Just a bit of frustration about this whole situation. It seems like DS should have just “accidentally” clicked boxes that didn’t apply to him or exaggerated a bit on his hours. Clearly this isn’t info that gets verified. He had the GPA and test scores but that clearly wasn’t enough.
Not taking anything away from students that legitimately have the extra info they claim. It just seems like a very flawed system when there’s no verification to these points that can make or break decisions.
Ok. Sorry. Checked with him…It was for the History Major. Sorry for the confusion. Well aware of the transfer policy. He is actually Pre Law.
any acceptances still coming out?
Apparently they are, I probably got rejected tho, I haven’t heard anything back yet
@kdenver4 agreed, it’s a rather flawed and frustrating system. People in the know, especially about MCA, have a clear advantage. Why can’t Cal Poly be transparent and simply publish the formula and cutoffs for each major, like what SJSU does, so those lacking the extra points won’t bother wasting the time, effort and money?
@kdenver4 It’s not just about time, effort and money; it’s about the stress associated with the process. IF it’s all just a computer-driven score, then acceptances should come out all at once. This trickle effect where some classmates hear and others don’t is just torture. My daughter has wanted to attend her “dad’s” college her whole life and right now…I am pretty frustrated.
@OneAndOnlySJ This whole process is new to us. Neither my husband nor I went to college so we have been as clueless as our son to even the basics of applying to college, much less all the extras. My DS was accepted into the honors college at SDSU for computer engineering. They based it strictly off of his GPA and test scores (as well as the essay he had to write for honors). While there’s still the chance of a waitlist, we are just starting to focus on SDSU.
Of course he’s disappointed since SLO was his first choice. It is what it is at this point but still frustrating. At least we will now know with our younger son and daughter!
Hello! What are my chances with a 3.5 GPA and 25 ACT? I assume they are low. I applied for agricultural systems management and still haven’t heard back…
@bridgetross Based on last year’s numbers it looks like you would have a 36% chance of getting into the major as its a pretty small department. Even though it doesn’t seem like that competitive of a major, the question would be, where do you rank when measured against other applicants in that major?
@bridgetross My take on it is that CP will accept you. @eyemgh will hopefully clarify but with 20 spots to enroll and 55 apps for 2018 and a 33% yield that should mean that all applicants who are CSU qualified would be accepted. Best of luck!
@GhidottiDad, that’s my take too, the caveat being “qualified.” Cal Poly has (or at least had) MCA minimums and standard test minimums. I’ve never seen the whole list and I’m sure it has changed since 2013.
@kdenver4 My daughter and I were saying the same thing "how do they know?’. We of course hope people are honest but really, in this competitive world of college admissions and the high cost of schools who knows. My daughter did get in and we went to the calculator to figure out her score and had to look back at her application. She didn’t even realize when they asked those questions about hours worked and hours doing EC’s that it played such a huge part in the admissions decisions (she had always been told CSUs just look at gpa and sat/act scores). She actually debated for a while about the question on how many hours worked? Some weeks she works none some she works 20 hours, over the summer she did some 40 hour weeks. She picked the lowest 0-5 but could have easily picked higher (again she didn’t know it mattered). How do they know you were a leader? How do they know how much time you really devoted to your clubs, etc. We also didn’t know the middle school grades had to be on there, we even asked her counselor and she said “only the Spanish because she’ll need them for the A-G requirements” (she took 2 years Spanish in middle school and only 1 year in HS) - she clearly said the math didn’t need to be on there because she had 4 years HS math but she put in on there anyway because it’s on her transcript and she thought what she put down should match the transcript. We are thankful she put it down. I don’t think she read the instructions to in depth because she thought the forms were pretty self explanatory. We feel Blessed that our D was admitted and we have options but feel for those who weren’t and probably had the gpa/test scores to get in.
Sorry if I sound cynical, I really hope people are honest. I think I’m just saying what people are feeling.
This process is definitely favoring the less honest… It feels to me CalPoly thinks too highly about itself and didn’t bother to fix it.
Accepted to Pre-Chemistry BS program at Cal Poly, In-State on March 1st.
Sat: 1270 ACT: 28, Unweighted GPA: 4.22
I work at In-N-Out, 13 hrs/week, and participate extensively in student council/community service/activities around 16 hours a week. (Low-income family [not sure if that helps me])
All As and A+s only on every reported subject (at three different high schools), I took the hardest (honors) coursework available. I only have an UW GPA because my current school doesn’t offer it.
I was accepted into CSU Long Beach and waitlisted to San Diego State University.
@hermom Congrats to your daughter! Yes, same here. My son works anywhere from 5-30 hours a week but put the minimum. We assumed there would be verification done on this info and he didn’t want to take the chance of being disqualified. Little did we know he could have said anything! Of course he was applying for engineering and already up against a difficult pool
of applicants. But that just means every extra point could have made a huge difference!
Unfortunately, we know multiple people who have outright lied about having job hours and extracurriculars. These students literally had zero hours of work experience and participated in no extracurriculars but they figured there was no way to check. And guess what? They were admitted with low stats. It’s really shocking that there are points granted for something that cannot be verified. I don’t blame people for being upset. They feel like they were penalized for honesty.
has anyone been accepted over the past few days. still waiting…
guessing more decisions will start rolling friday night thru weekend again. hopefully all acceptances!
My daughter visited Cal Poly in her junior year and loved it.So she did her own research on Cal Poly’s website about Freshman Selection Criteria and talked to as many people she could to find about Cal Poly.When it came time to complete the application, she did it all by herself, even correctly reporting her middle school grades.I just handed her my credit card. Though it was first year of CAL STATE APPLY, she obviously looked at the application in detail. I did not help her nor look through her application because as one admissions counselor said, the completion of the application is in itself part of the process.She had three internships related to her major over 100+ hours each (started in 10th grade); worked 40 hours in the summer, 4 years of athletics, was an ASB officer, NHS, and youth group. In fact, when she got to that part of the application she was very disappointed that she could not elaborate on all she has accomplished.
We knew nothing about the importance of middle school grades nor MCA until after she was accepted and posted her stats in this forum.
This year when it was my son’s turn, I let him complete the application himself because I believe that this is the beginning of their learning process. However, this time, I did review it and though he’s not that detailed oriented he managed to find the section to enter his middle school grades.He also learned from his sister that he needed all those extra EC’s for the most competitive majors.He added up all the hours and averaged them by the 52 weeks and answered those questions honestly and ready to provide proof.
I would like to think though there may be exceptions, most applicants completed their application honestly.If they didn’t and they succeeded at this juncture, they won’t continue to succeed at the next juncture.
@hermom1 We went through this process 2 years ago and the whole time I kept thinking the same thing about verification. The grades and course rigor are verified. The test scores are verified. But the stuff that matters in the margin is not verified. My D filled out application using conservative numbers. In the end she was admitted for Biomedical Eng and then decided she wanted to do Chemical Eng (not offered at CP SLO) at another school. But the CP SLO admissions process is definitely stressful.