Here’s my hypothesis. We know that in the process of calculating MCA, the class rigor score is capped at a maximum of 750 points, thanks to this post: (http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/comment/17668346/#Comment_17668346)
Assuming that an applicant took 8 semesters of math in high school (which pretty much all of us do), that would leave middle school math coursework to only count for 250 MCA points, since the math section caps out at 10 semesters/500 bonus points, with 125 bonus points per semester taken after the 6th math semester (see the link I posted if this confuses you).
Because of this, it is clear that applicants who forget to declare their middle school grades are missing out on exactly 250 MCA points.
As a result, I believe the most probable way that Cal Poly is going to be correcting this problem and making sure that this error is not counted against applicants is simply by slightly tweaking the MCA algorithm altogether.
Instead of including a maximum of 750 points for the rigor section, I believe Cal Poly will instead be reducing the cap to 500 points to account for the error that many students made in not listing their middle school math grades.
This way, those who DID list their middle school grades will simply have their MCA’s brought down by 250 points, and those who forgot to list middle school math grades will be on a more even playing field since their 250 MCA point deficiency will now be eliminated.
I think this is the most likely course of action that Cal Poly will take because it doesn’t involve them having to edit each and every single application. This is the most convenient way of fixing this whole ordeal and applications will still be able to be seamlessly fed through the algorithm to make admissions decisions quickly like in years past.
I hope this makes sense, and even more so I hope what I’m saying is actually true. Although I’m very confident in my theory, I’m just another one of the thousands of applicants in the sea, so until someone at CP admissions tells us exactly how they’re going to be compensating for this flaw, we can’t be 100% sure. At least there’s only ~1 month and a half left until we know our fate lol.
Hope this helps, and good luck!