<p>So so many sour grapes and mistakes here where do I start:</p>
<p>@beachball101 you can’t game the system. One reason people feel it is so hard to change majors is this exact case, unless this person had the stats to get into the major she thinks she will switch to, it is not allowed. It is a trick at other schools that don’t rank applicants with a number. She will be changing schools most likely blaming Cal Poly for not “allowing” changes of majors. Also USC isn’t that hard to get in. It is a good school for some majors, but is very expensive. FWIW at the moment my son is on track to graduate a full year early with a master’s. If they took out the programs that start out as 5 year degrees, I think Cal Poly would have a much higher 4 year graduation than the current 40%.</p>
<p>@10fromLA every CSU and probably UC has a mandate to accept certain students. It is not up to them. The state designates what is a low performing school, and students attending those do not get the same level of education from kindergarten on. Also not all of them do offer APs or even if they do they may not have teacher’s capable of teaching it so they have a chance at a 5. You are competing with a pool of MCA only students. There is another group of students (much smaller) who qualify with the bonus points, There are no benefits of having a parent who went to Cal Poly. </p>
<p>@Justin7473 I had been rooting for you, but you present yourself much higher than you are. I don’t want to go into specifics but from the stats you post you really don’t have 10 APs, and I am at a loss how you come up with 12 semesters of countable math. I bet there are many students with an unweighted 4.0 gpa at your school. I honestly feel that unless there is a reason other than attending a top 500 (ranked 498 by US News) high school for your GPA and poor AP scores, being sick really doesn’t explain getting 1s or 2s, Cal Poly will be very tough. My son has been in classes where half the class fails the 1st midterm. </p>
<p>@TSchaser, You have to be very close on the scale, but no it isn’t just Cal Poly who has to consider the Low Performing Schools, parent education level, and first in family to go to college. This is mandated I believe by the state or the CSU for all public colleges, may even be a national level requirement for all State schools, not sure, but absolutely sure it is not only Cal Poly.</p>
<p>Again I reiterate that the majority of people admitted get in strictly by the standard MCA scoring. Some of the students who are in the extended criteria don’t need it which lowers the numbers of MCA+ people. I can understand the frustrations, however I don’t think it is unfair.</p>
<p>From <a href=“http://www.act.org/epc/ppt/EPC%202013%20F1.2%20Maraviglia%20Amos.pdf”>http://www.act.org/epc/ppt/EPC%202013%20F1.2%20Maraviglia%20Amos.pdf</a> in 2010, the Orfalea College of Business admitted 659 out of 659 applicants with MCA scores of 4251 and above. That group’s average Cal Poly (MCA) GPA was 3.902 or above and had average SAT (CR/M) scores of 1269 or above. Conversely, only 249 out of 2627 applicants (MCA score of 4000 or less) were admitted from the group where the average Cal Poly GPA was 3.587 or lower and average SAT was 1132 or lower. If I’m understanding it correctly, very few lower-performing students were admitted. In fact, I counted a total of 13 accepted applicants out of 1196 whose average GPAs were 3.212 or lower and average SAT scores of 1047 or lower. Not much of a threat to higher-performing students in a competitive major from what I can see. </p>
<p>@czs1994, cal poly does all math from alg 1 and higher, i did alg1 in 7th grade, and have taken math since then, acquiring 12 units of math, so there. And for the 10 aps, i guess i will have to list them for you: ap world history,ap us history, ap government, ap microeconomics, ap language and comp,ap lit and comp, ap calc ab, ap calc bc, ap physics b, and ap physics c, there you go, 10. As for the 1 and 2s, the 1 was in calc, i was sick, and my math teacher says that i am one of the best in the school, i aced the final, and many of the students compared the final to the ap exam. The 2s in English and history, i suck at writing essays. Obviously you stalked my profile, so you will have seen that i got only a 580 in the writing portion, while getting a640 cr and 790 math. As for the 4.0s at my school, every single one of them are planning, and have good chances at the ivies. For the 498, it is still gold, and every other website that i have seen, we are ranked in the 100-200s. Sorry, not sorry, i hope your son isn’t as insolent as you.</p>
<p>@czs1994, sorry for the previous post,i was just furious that you would think i was lying about my stats, i get offended really easily with that subject, considering that school is the one thing that defines me. Again, sorry, i was just on a mad rant like “OMG, oh no you didn’t” </p>
<p>To be clear (I thought I was), it appears the professors union at SLO has forced a point spiff for children of faculty and staff. It’s not a legacy issue like Harvard for example. It’s a child of an active employee. I have seen a number of references to that being worth 500 free points in the ranking.</p>
<p>I really don’t care who’s forcing the free points for low performing schools. If it were up to me, I’d skip the rampant grade inflation and go back to a 4 point scale for all classes. The gaming of AP, IB and honors “5s” is well known. That would remove the need for any freebie points for API 500 schools.</p>
<p>I’d recommend you take a deep breath and not take this as a personal attack of some sort.</p>
<p>PS Much of what you call sour grapes is simply a negative reaction to the lack of a transparent process. There are a lot of spiff points in play for low performing schools, parents who work at CPSLO, parents without HS diplomas, etc. A simple table of values would go a long, long way to calming the distant war drums.</p>
<p>True that. Anyways back into the spectator position, was a mistake to get back into this. Better to just let it happen, we’ll end up where we belong. Can’t get angry over things not in our control</p>
<p>@ralph how do you get a CSU weighted GPA that high? If you take 6 classes per semester for 2 years and take the max 8 semesters of honors and get all As, you get a 4.3.</p>
<p>@Sierra225 -Those stats were posted on page 85 of this thread by user Faithbegins. I don’t know how they got that GPA. I would guess it includes more than 8 semesters of honors/AP classes.</p>
<p>I’m thinking I’ll make a public records act request to the SLO lawyers and ask for the algorithms. They’ll stall - but I’ll kick it up to kamala Harris and at least let them know someone cares. We’ll see. Stay tuned. </p>
<p>what’s the chance that transfer student getting of the waitlist? I know it depends on the major too, but I wanna know that should we wait till july 15???</p>
<p>Read Stanford thread. Doesn’t make sense either. Lots of disappointment there. It’s all the same guys no matter the college. - btw, my D knows 8 classmates that applied to CP SLO. 4 got in, 4 were wait listed. None of them are minorities, and the high school is NOT low performing. 2 of the wait listed were applying to engineering and had great stats. The other 2 wait listed, not sure of major, but stats were slightly lower than those admitted. Kind of made sense here in So Cal.</p>
<p>Knowing the exact algorithms kind of ruins the fun, don’t you think? I’m almost certain that their admissions system isn’t corrupt. There just isn’t enough evidence to prove that. But to each their own.</p>
<p>I don’t think anyone thinks the university is corrupt. I just think the mystery has worn thin. I’m in on a Sunshine Act claim too. I’ll try also. I doubt they’ll respond other than to say “sue us.” I’m assuming they score all 50,000 applicants in a single batch pass. I’d like to know what all the adders and subtractors are too.</p>
<p>Okay, maybe corrupt was too harsh but what I’m saying is that I’m sure their adders and subtractors for arbitrary factors other than grades, test scores and extracurriculars is not significant enough to make or break you.</p>
<p>It’s not a great mystery. Over 50,000 qualified applicants and approximately 5600 spots, it must be a random selection or lottery. There is no fair way to do it. This is why Cal Poly is not a reliable school for admission. </p>
<p>@tenfromla and @dogluvr1 Cal Poly isn’t the only school that doesn’t tell you exactly how they choose who to admit, no school does. If it made sense, two students I know personally with identical SATs, APs all with 5s, and GPA (4.0 with same AP’s) would both have gotten into Stanford and MIT. However the one who wanted MIT got into Stanford and the one who wanted Stanford got MIT (both are now very happy with their colleges). You can’t seriously think it is some sort of random selection or lottery (many schools have even a higher number of applications with lower numbers of admissions), or that a ton of students got in only because of bonus points, with 75% of the students scoring around 1200 on the SAT and 85% having at least a 3.5% unweighted GPA (65% have a 3.85% unweighted). It is also true that most other schools I know of have given out some admits already with others having to wait until April 1. Is it hard to wait, of course, is it a mass conspiracy to mask their admission policies, I think not.</p>