<p>Applied ED
Mechanical Engineering</p>
<p>ACT: 35</p>
<p>GPA 9-11 weighted: 3.9</p>
<p>5 Honors, 4 APs</p>
<p>11-20 Hours, yes work experience, yes related to major</p>
<p>Is your GPA, the CSU weighted 9-11th for Cal Poly???<a href=“Cal State Apply | CSU”>Cal State Apply | CSU;
<p>Your GPA is with in range and your ACT is outstanding. SLO is a Match.</p>
<p>Good Luck.</p>
<p>Extracurricular hours? I’d say you’re mostly likely in. </p>
<p>Assuming that 3.9 is your fully weighted GPA, I believe that CPSLO is your reach. Your GPA is crap.</p>
<p>@Mangiafuoco It’s not great, but it’s certainly not crap. 4.12 is the average selected GPA for engineering. I have a 3.7 UW 9-11. I’m hoping my ACT will help though.</p>
<p>Is 3.9 your fully weighted GPA or your CSU (9-11) GPA? Can you post your GPA with two decimal places?</p>
<p>My unweighted GPA is 3.66. My fully weighted GPA is 4.29. My CSU GPA is 3.86. My SAT score is 2300. CPSLO rejected me.</p>
<p>Your ACT will not help you much. Only your GPA can determine whether or not CPSLO accepts you. If 3.9 is your fully weighted GPA, CPSLO is your reach (and your GPA is indeed crap). If 3.9 is your CSU (9-11) GPA, CPSLO is either your match or high match, depending on whether you rounded your GPA up or down to get 3.9.</p>
<p>@Mangiafuoco Its great that you have an opinion but there’s no need to say that their GPA is crap. Really? </p>
<p>4.12 is the avg for engineering overall, but ME is one of the most competitive departments, so their average is likely higher. Your ACT will help, it just doesn’t weigh as much as GPA. Test scores account for 33% of your admission score, GPA, 45%. Good luck!</p>
<p>BTW, your GPA certainly is not crap. Congratulations on your hard work. Poly, especially for engineering, is just very competitive these days. They attract a lot of extremely highly qualified candidates.</p>
<p>@Mangiafuoco Did you apply early decision? Looks like you were one of those overqualified people that they reject to discourage people using SLO as a safety.</p>
<p>@Mangiafuoco CSU (9-11) Weighted GPA is 3.94, Unweighted 3.70. I think my fully weighted GPA is the same as my CSU (9-11) GPA because I have exactly 8 semesters of AP/Honors classes. Is that correct?</p>
<p>@nfisher
Yes, that is correct. 3.94 is actually not too bad for a CSU (9-11) GPA. I was mistaken when I said that your GPA was crap. I did not realize that 3.94 was both your CSU (9-11) GPA and your fully weighted GPA. However, this means that your course rigor is not as difficult as other students who may be applying. Therefore, CPSLO is a high match for you.</p>
<p>No, I did not apply early decision, and I was not overqualified. CPSLO only looks at the critical reading and math portion of the SAT, so my SAT score for CPSLO is actually only an unimpressive 1520. Also, my GPA was crap. This was probably the reason why I was also rejected/waitlisted by five UCs.</p>
<p>@nfisher, The concept of Tufts Syndrome (rejecting overly qualified candidates) doesn’t happen at Poly. If you rank high on MCA, you get in. Those who were very qualified who didn’t missed something on their application, like not taking a performing art. Those omissions in requirements or errors on the application are simply culled into the rejection pile as not meeting all the minimum standards regardless of how stellar they are otherwise.</p>
<p>Think about it, the mean GPA for the College of Engineering was 4.12 last year. The maximum on their scale is 4.2 (yes you can have slightly higher). That includes several majors that aren’t very competitive like IE and Materials. Presumably their average GPAs are lower than the mean of the College. That means there are LOTS of 4.2s in ME, BME, Aero and CS. Otherwise, the overall average couldn’t be 4.12. </p>
<p>Poly Engineering, pure and simple, is very competitive and very unforgiving of application errors and omissions. </p>
<p>post #11 = “The concept of Tufts Syndrome (rejecting overly qualified candidates) doesn’t happen at Poly. If you rank high on MCA, you get in. Those who were very qualified who didn’t missed something on their application, like not taking a performing art.” </p>
<p>IMO, the above comment is possibly not true and is absolutely a biased remark. </p>
<p>According to eyemgh’s own post on another thread**, Cal Poly also weights demographic predictors of yield like high school of attendance, zip code, education level of parents. </p>
<p>Each year plenty of otherwise qualified applicants are rejected in favor of “likely to attend applicants”. Why does Cal Poly (a state funded insitution get way with such ridiculousness? Because the highly qualified rejected applicants recieve much better offers from superior schools (go away quietly). While Cal Poly is good school with strong programs and offers a great value for in-state students, the “cream of the crop” enroll elsewhere.</p>
<p>** #7 <a href=“Confused about MCA score - Cal Poly San Luis Obispo - College Confidential Forums”>Confused about MCA score - Cal Poly San Luis Obispo - College Confidential Forums;
<p>It’s well known that Cal Poly gives admission advantages for non-academic aspects. Most schools do. Nearly every school in the nation will give a “boost” to an under represented minority student or a first generation college attendee. Some boost legacies. They just aren’t as transparent about it as CP is. That’s why it’s called the Multi-Criteria Admissions score.</p>
<p>There’s no doubt that when ranking GPA and test scores alone, that some applicants with higher scores get displaced by applicants with lower scores based on the added criteria Poly gives credit for. The result isn’t that the top applicants get rejected ala Tufts Syndrome. It’s the candidates at the bottom margin that are impacted.</p>
<p>Eyemgh, if we are to believe that data you posted (cited on post #12), then GPA + SAT/ACT account for about of the total multi-criteria admissions score. I understand you sourced the data from a presentation by cal poly’a admission dean to the ACT conference, where cal poly showed how to boost numer of applicant and increase yield while decreasing expenses. </p>
<p>As far private institutions giving a “boost” to high yield applicants; we’ll that their private business. As a state funded insitution, cal poly should be held to more transparent standard. </p>
<p>@momneeds2no, I know you are unhappy, for whatever reason, about the admissions process at Cal Poly. I understand and can to a degree sympathize with your point of view. It however has nothing to do with what the OP is talking about. Cal Poly does not reject the highest qualified candidates ala Tufts Syndrome because they don’t believe they will attend. Everything they do, like it or not, for better or worse, is transparent and automated.</p>
<p>@eyemgh I’m curious about the MCA score. Do they just put everybody in order then lop it off when they hit the desired number? Is it that cut and dried?</p>
<p>I have the same question as @SoCalGirl97</p>
<p>Yup. There is zero human intervention. </p>
<p>Wow. Thanks!</p>