Overqualified for SLO?

<p>Meitou - My two cents worth is that you’ll get into UC Davis. It’s a great school. My kid did a summer enrichment program there and loved it. Just make sure you have a bicycle and helmet. Here is where you can see stats, including first generation stats, but it only goes through 2009:
University of California StatFinder
[University</a> of California: StatFinder](<a href=“http://statfinder.ucop.edu/statfinder/default.aspx]University”>http://statfinder.ucop.edu/statfinder/default.aspx)</p>

<p>Meitou: I’ll try to keep this as simple as possible. I don’t really think Cal Poly can be a considered a safety school, especially in the colleges of engineering, business, and architecture. In those areas, cal poly is top notch, up there with the best UC schools. To dismiss (and insult) Cal Poly’s reputation and students simply because it’s a CSU is pretty immature and pretty ignorant.</p>

<p>Your stats are good, but they are not good enough to guarantee your admittance. In fact they are lower than your college average. Maybe this was a reality check for you. Undermining really good schools and thinking they’re below you and it will come back around when they say you’re not good enough for them. </p>

<p>Good luck at whatever college accepts you.</p>

<p>How would you explain me getting rejected from cal poly when:</p>

<p>Chemistry, Biology, and Physics honors…
I completed all math classes provided at my school…
Top 9% of my very competitive class…
Spanish 3…</p>

<p>Your description suggests you did not complete 10 semesters of math, 8 semesters of lab science and 8 semesters of foreign language that Cal Poly is looking for. Could be your down-fall. </p>

<p>Note: You could receive bonus points for taking Cal Poly’s recommended 10 semesters of math, 8 semesters of lab science, and 8 semesters of foreign language.</p>

<p>REJECTED:
3.9 GPA
26 ACT
Microbiology Major
I waned to go to this school more than anything…now what</p>

<p>@VentureMan</p>

<p>Someone else has mentioned this, the admissions process for Cal Poly is not holistic. Thus, your UC a-g courses and GPA matter more here.</p>

<p>To me, this means whatever that wasn’t entered in the application may not affect your decision. I got rejected to Cal Poly too, and my stats aren’t as great as yours, but I taken some courses in a CCC, been part of a FIRST robotics team and another engineering program , and took some APs. But Cal Poly doesn’t know that, so that had to rely on what they had like my GPA, which wasn’t that great (3.57 unweighted).</p>

<p>@ ventureman Correct me if I’m wrong, buy i believe they recommend three years of a language and four years of math. Ive take five years of math and three years of a science and language. </p>

<p>@minimegs if you really want to attend cal poly, you should appeal even though you might get less grants. </p>

<p>Also, I believe that the timing of when you sent in the apps also contributed to your acceptance. I know a hand full of people who are under qualified (3.6 uc gpa and 1800) and was accepted into the electrical engineering program. I also know a bunch of people who has even better stats then I do (2100 sat, four years of a language, taken ap chem-5 on ap test, ap biology and even physics ap ) and rejected or waitlisted for bio chem</p>

<p>From CSU Mentor for Cal Poly</p>

<p>High school years required or recommended:</p>

<p>Art:… 1 required, 2 recommended
English:… 4 required, 5 recommended
Foreign language:… 2 required, 4 recommended
Math:… 3 required, 5 recommended
Science:… 2 required, 4 recommended
Social studies:… 2 required, 2 recommended
Academic electives:… 1 required, 2 recommended
Total:… 15 required, 24 recommended</p>

<p>[CSUMentor</a> - Explore Campuses - Campus Facts - Cal Poly San Luis Obispo](<a href=“Cal State Apply | CSU”>Cal State Apply | CSU)</p>

<p>I dropped my math and language senior year because I wanted to take it easy after taking regular Calc junior year. O.o I’m taking 4 APs though, so it’s not like I’m completely slacking off. I honestly think what saved me is my heavy courseload junior year and the fact that I’m qualified, but not enough so that I’d go somewhere else more prestigious in a heartbeat. GENE major, by the way.</p>

<p>Someone please correct me if I’m wrong but electrical engineering and bio chem engineering are two completely different pools of applicants so comparing the stats of those two groups is pointless. </p>

<p>If people are going to appeal they should spend less time passing judgement that admitted applicants are ‘under qualified’ because that’s NOT a basis for appeal. After all those ‘under qualified’ applicants have already been deem qualified by the only group that matters…the Cal Poly admissions board.</p>

<p>From the Cal Poly Website:</p>

<p>Appeals to Undergraduate Admission Decisions

  • Freshmen and Transfers </p>

<p>Cal Poly does not set aside space in our class for students who appeal admission decisions. Every denied application has been reviewed for maximum consideration. Therefore, for an appeal to have merit, it must bring to light new academic information as well as information pertaining to extenuating circumstances that was not present in the application - information that clearly shows the student to be stronger than had been earlier evidenced. Grades received in the current academic year are not a basis for an appeal or the reversal of a decision.</p>

<p>Biochem is in the college of math and science.</p>

<p>EE is in the college of engineering.</p>

<p>Typically, College of math and science has lower requirements for admissions than engineering.</p>

<p>And with regards to the appeal discussion, it sounds like just 1 or 2 of the posters want to appeal just to soothe their bruised ego. College acceptance letters are not a trophy collection, remember.</p>

<p>However, if one of the posters is uniformed and or arrogant enough to think Cal Poly is just some random easy state school safety shoe-in for admission, well, this is your first lesson in growing up and be more thorough in your college research.</p>

<p>Cal Poly’s admission stats have been almost identical to UC Davis, Irvine, Santa Barbara for years now. For some disciplines such as engineering and architecture, CP can be even harder to get into than UCSD (for some engineering) and Cal (for architecture).</p>

<p>How else do you think Cal Poly engineering is ranked the same as Air Force and Naval Academy and its undergrad architecture is ranked #4 in the US?</p>

<p>The below is Fall 2010 admission averages for each CP colleges:</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.ess.calpoly.edu/_admiss/Pdf/Profile10_51910.pdf[/url]”>http://www.ess.calpoly.edu/_admiss/Pdf/Profile10_51910.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Fall 2011 admission averages for each college:</p>

<p><a href=“Cal Poly Admissions”>Cal Poly Admissions;

<p>Does anyone know why the average admission stats for entering freshman actually dropped between 2010 and 2011? I could not help but notice from the two posts above that for engineering the average GPA was 4.03 and the ACT was 31 and the SAT was 1372. While for 2011, the average GPA was 3.94 and the ACT was 29 and the SAT was 1299. I noticed that this was pretty much the case across the board for all majors regardless of department. Shouldn’t the trend be the opposite? Did Dr. Armstrong have an agenda to loosen up standards when he come on board? I for one am a huge fan of the school. But it is curious.</p>

<p>To all those folks that considered Cal Poly a “safety school”, my kid turned down UCLA, UCSD, UCI, UCSB, and other schools to attend Cal Poly. No regrets – none at all.</p>

<p>@Osakadad</p>

<p>The link to the 2011 profile is reporting averages for ENROLLED students. I know the document says it is SELECTED student averages, but if you compare those numbers to the 2011 Factbook, you can see that the numbers match those for ENROLLED students.</p>

<p><a href=“IR Home - Institutional Research - Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo”>http://www.ipa.calpoly.edu/sites/ipa.wcms.calpoly.edu/files/publications_reports/factbook/fbfall11.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>On page 7 of this document (Enrolled First-Time Freshmen) you can see that the 2011 averages for all of Cal Poly are:
GPA 3.84
SAT Reading 593
SAT Math 633
ACT Composite 27</p>

<p>These numbers match the TOTAL line on the 2011 profile linked above (SAT 1226), so you can see that these are the numbers for ENROLLED freshman in Fall 2011, not SELECTED. The stats for ENROLLED are always lower than for SELECTED, because many top SELECTED applicants enroll at Berkely, UCLA, Stanford, etc. The link provided above for 2010, reports the stats of SELECTED students, so the two profiles linked here are not comparing apples to apples. Looking at the Factbook, the stats of ENROLLED students have gone up every year since 2007, so it can be assumed that the stats for SELECTED students for 2011 are also higher than 2010. I hope this makes sense.</p>

<p>It makes a lot of sense. Thanks for clearing that up.</p>

<p>I cant believe, I got in.
They changed my status from waitlisted to accepted.</p>

<p>Congratulations, you have been selected for admission to Cal Poly pending your meeting the following Terms and Conditions. Click on the link for further information.</p>

<p>@seniorsfo congratulationnnnns!</p>

<p>@seniorsfo – congrats buddy! Now get yourself to the Open House and bury any and all hard feelings for being waitlisted. I know that you were upset, but that is all ancient history now. You are a Mustang!!</p>

<p>I can’t help but get a little emotional as I read through all of these posts. I don’t think there has been a response yet from someone who was “under-qualified”. I was completely lost last year when it came to admissions because my scores were definitely below average for SLO. I know, it may not have been fair to reject students who had better scores than me, but being accepted may have been the best thing to happen to me. I love it here and wouldn’t want to go to school anywhere else. On top of that, I am doing a lot better than a lot of my peers in my major who had significantly higher GPAs and test scores than me. I know this post may not really contribute to the original intent of the thread, but I just thought I’d mention this.</p>

<p>

since you have confirmation on that, my gut tells me that is true.</p>

<p>

This is really too bad. What this means is that potential academic stars, whom admissions (actually whoever defined the upper and lower limtis of the screening algorithm) believes would not likely choose Cal Poly over Berkeley, or WashU, or USC, without knowing ANYTHING about the financial impact of that decision, will be denied that option. An upper middle class family, as hard as this is to believe, might be able to affort Cal Poly and not any of the other three options I list. From a public policy point of view, this is a horrendous admissions policy which, as stated above, appears to have as its motivation “efficiency” over correctness. It is efficient in that, assuming admissions knows historically that if only, say, 5% of those above the upper bound (lets call that 1500 SAT and 4.5 weighted GPA), will untimately matriculate, they save the time and money of communicating with those 95%, but at the expense of the 5% who would have matriculated.</p>

<p>dijkstra and DunninLA - I just don’t buy it. I called Cal Poly weeks ago and asked them questions and they said they do not reject “overqualified” candidates. I would like to see a link to this policy in print rather than just hearsay. It just does not make sense.</p>