<p>While your point is ideal, the facts speak for themselves. Of 11,000 students offered admission, only 32% accepted. This seems to provide support for the theory that the more qualified also have the most choices… and are less likely to enroll at Cal Poly.</p>
<p>FIRST-TIME FRESHMAN ENROLLMENT
Number of completed applications received: 33,627
Number of applicants offered admission: 10,944 (33%)
Number of applicants offered admission who enrolled: 3,524 (32%)</p>
<p>Cal Poly administration does not suffer from delusion of grandeur. CP knows its strength and limitations and who it can attract by the way of good students. CP is a great school, but it is not the top dog, like the way Stanford is in CA. So for CP to succeed in getting the maximum number of best students they able to get to enroll, they have to be strategic in its acceptance methodology. </p>
<p>Cal Poly operates in a very crowded segment of the college spectrum. It has to compete with UCSB, UCSD, UCI, UCD as peers, the lower UCs and other CSUs from the bottom, Cal, UCLA, top Private colleges (Harvey Mudd, Rose-Hulman, etc) from the top.</p>
<p>So it is an absolute given that students admitted will also be admitted to one of the other aforementioned colleges. As a result, CP has to find a way to maximize enrollment yield and I would guess probably giving students with profiles most likely to enroll the right of first refusal over students who are cross-admitted to say Harvey Mudd or Stanford or UCB.</p>
<p>But with that said, Cal Poly enrolled student stats have been going up year over year. This means that they are able to slowly shift up market to more “over-qualified” students year over year.</p>
<p>Finally, through my occasional involvement with the University administration, I know former President Baker, and President Armstrong both wanted to expand Cal Poly application to include an admission essay, and a more holistic approach to acceptance. However, they were denied this request by CSU because of lack of funds to hire additional admission officers to read the essays. So they are doing their best with what they have already.</p>
<p>Very interesting ickglue. My kid was one of those that got into pretty much every school you mentioned above. He was one of those that was “overqualified”. However, Cal Poly ended up being his and our first choice because of what Cal Poly offers and represents. A real hands on learning experience that will prepare him to be a working engineer as opposed to a research engineer from day one. He could have gone elsewhere, but after we looked deeply into the programs at all the other schools, Cal Poly came up way in front of the pack. Interestingly, many other kids in our situation felt the same way. We kept running into the same families again and again at the various open houses for admitted students. Several of those kids that we met at UCLA and UCSD, etc. ended up choosing Cal Poly too.</p>
<p>So, what I want to communicate is that to us and many other families, Cal Poly has an “A” game and can and will continue to attract the most qualified students. There was no comparison in programs in our minds.</p>
<p>Don’t get me wrong. I am NOT saying Cal Poly can’t compete for top students against the other high ranked universities. Rather, I am pointing out that CP like, all well run colleges, leverages its vast database of previous years of admission data and use data-mining techniques to analyze which high achieving candidates will most likely enroll.</p>
<p>And they probably optimize the entering class on those basis. It equivalent to knowing who will most likely to buy your widget at various price points.</p>
<p>With that said, Cal Poly is most definitely on the ascension, both in academics (higher entry requirements and ranking) and campus facilities (new engineering complex, new gymn, new science center, and upcoming new library building) . Cal Poly is one of the few public colleges that substantially improved despite constant budget challenges over the past 20 years. And it most definitely can compete for and get top ranked students to enroll, like your son.</p>
<p>I strongly believe that CP has the potential to reach parity with UCSD in the coming future.</p>
<p>I totally get that you are a major supporter of Cal Poly and I understand where you are coming from. With regards to UCSD, I find it interesting that you see it as below UCLA. From our standpoint, after we did the Open Houses of both schools, we found the engineering program at UCSD to be superior to UCLA.</p>
<p>@ickglue
“So for CP to succeed in getting the maximum number of best students they able to get to enroll, they have to be strategic in its acceptance methodology.” </p>
<p>Right. They look at the yield rate from the most recent years (For CENG this ranges from about 31-35 percent) and then offer admission to the top N applicants (according to MCA score) where: </p>
<p>N * yield-rate = #openings in that major/college.</p>
<p>If the yield rate takes an unexpected jump (like it did last year in CENG), they end up with a bigger freshman class than planned, and modify yield expectations for the next year and admit fewer students. I highly doubt they reject anyone because their MCA score is too high for Cal Poly.</p>
<p>I agree with Ralph4. I think they make adjustments to yield a smaller class but they would not (and admissions told me they do not) reject the most highly qualified applicants.</p>
<p>I don’t think there is any way of knowing how Cal Poly really chooses there applicants, it seems like a crapshoot to me. I’m crossing my fingers and really hoping I’ll get off the wait list since Cal Poly was my top choice and the only school I can afford, so I think that not choosing overqualified applicants assuming that they will get in somewhere else is unfair. I got in everywhere else with scholarships, however, I still can’t afford these schools. And even if I could, I would still go to Cal Poly hands down. I just wish there was something I could do to show them that it was my first choice, I wanted to apply ED but my parents wouldn’t let me because they weren’t sure that they would even be able to afford Cal Poly at that point. I would do anything to get in.</p>
<p>@vetinprocess - Have you called the school or explored an appeal? If you are that serious, I’d pull out all the stops and go at it from every angle. If it were me, I’d even send Dr. Armstrong an email laying out your case in detail and the exact reasons why you see Cal Poly as the best fit. Others here and those closest to you at home may disagree with my advice. So before you pull the trigger on an all out campaign to get off the waitlist, consult with others. I’ve never been the kind of guy to pull any punches and so far, it has served me well. But that is my personality. When I really, really, really want something, I become unstoppable.</p>
<p>I didn’t apply to Cal Poly, but a lot of my friends have–and from what I can infer, they never reject “over-qualified” applicants, but they have sometimes wait-listed them.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t use this data to jump to conclusions, however, as there are many factors not shown on this graph, such as intended major. Just more food for thought…</p>
<p>1x612nt13 - The scattergram you linked to includes the writing portion of the SAT and I believe Cal Poly does not include writing. Would you link to a scattergram based on the critical reading and math only?</p>
<p>There are a lot of additional factors regarding bonus points in the MCA (Multiple Criteria for Admissions) that will result in people with lower GPA’s being accepted over those with higher GPA’s and test scores. The bonus points add up rapidly if you have them. Example faculty staff children get 700 bonus points out of 5000 total allocated points.</p>
<p>so when they say 4 years recommended for a subject area, it includes senior year courses too right? and also how is it possible to take 5 years of maths in high school? I’ve taken so far geometry (frosh), algebra 2/trig (soph), pre-calculus honors (junior), and i’m going to be taking ap calc ab (senior) this year. can someone inform me how many MCA points will i get for this maths load? thanks!</p>
<p>Can someone please explain this to me.
I was rejected form SLO with a 4.35 GPA weighted 3.87 GPA unweighted, 1410 SAT1 Score out of 1600, and a lot of extracurricular activities such as ASB, 3 sports, show choir, and Youth and Government.
Does anyone have any insight into what I could have done? I really wanted to go to SLO.</p>
<p>What was your CSU calculated GPA? What was your highest math? How many years of English? Did you meet the minimum of every one of the a-g requirements including art? Lastly, what major did you apply for?</p>
<p>First, I am a huge fan of CP. D1 graduating this year Bus Admin/minor in statistics. She will be graduating on time in four years with a minor. She also received an Junior year summer internship from a job fair on campus. She has been hired and will start as soon as she graduates. CP has been a wonderful experience for her and for us. S has been fortunate enough to be admitted ED in BioMed this year. We studied the admissions process in detail. He even changed a senior year course load to pick up the additional Visual Arts requirement. It was worth 50 points and we will never know if this decision helped him make the “cut”. As many applicants, he has great stats. What surprises me is that no one has commented on the subjectivity of the UC admissions process. In my option, Cal Poly admissions is more transparent than the UCs. The essay portion adds subjectivity to their admissions process. The ECs also add subjectivity:did your work in your field of study? did you start a business?. The UCs love this stuff. Cal Poly is strictly “by the numbers”. There are so many frustrated people with the admissions process at Cal Poly that I believe they will be even more frustrated with the UC admissions process. There are students receiving Regents at UCSB and UCSD that have lower stats than my son’s friends that applied to both schools. Students are having to apply to so many more colleges because admissions seem so random. Four years ago, my daughter applied to only four schools with a 50% admission rate. Many of my sons friends applied to about nine schools this year. It’s unfortunate that our children work so hard trying to cover all the “bullet points” of the application process and then realize the parameters in which they were preparing themselves don’t always work to their advantage. For those who were rejected and waitlisted, I can imagine how difficult the news was but remember that other colleges will evaluate your application differently than CP and you will more than likely be the perfect fit for their admissions parameters. Best of luck…</p>
<p>I was accepted to Cal Poly under Computer Science. My GPA is a 4.51, ACT 33. I did a great deal of research and am very confident that Cal Poly is absolutely the best school for me. I applied to several UCs as a backup plan. So excited to attend Cal Poly. </p>
<p>@cpmom2 your post is spot on. My son is a senior at UC Davis and we saw many baffling UC admissions decisions back when he was going through the admissions process. My daughter was fortunate to be accepted to Cal Poly a few weeks ago and has committed in spite of the fact that the UCs haven’t released most of their decisions. To highlight your point - one of her classmates was invited to apply for Regents at Cal, with lower GPA, test scores and class rigor than my daughter and several of her classmates, all of who are top 10 in a class of about 550. What the invitee has that the others don’t is a hardship. My daughter didn’t expect to get a Regents invite at Cal or UCLA given the high number of extremely qualified candidates (in spite of her 4.0/4.65/33 ACT/500+ hours community service/leadership), but was a little surprised at her classmate’s invitation. Holistic review decisions are much harder to understand than those based on Cal Poly’s algorithm IMHO. </p>
Alright, this thread seems old, but here are my thoughts.
Cal Poly wait-lists over-qualified applicants because they feel that those applicants
will NOT attend Cal Poly and are using it as a safety school.
You would never hear an over-qualified applicant being rejected from Cal Poly because they are always wait-listed, and If they accept the position on the wait-list that shows that they are really keen on attending, and they’ll probably be accepted.
Also, I doubt you’ll find any over qualified applicant being rejected who applied ED to Cal Poly.
Cal Poly is my dream school, and my ACT Score (35) is somewhat over-qualified but I am applying ED because it’s so awesome.
![http://i.imgur.com/0GBLB.png[/url]](http://i.imgur.com/0GBLB.png%5B/url%5D){kind=link}
