Chances for Aerospace Engineering

Colleges and Universities A-Z Cal Poly San Luis Obispo
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My daughter has a 9-11th grade unweighted 4.0 and a weighted 4.22. Her school does not have honor courses aside from AP classes and did not accept community college credit. She took all AP classes available to her (5) except for APUSH since she was busy with extra curriculars (founder and president of engineering club, robotics team captain, founder and president of women in stem club…and other activities). She’s a senior this year so applying for colleges this fall, should she not expect a chance to get into Aerospace Engineering at Cal Poly because of her weighted gpa?

She is our oldest so this is our first time around with college admissions

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Your daughter’s SLO GPA is within the middle 50% of first-year students admitted for Fall 2022 to the College of Engineering which was 4.17 – 4.25, however with an overall acceptance rate of 21.9% for COE and around a 13% specifically for Aerospace, SLO should be considered a Reach school. Based on what you have posted, she is competitive but there are no guarantees.

Make sure she applies widely and has some solid likely schools on her college list.

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You didn’t ask but as @Gumbymom states … apply widely. If cost is at all an issue, with a 4.0 neighboring U of Arizona will award you $32k merit (down from $35 in prior years) and looks like tuition up to about $41k.

But for $9k + room and board it’s a steal for a solid Aerospace safety at basically an in state price. The Honors dorm is awesome too.

Good luck with SLO. With the 4.0, there are great merit offers…some will require a test but not the UC/CSU/U AZ.

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Thank you so much for your response. We were really hoping that they would consider her school situation since she can’t rack up honors classes to boost her gpa. I read that the UCs consider each student’s context but not sure if they are true to that.

She was really excited about aerospace but is reconsidering a different engineering major based off of the little we are finding out about how aerospace seems even more competitive than other engineering options. Ugh. Thank you, we really appreciate your insight so we can have realistic expectations.

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UC’s do evaluate an applicants academics based on what is offered at their HS so if she completed a rigorous curriculum, it will be noted. Engineering in general at many of the CSU’s and all the UC’s is competitive regardless of major.

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I think that if she is excited about a field/major, you should pursue it.

Many will tell you that you don’t need aerospace to be in aerospace. It could be Meche or EE, etc. just like Aero doesn’t mean you can only do Aero. And I know this is true.

Lots of great schools out there - even some that have an aero focus such as Embry Riddle (campuses in Prescott Az and Daytona Fl, Florida Tech in Melbourne Florida and UAH in Rocket City…Huntsville AL. Great merit but you’d need an SAT/ACT test (UAH). All three have merit and lots of great ones all over where she’ll get in. And as a female at some privates she may get a boost.

The point is - if she truly wants aero as a major (check the curriculum), she’ll find lots of aero programs available to her…they may or may not be in-state publics but lots of OOS and privates offer great merit aid !!

Good luck.

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It depends on the school, and in Cal Poly’s case specifically, the year. When my son applied ME was much more competitive than AE. Now it’s reversed.

Speaking of CP, is that a capped and weighted GPA based on 9-11? What is her highest math? What lab sciences did she take? How many years of foreign language?

As @tsbna44 said, there are lots of great WICHE schools with respected AE programs that offer WUE tuition.

The big question is why AE? She can work in the industry with a lot of engineering degrees. It depends on what she specifically wants to do. Does she know?

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I would encourage her to also apply to Cal Poly Pomona. Her chances would be better at CPP than SLO and their engineering programs are outstanding.

I didn’t see anyone else comment on your comment about thinking the UCs would consider her circumstance. The Cal Polys are CSUs and as a result, it’s mostly a number game. As Gumbymom said, she’s got a chance at SLO. Her numbers are in there. It’s just that they’re so competitive with tons of applicants that no one is guaranteed. My step-nephew didn’t get into CP SLO with a higher GPA than my son (SN took as many AP classes as possible across a broad spectrum, DS was selective in which ones he took - CS, calc (x2), & physics 1). My son’s application for CS had the extra math and science, the extra CS classes, the additional year of language that was mentioned in a post above. And he had lots of extracurricular hours (with leadership which your daughter has) and lots of work hours (he was also able to check the major-related box which is more difficult). Find the references to the MCA calculator and just look at what the school demonstrates interest in.

Even if she doesn’t wind up at SLO, there are lots of great schools who would love to have her and she’ll thrive at.

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In a non-test environment, these things at the margins are going to be even more important.

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Here are more of her stats:
Unweighted: 4.0, SLO GPA: 4.22, UC GPA 4.33 / Rank 3 out of 257
(Not allowed to take APs fresh yr, allowed 1 AP soph yr, no honor courses offered and not allowed to use community college courses as credit.)
6 years of math (blocked schedule) Took AP Calc AB and BC this past junior year, Chem, Physics, Bio, 3 years language, will take AP Physics, AP Chem, AP Enviro Sci, AP Gov/Hist senior year - all were not offered until now…our public high school just opened her sophmore year.
Took AP Euro (4), AP Lang (5), AP Psych (5), AP Calc AB and BC (3)
Extracurriculars: Pres & Founder of Engineering Club, Pres & Founder of Women in Stem Club, Captain of Robotics Team, Pres & Founder of Creative Writing Club, 5 years of coding -html, java, mostly Python, Coded an open source doc used in a satellite, Coordinating a school district wide Women in Engineering panel this fall, Co-coordinating an elementary school science fair…a handful of other activities/volunteer work

She loves engineering, but she LOVES aerospace because her dad is an aerospace engineer and regularly comes home with fascinating details about his projects…they are working on the new space station that will orbit the moon right now. I’m telling you, if you were at our family dinners you would consider studying aerospace too!:slight_smile:

She is also interested in Materials Engineering and is considering that and using it in Aerospace, but she would be most excited about studying Aerospace… her dream schools are actually UCD and UCSD but I haven’t found any engineering admissions stats on them and Cal Poly was high on her list too.

The other issue is you can see she got a 3 on her Calc AP exams… there is a story behind that, and it doesn’t represent how well she is able to perform, but more importantly not sure if UCs or CalPoly consider AP exam scores? and if her score will take her out of the running especially for a competitive major like aerospace.

Should aerospace at UCD, UCSD, and UCI be considered reach schools for her similar to Cal Poly?

She really wants to stay in CA… @s318830 thank you for the Cal Poly Pomona suggestion, we will add it to our list

Thank you everyone for your responses, we really appreciate them as we are trying to figure out her best options and what feels like a constant shifting of expectations from the UCs and Cal Poly

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She has an excellent profile for all the schools on her list and all are within Reach including SLO.

Here are some UC admit rates based on the Capped weighted UC GPA but not major specific. For Engineering, the admit rates will be lower. UCD and UCSD do not breakout admission rates by major so you will not find specific data like Cal Poly SLO’s target projections.

Campus 4.20+ 3.80-4.19 3.40-3.79 3.00-3.39
Berkeley 30% 11% 2% 1%
Davis 85% 55% 23% 10%
Irvine 60% 31% 14% 1%
Los Angeles 29% 6% 1% 0%
Merced 97% 98% 96% 89%
Riverside 97% 92% 62% 23%
San Diego 72% 25% 2% 0%
Santa Barbara 73% 28% 4% 1%
Santa Cruz 91% 81% 46% 9%

UCD will be a direct admit into Aerospace Engineering.

UCSD admits into the University first and then into the major. Aerospace/ME is a capped major which means it is very selective and has limited enrollment. When applying she should select a Non-capped major as an alternate if she has another interest. Also many students are accepted Undeclared and then have to change majors which is very difficult if the major is capped.

UCI is similar in admission as UCSD but changing majors later is slightly easier. UCI also considers alternate majors.

Make sure she has at least 2 Likely/Safety schools on her list and best of luck to her.

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I think she has an excellent chance at Cal Poly, but I would still call it a reach.

She has amassed a very impressive record, but in a weird way, it has had a negative impact on her Cal Poly GPA. The number of classes she’s taken, which in most paradigms would be a strength, diluted the impact of the AP weighting. The algorithm used to cap at 4.20 treating everyone there and above the same. There’s speculation that they’ve either removed the cap, or that it’s higher, because they report higher GPAs now. No one knows for sure. My guess is that it is capped at 4.25 now, as their accepted student profiles for each college top at 4.25. The CENG range is tight 4.17-4.25. A 4.22 is still very strong.

As for her AP scores, no impact on admissions. In order to find out if she’s ready to use them to start in Calc III if she chooses Cal Poly she should call the math department and ask for old tests from I and II. If she does ok, or is just a little rusty, she should move on. If it feels foreign, she should repeat.

AE is certainly an option, but ME is too. The ME route is less systems oriented, and oriented more to aerodynamics if one chooses that route. My son did. He did his MS in aerodynamics and had multiple aerospace industry options. He ultimately went a different route though. They would be similarly competitive though, so AE is probably the way to go. Both would be reaches.

MateE would be a match though, as would General, with the intent to switch to AE.

If Cal Poly is strongly in consideration, she can boost her application by doing a job, even as a volunteer, even 1-2 hours per week. Every point will help.

Also, make sure that she reads the application carefully. It calls for including some middle school classes. If missed, a student’s chances are greatly reduced.

I’m highly biased, so take this with a grain of salt, but the Cal Poly experience will be different than UCD and UCSB.

Classes are smaller and nearly all of them are taught by instructors with terminal degrees, including labs and discussions. Calculus for example is capped at 32 students per section.

The bigger thing though is that Cal Poly students do really cool things in labs and clubs. CubeSat was invented there. As a result, they have not one, but two CubeSat clubs. Bill Nye based LightSail out of CP because he said CP is the center of the CubeSat universe.

My son has friends at SpaceX and NASA. One of his best friends worked on the Webb telescope. Getting a job won’t be a problem.

The downside os that for better and worse it is isolated. It’s also less diverse, even though they are making huge efforts to mitigate that.

OK, end of sermon. :rofl: She should certainly visit and ask for a deeper tour of the facilities, especially the CubeSat labs.

She’ll have a great future no matter where she lands.

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Thank you so much Gumbymom and @eyemgh , both of your posts have been so incredibly helpful!!

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My son basically had the same academics as your kid, and he had a perfect SAT score, and didn’t get into Aerospace Engineering.

He went to San Diego State and loves it.