Chances at CSU (safety)- Cal Poly SLO & others- stretch?

Chance Me / Match Me!
1

Home state is Colorado. What are my chances?

Stats:
GPA: Weighted 3.97 unweighted 3.74
Rank: top 15% (59/414)
SAT 1500 (math 770 Reading/writing 730)

AP Chem, AP Music Theory, AP Eng. Lang, AP Calc AB, AP Eng Lit, AP Calc BC, AP Physics C
Japanese (4 semesters-concurrent enrollment at college)

Major ECs:
4 years Marching Band
Youth worship leader at church (1 year)
High school Newspaper- 1 year
Handbell choir - 4 years
Community service with youth group

Serious hobby: Music composition (2 years)

Colleges (in order of preference):

  1. Colorado State Univ (CSU)- is this definitely a Safety?
  2. CU Boulder (how likely for Engineering)
  3. Cal Poly SLO- Is this even a chance for Engineering?
  4. Purdue- Any chance?
  5. Arizona State U. (ASU)
    6 Univ. of Arizona (UA)

Intended major: Unknown- but may apply Engineering to keep that door open
Legacy: No
Ethnicity:White
Gender: Male
FA: likely not

2

Cal Poly SLO uses 9-11th grades in their GPA calculation with a cap of 8 semesters of AP/IB or DE classes taken 10-11th grade. You can use the RogerHub UC GPA calculator and input 9-11th a-g course grades. Your SAT is very competitive. SLO also uses an MCA point score to rank applicants by major. SLO also requires you select a major and does not accept Undeclared.

Here is the MCA score point calculation and the RogerHub calculator:
https://rogerhub.com/gpa-calculator-uc/

MCA information:

Academic MCA:

The maximum GPA they will use is 4.2, even though you can have a higher calculated CP GPA. A 4.2 is worth 2250 MCA points. Thus, multiply your CP GPA by 535.7 and you’ll get your MCA points for GPA.

The next biggest thing is test scores. The odd thing, likely because they wanted it to total a nice round number, is that the max score is 1650, even though the max SAT score is 1600. Multiply the total of your best SAT CR and your best SAT math by 1.03125 to get your MCA test points. If you took the ACT, they convert and vice versa.

The third largest section is the class rigor score, worth 750 points. In this section you get zero points for meeting the minimum admission requirements and adders for more than the minimum. The bonuses in order of power are (min semesters/max total semesters/bonus per extra semester/total possible bonus): math 6/10/125/500, lab science 4/8/50/200, English 8/10/50/100, foreign language 4/8/25/100, visual performance 2/4/25/50, no bonus points for social sciences or electives. As with GPA, you can actually score higher than the maximum, but 750 is the most they will count.

Finally, work and ECs, worth 350 points. Work (hours per week/bonus): 0/0, 1-5/20, 6-10/40, 11-15/60, 16-20/80, 21+/100, add 50 points if work is major related. ECs (hours per week/bonus): 0/0, 1-5/30, 6-10/60, 11-15/90, ‪16-20/120‬, 21+/150, add 60 points for leadership role.

There are also other Non-Academic Bonus Points:

CA vet/701, Hayden Partner School/700, faculty/staff dependent/700, service area of CP/500, either parent with some or no HS, but who DIDN’T GRADUATE FROM HS/300 (per parent).

A target MCA score of 4700+ for Engineering can be competitive.

No financial aid for OOS applicants so expect full pay at SLO.

3

Wow Gumbymom! The Rogerhub thing is a bit confusing. So, I read the A-G requirements, but my main question is for the GPA, for example if the history UC requirement is for 2 years, but he has 3 years of history, geography, world civ, western civ- Do I just put 2 years (4 semester grades) or 3 years (6 semester grades)?
Maybe this is more confusing because I’m using grades 9-11 for SLO instead of just 10-11.

4

You would input the grades for each semester of the a-g courses taken in 9th-11th grades. You would then put the #of semesters for each AP/IB or DE course he took from 10-11th. The RogerHub calculator calculates 3 GPA’s, the UW UC GPA, the Capped weighted UC GPA and the Fully weighted.

SLO only uses the capped weighted UC GPA so the calculator will cap at 8 semesters of honors credit. Since he is OOS, HS designated courses do not get the honors points in the calculation. If you want to PM me with the class and grades, I could help you with the calculation. SLO then takes his stats along with HS course and figures out MCA score points. His then ranked by major and MCA points to determine if he is accepted.