Hi everyone! Im a rising senior interested in Cal Poly SLO. So as per the instructions of one of the commenters on another post, I calculated my MCA score for Cal Poly SLO. I would be applying for Mechanical Engineering/ the College of Engineering and my W SLO gpa would be 4.128.
For mca, at the bare minimum (as in underestimating the number of hours per week at extracurriculars) I got a score of 5279.8071
Is this a good enough score for engineering at SLO?
How do we know that this is the system SLO uses? Like are there any articles that show that SLO used this system in past? (Since the other CSU's don't have this system)
Also (oops forgot this one) 3. When giving bonus points for extracurriculars, do you get points for the number of hours spent for each, or at one time? Like if someone does 4 ec activities, and spend roughly 3 hours on each, do they get 3*30 points (or 90 points), or do they only get 30 once?
So if you only count those points once my MCA would be 4741.2 (yikes its significantly lower) and it turns out I calculated my SLO GPA wrong and it’s a straight 4.0. Do I still have a chance?
What are you test scores? An MCA of 4700 can be competitive but with a projected acceptance rate of around 15%, average SLO CP of 4.16 and SAT of 1467, SLO is a tough admit. Definitely worth an application but make sure you have some solid safety and match schools on your list.
As to your original question, “How do we know MCA score works?” We don’t.
We know for a fact that Cal Poly used the MCA you calculated in 2013 because there was an official CP presentation outlining it linked in their web page. It has since been pulled.
We continue to operate on the assumption that it’s valid, but no one is certain of that. What we do know, is that it doesn’t hurt to assume it is still valid and maximize everything you can, because any student with a high first read MCA will be a pretty strong student anywhere.
