAT. The range on the composite score for the ACT is 26-28. The average ACT Essay is 9.

All students admitted to the B.A. in Liberal Arts program whose annual earned family income is $60,000 or less and who have neither graduated from college nor completed more than ¾ of their required coursework towards their first undergraduate degree (BA/BS) at the time of application to SUA, will receive free tuition (room and board fees still apply). Soka also offers merit-based awards and need-based loans.

Soka graduates are prepared to compete with top students from all over the world for a seat in outstanding graduate school programs. Soka students have been accepted into programs at Harvard, Yale, Stanford, UCLA, UC Berkeley, UCI, Penn State, NYU, Columbia, London School of Economics, Carnegie Mellon, Vanderbilt and more.