Cal Poly admissions - how to classify high school course work for OOS people

Wondering if anyone can tell us if Cal Poly classifies course work based solely on the a-g course list or if they look at how the high school classified it. For example, my son is taking college writing, which his high school counts as English credits. Looking at the a-g course list, some schools consider it a B (English) and others a G (college prep. Any guidance?

Is the College Writing class a substitute for English 12 class at his HS? Will this course be part of the 4 years of English required for the CSU’s?

The UCOP a-g course list should be used as a guideline for OOS classes.

The guideline had a few listed as English and a few college writing classes listed as college electives. I ended up getting ahold of an admissions adviser who said they will classify it based on how the high school classifies it in the transcript and in their curriculum handbook. Since they classify it as English credits, Cal Poly will too!

Thanks for the quick response!

It is always best to go the source in this case, admissions. Best of luck to your son.

@Gumbymom Thanks! Trying to figure all this out (like the MCA…mind boggling!) is crazy! And, they take middle school courses for math and language so I’m not sure how to figure that into anything but I’m still working on it! Thanks for all the help and knowledge!

@HopefulMadre: The middle school Math and FL courses are only used for course rigor so you would add these course semesters to the MCA calculator and the appropriate section.

Just in case you do not have the MCA calculator: https://mca.netlify.com/

I hadn’t seen that one! Excellent! Thank you! He’s coming out with an MCA of 4306 which I think is ok based on what I’ve seen! He’s trying to decide between Kinesiology, Marine Science and environmental sciences. Fingers crossed!!!

One description, “Hours of Paid Work Per Week”, on the calculator is incorrect. This can include unpaid work.

From the Cal Poly SLO "2019FreshmanApplicant_Tips.pdf