<p>Hey all, I just graduated from high school. I applied and got in to Cal Poly SLO's Mechanical Engineering major. During the 2nd semester of senior year, I got a D in my dual-enrollment city college calculus class. Obviously, this sends me into the review process. I'm curious about how to maximize my chances of getting through without my application being rescinded.</p>
<p>My Case:
-spent over 400 hours last semester working on a FIRST Robotics Team
-it's a college class!
-i was recovering from an emotional crisis during this period of time
-i got an 89.5% on the final</p>
<p>My Questions:
-given the (unreasonable and generally unenforced) clause in the policy stipulating that admitted students must maintain the overall reported GPA, is the whole policy flexible?
-should I contact them now and inform them of my situation or should I wait until a decision is made and try to appeal it if I'm rejected?</p>
Contact them now! Most immediately, if this affects your admission but there is some remedial action you can take like a summer class then you need to start right away. If you wait until later this summer when they get your transcripts then it will be too late.</p>
<p>And for more general advice, its better to face up to your problems instead of hoping perhaps nobody will notice. I remember a post where some actually said “why should I call attention to my grade?” as if the adcoms might not notice otherwise. Trust me, they’ll notice. But the difference between calling and them finding out later is the former shows maturity. And since they have a degree of leeway, you want to give them every reason to keep you.</p>
<p>When you contact them there’s a formula to follow. It’s the standard formula for crisis handling, whether you’re dealing with a bad grade or a product recall. “We messed up, we’re sorry, here’s why it won’t happen again”. In other words, no excuses; the bad teacher, the time you spent on your ECs, your heavy courseload, etc. For the latter part, its often easier for a student to frame it as “here is what I learned from the experience so it won’t happen again”.</p>
<p>I’ll be frank here; your “case” is nothing but excuses. Do you really want to tell the adcoms that you can’t handle the workload of one college class when you’ll be taking a boatload of ones (and in engineering to boot!) in 3 months? That your priorities are screwed up, so you chose to spend so much time on an EC you enjoyed that you didn’t pass an academic class? Oh, and if you really want to get on their good side, be sure to tell them that you think their policy is unreasonable to boot. </p>
<p>Its your future so play it the way you want. Personally I think adcoms will be much more forgiving if they hear that you learned from this that academics come first and that you’ll trim back outside activities if need be; if they hear that you’ve thought about how you will do better in hard classes (work with the teacher, tutoring, practice workbooks, etc); that your grade on the final shows you realized all of this during the class, just not in time to rescue your grade.</p>