How to calculate your major and college's acceptance rates, based on the 2015-2016 projections

Colleges and Universities A-Z Cal Poly San Luis Obispo
1

Just a disclaimer, this is all based off of last year’s enrollment projections (2015-2016). Cal Poly has this data posted here:
http://www.ir.calpoly.edu/content/publications_reports/targets/index

^ Assuming they stay consistent, the updated projections for this year (2016-2017) should be posted sometime in late February or early March; you can go back to this page around that time and calculate the updated rates if you would like.

You can figure out the approximate acceptance rates for your particular major AND the college you applied to by referring to this document here (**note, these are last year’s projected numbers):
http://content-calpoly-edu.s3.amazonaws.com/ir/1/images/2015-16%20Enrollment%20Projections_0.pdf

** To figure out your specific major’s acceptance rate: **

  1. Scroll down to find your college (you’ll know you’ve gotten to the different colleges section once you see the rainbow charts)
  2. Find your major under your college’s left-side heading
  3. Refer to the 2nd column titled “NTR Apps;” this means “new transfer apps” (if that wasn’t clear), and record the number
  4. Refer to the 4th column titled “NTR Target;” this–I’m assuming–refers to that particular major’s actual goal/number of transfer students who will be accepted, and then also record that number
  5. Divide the 2nd column # (NTR Apps) by the 4th column # (NTR Target) and multiply by 100, and you’re left with your major’s acceptance rate :slight_smile:

** To figure out your college’s overall acceptance rate: **

  1. Again, scroll down to your college and then scroll to the bottom two rows that are titled “Working Total” and “Fixed Total” (for most of the colleges, these two numbers will be exactly the same, so you can refer to either one)
  2. Refer to the 2nd column “NTR Apps” again and record that number
  3. Refer to the 4th column “NTR Target” number again and also record that number
  4. Divide the 2nd column # by the 4th column #, multiple by 100 and you’ve got yourself your college’s overall acceptance rate :slight_smile:

Hope this helps give you guys some tangible numbers for how many people get accepted, and also the rate of acceptance (which, I’m just going to say, is kind of fun to brag about a little since most of their major acceptance rates are pretty low…just saying their psychology major has a ~3.6% acceptance rate >:D< have fun with these numbers if you’ve already been accepted!)

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You’ve forgotten to include yield. It is certainly a bit different, if not radically different for each major, but the typical total school yield is around 33%. That means for every 100 slots they want to enroll, they have to accept 300. That would put psychology at roughly 11%, still a tough admit.

The other unknown is the strength of an application pool. It could be that a major that has a 30% acceptance rate is harder to get into than one with a 10% rate, because the one with the 30% rate has higher average stats, but fewer applicants. That’s why chasing majors based on projected admission rates is a bit of a rabbit hole.

Thanks for posting!

3

Here’s another thread/post that might also be useful too. It has a link to approximate yield percentages etc. :slight_smile:
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/comment/18895425/#Comment_18895425