Our son will be a Junior next year. He is at a college preparatory school known for academic rigor. His course load is challenging for junior year. I was wondering what MCA is expected for an athletic recruit at Cal poly? He is an year round athlete, works 16 hours during week days and once a month competitions. I calculated his MCA very conservatively and got about 4450. It could only be more if I add his ECs. I just want to know where he stands as an OOS athlete.
Not that I can answer your question, but what major will he be considering? Some require a higher MCA than others. There are three times as many applicants for Computer Science (@4500) as there are for Computer Engineering (@1500), but they each have the same number of spots (130). You have to figure that the average MCA is probably higher for C.S.
He is interested in Mechanical Engineering.
Check out this thread: http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/cal-poly-san-luis-obispo/1958827-fall-2017-final-status-p1.html
It’s just people posting their stats after they were accepted. It’s for all students, so it doesn’t account for athletic recruits. Still, it will give you some insight.
Thank you.
There might be a bit of a MCA bump for some recruited athletes. If so, I’m sure it would be highly dependent on the sport and wouldn’t be much.
ME is very rigorous. One of my son’s classes had weekly homework assignments where the answer keys were 100 pages long, all math. It’s certainly possible to be a D1 athlete and an engineer, but it will require well developed organizational and study skills.
Very helpful info. to discuss with our son. Thanks
@bleadingheart You are getting inaccurate information. I will pm you, it is hard for anything to be said on the Cal Poly site without it being negated or overwritten by those that think they own it. Many with experience with CP quit posting here long ago because of that. I have an athlete.
@scotlandcalling, if you have solid information to the contrary of what I or @AMCdad said, please share. You’ve been openly anti-Cal Poly and that’s ok. It’s important for everyone to know however if they’re are different hurdles (no pun intended if either of your kids are in track :D) for athletes. Personally, I suspect there are because looking at the Common Data Set, they show a handful of SATs that are below the absolute cutoff in the MCA.
Now for full disclosure, I have a student who is an ME at Cal Poly. I know the school pretty well, warts and all. What’s your connection?
Your son may get a boost since he is out of state student, I can’t speak for athletes though…
It will be very difficult to balance athletics, engineering, and extracurriculars in college… so wishing him the best of luck!
-Super Senior ME student @CP
For the last five years he has been working out two days before and after school and other four days two hours/day. He was able to manage his academics with that. But it’s different when one is away from home, I do worry whether he will be able to manage. As a ME student would you be able to give me an idea how much the work load is? Thanks a lot for your input.
@eyemgh I actually like Cal Poly, have a strong connection and would post more if it made sense, but this forum has become impossible for anyone else to contribute to because of a perceived “ownership” of this school’s forum. There are two schools - Cal Poly and UW - where helpful posters just stay away whether there is positive or negative info to share. There is no room for others to discuss anything without overwhelming bias constantly coming into the conversation. It seems I only jump in with what seems like anti CP posts, but I only post when trying to correct inaccurate info (like the athlete info). The blatant over-marketing of CP is not helpful, and in fact hurtful to kids who attend and have no idea what the reality is till they get there. That’s why transfers are crazy the last 2 years - misinformation. I understand some people post to build up a school’s reputation, especially because their kid attends, but that does not make for a helpful or useful forum. Every school has good, bad and ugly - people should be allowed to discuss all sides, but on this CP forum they cannot. Happy to move on.
The academic rigor of college engineering is substantial compared to HS. It’s the complexity of the material, but also the volume. It can certainly be done. My son works 12-20 hours per week, is involved in an engineering club and gets good grades. He’s extremely well organized though. Certainly there are college athletes who are engineers, even at Cal Poly. It just takes horsepower and drive beyond what most will be able to muster. @r77r77 is about to graduate as an ME, he can speak to the specifics of the academic challenge.
P.S. Josh Dobbs, the quarterback who just graduated from Tennessee, got his degree in Aerospace. 
@scotlandcalling, from what I’ve seen, the only push back has been when a poster brings up things that are pure conjecture and can’t be substantiated by evidence. The most common example is that Cal Poly has a secret plot to reject high stats kids to protect yield without any proof, typically from a parent who had a student rejected. The evidence certainly points to the contrary. Otherwise, Cal Poly wouldn’t yield 33% and the stats for the CENG could not average at 4.13/1400+. It became clear in this year’s cycle why high stats students got rejected, if they had an MCA where others were getting in. They forgot to include their 7th and 8th grade maths and lost 500 rigor points. This their MCA was lower than they thought. That is 10% of the total algorithm.
As for what’s wrong, no school is perfect. Anyone suggesting otherwise isn’t being honest. The campus food at Cal Poly is terrible (according to my son, and he’s not alone). Students can get full schedules, but have to tolerate odd schedules like early mornings or evening labs. Some of the professors are bad, but where are they not? They suffer from administrative bloat, like very single UC and CSU. Off campus housing is a pain to get and is stupidly expensive in SLO, for what is frequently dirty and run down.
It’s certainly not all roses. On balance though, it does offer a lot of positives, at least for engineers.
If you are going to correct inaccurate information, which to this point, other than saying ME is hard, because it is, has been pure conjecture, why not do it here? It’s how we all learn. I’d love to know if athletes have an MCA advantage at Poly and if so, which sports. The only thing I know for certain is that athletes get priority registration. Beyond that…clueless.
Hey @scotlandcalling I respect your perspective, but my perception is different. In full disclosure, my D is a student and while I do see @eyemgh being very active, it always felt to me that he tried his best to be upfront, balanced and backing himself with good objective data in everything he said about the school and being respectful on any other poster. As you indicate, there are good things and bad things about any school and a given school can be perfect for one student, while it can be hell for others, and I haven’t seen him ever stating the school is perfect for everyone. In most situations, I did see him asking, in what appeared to me polite way, for specific data when others stated what appeared to facts. To me, with all due respect, the characterization that he is engaging in over-marketing is a stretch, which borders on personal attack.
I find a parent that spend so much time on such a forum, on the manner he is engaging in, very useful for providing the right context.
@bleadingheart The workload is quite a lot, but is manageable if he has built up his organization and time management skills. It is all an intricate balance of academics and everything else (sleeping, eating, exercising, socializing, clubs).
An average quarter will be around 13-16 units and be around 18-25 hours in class or lab. You can estimate around 18-25 hours minimum of studying to keep afloat. That leads to 36-50 hours of school work. If you want higher grades add in more time, club work and projects can also add in more time. I would estimate my workload varied from around 40 hours freshmen year to around 70 hours junior and senior year. Keep in mind that I had a full load and was leading a club. I’ve seen people get by with around half of that, but they often don’t get the competitive internships and/or scholarships.
It really comes down to the person and what they want out of college. Personally I love exercising and it helps me relieve stress, but when things got busy it was one of the first things to go. Often you will see people who choose to do more socializing and less club work or sleep. I found club work to be one of the most rewarding parts of my college career and invested heavily into it.
Like all things, your mileage will vary, and it’s important to surround yourself with the correct tools to succeed. What works for one person may not work for others. It’s probably most important that your son picks school that is right for him and the rest will fall into place.
Would very much value your input at relates to an athletic recruit at CP. ~MCA 4500, not STEM major. CA Public School. Understand essentials of recruiting, title IX, but nothing really specific to CP as it relates to admissions slots, assistance or scholarship vs invited walk on.
@bigfandave My son’s friend committed to one of the top UC schools as an athlete in 9th grade unofficially (it became official this year)and was told to maintain GPA3.5( all regular classes), and ACT 24 or so.
I was shocked to hear that. He did not even get a full scholarship(his tuition will be partly paid), but the school has that much room on his academics.
He was also recruited by one of the Ivy’s, the school asked him to have GPA 4.0 and ACT 30.
His stats were not that high, so he chose the UC.
Please use these stats as references only as I am sure every school has different requirement.
@scotla unclear how one can commit outside NCAA legal recruiting window as D1-D2 schools are not even allowed to speak with underclassmen. What sport?
@bigfandave, a student can be recruited and verbally commit in middle school. There are plenty of examples. Lebron James Jr. started getting offers when he was 10. None of it is binding though. It is all considered “unofficial.” It only gets regimented when the official window opens August of senior year.