Can I ask your 4th year student’s major?
My son goes to one of the top public schools in CA, extremely competitive. I can tell you that parents here play the system to give advantage to their kids so the GPA is not completely representative of one’s academic abilities to the point of being the only metrics used for admission. In our school, there is a perpetual battle between the parents of the high-achieving kids (mostly of immigrant origin), and the others. The latter managed to convince the school board that honors classes in 9th grade should not be weighted, that “-“ should not be put on the transcript, etc. As a result, my kid who took Geometry H and Algebra 2 H in middle school and Pre-calc H in 9th grade did not get the weighted credit for those. Despite having 6 APs (with 5s) in sophomore and junior year, from which 5 in STEM and 1 in Spanish, his wGPA is not super high. And, yes, the P/F in second semester junior year did not help. He had all As the first quarter before school shut down. Kids here take AP Music Theory and AP Art History to boost their GPA. Such niceties as exactly what is behind the GPA are likely lost in CP SLO.
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I heard Michael Bloomberg speak about education one night. He said, “no one cares where you went to school, only what you have done”. I agree with that. I think students should focus on what I call “eminence” both in high school and college. Write papers and get them published, even in local journals; do an experiment and film it-show the film at film festivals; give a speech at some conference; create a web site that deals with some relatively focused issue; get a patent, etc. That is what creates you as a pro, not the school you graduated from.
On another night I heard Peter Thiel speak on who he liked to hire. He said that he would rather hire someone who went to Africa and studied butterflies for a year after college than hire someone who was just checking all the boxes.
I do think that CalPoly’s engineering school has a national reputation. I know of a CFO of a major NYC development company who got her real estate finance degree at CalPoly and her MA in Finance at NYU.
Go to a good school that fits you. Focus on eminence along with your studies and CalPoly-or anywhere else- can be as good as any other school.
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Daughter got waitlisted at SLO yesterday, and Regents at UCI today. Go figure. Not sure how SLO is picking kids if all they have to go on is GPA, class rigor, and self-reported hours.
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Yield protect, they know kids like your daughter are going to be accepted to higher ranking schools. An early post shows that they have to pull more than 2000 students from waitlist in 2018 because a lot of admitted students didn’t commit.
FYI, they pulled so many from the waiting list in 2018 because they made a yield error the previous year when they dropped early admission and needed to be cautious to correct. It was an anomaly
Given that most of the kids that have gotten in had very high stats, I don’t buy that SLO engages in yield protection.
I see. Thanks for the information
Well, they perhaps just picked out names randomly from a box then.
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I’m pretty sure SLOs recommended a-g requirements get some substantial weight.
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@TwoforT My son reported his scores but we’ve not sent anything to UC. They said to do that upon acceptance. I saw the portal for the first time this week and his had a small paragraph and I can’t remember under which tab but it says something about him being in the 9% and ELC. Check the portal.
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Yes they mention ELC but in prior years you couid qualify via the local path(ELC) or statewide top 9%. I know my son qualifies via state path just not sure about ELC since I got two different numbers from his counselor. I know at this point there’s nothing to be done but it would be comforting to know if he couid qualify either way. With SAT not being counted this year who knows if AOs will even check.
That makes sense. The ranking criteria is interesting. It works from one aspect, but not another. For example, I moved and switched high schools between my sophomore and Jr. year. My first school was private and allowed few AP’s. For example, most AP’s could not be taken until Jr. year (and only AP English on senior year) and there were few of them. Only 3 allowed per year. AP’s and Honors were similarly weighted with a .33 bump (not 1 point). Overall, GPA’s were lower vs the public school students and their regular courses were as difficult as the AP’s at public. Ambitious kids from the neighboring public though had much higher GPA’s because they were loading up on AP’s and had 3x the weight. So, in this case, class rank would help evaluate the private school kid vs the public. Now, for someone like me who switched half way, not sure what that does. At least on the UC app, I’m allowed to explain it - so that helps.
Yes, they recognize statewide ELC but for application review criteria it specifically states : Identification by UC as being ranked in the top 9 percent of your high school class at the end of your junior year (Eligible in the Local Context, or ELC).
So Statewide ELC may only get the default campus guarantee and not weight as high as local ELC.
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I hear you on the gaming. But, just to note that AP music theory is an extremely difficult course. FWIW. It is not an easy AP.
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Right. I heard that AP Music Theory is not easy to do well in and that you definitely need previous musical training and to be able to read music going in to it.
No kidding. We did the same and UC and Cal Poly changed the rules in the middle of the game. The lawsuit thing says that because not all kids got to take the ACT/SAT it is unfair. Well is it fair to those kids who started studying for the ACT the year before Covid? We drove to Utah from San Diego to take the ACT last summer, crazy. We have given up on UC and are applying to out of state schools that still at least look at the ACT as an option.
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Bummer. Well he got accepted to Riverside which was his “default” campus so we’ll just hope for the best on the rest.
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The default campus is UC Merced not Riverside. UCR is a hidden gem for many students. I was really impressed with their Engineering/CS department but couldn’t convince my younger son to attend.
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Yeah, my older son looked at Riverside a few years ago. (Decided to do community college instead that year.) We liked it. And, think about this: think about how many great students - probably like @TwoforT - who aren’t getting in to schools they preferred, and who go to Riverside. It’s not like some flunky school! The only thing we didn’t love is that it might be slightly more of a commuter campus than other UC’s. But I just don’t think that can still be true. Look at all the kids who will end up going there. It’s not only going to be local or even SoCal kids.
Maybe our kids will both be there, and my kids cool 
…but there have been no acceptances over here yet… 
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