@eandesmom I saw that in the CalPoly recs. Not easy to put 5 years of English into our H.S. program unless you took English online or at a CC. Our English program really isn’t set up for it. I think there might be a semester long Journalism class and that is about all we have for English electives. S17 took geometry in 8th… so the advanced math isn’t a problem. Never mind there isn’t space in our regular class schedule to take that many extra classes. I don’t think DS will get in to Cal Poly, so I’m not worrying about it. What I do know is S17’s 7th & 8th grade math classes will need to be self reported & do count towards the GPA. (That will slightly help the GPA as he did well in advanced math in jr. high.)
Interesting that they’ve dropped ED. As a general rule I don’t like ED at all (but love EA).
I cen see the point of advanced math but 5 years of English is ridiculous especially if they also want 2 years of visual/performing and then one elective.
I didn’t read through all 33 pages of this topic so I apologize if this has already been posted.
The following is the formula that Cal Poly SLO uses to rank applicants. It isn’t mine but is taken from the Cal Poly SLO forum. To calculate your Cal Poly GPA, go here https://rogerhub.com/gpa-calculator-uc/ but include grades from 9, 10 and 11th grade.
Academic MCA:
The maximum GPA they will use is 4.2, even though you can have a higher calculated CP GPA. A 4.2 is worth 2250 MCA points. Thus, multiply your CP GPA by 535.7 and you’ll get your MCA points for GPA.
The next biggest thing is test scores. The odd thing, likely because they wanted it to total a nice round number, is that the max score is 1650, even though the max SAT score is 1600. Multiply the total of your best SAT CR and your best SAT math by 1.03125 to get your MCA test points. If you took the ACT, they convert and vice versa.
The third largest section is the class rigor score, worth 750 points. In this section you get zero points for meeting the minimum admission requirements and adders for more than the minimum. The bonuses in order of power are (min semesters/max total semesters/bonus per extra semester/total possible bonus): math 6/10/125/500 (note: stats and finite do not count), lab science 4/8/50/200, English 8/10/50/100, foreign language 4/8/25/100, visual performance 2/4/25/50, no bonus points for social sciences or electives. As with GPA, you can actually score higher than the maximum, but 750 is the most they will count.
Finally, work and ECs, worth 350 points. Work (hours per week/bonus): 0/0, 1-5/20, 6-10/40, 11-15/60, 16-20/80, 21+/100, add 50 points if work is major related. ECs (hours per week/bonus): 0/0, 1-5/30, 6-10/60, 11-15/90, 16-20/120, 21+/150, add 60 points for leadership role.
There are also other Non-Academic Bonus Points:
CA vet/701, Hayden Partner School/700, faculty/staff dependent/700, service area of CP/500, either parent with some or no HS, but who DIDN’T GRADUATE FROM HS/300 (per parent).
Lastly,
Cal Poly ACT/SAT Concordance Chart in case you took ACT (use only Math and English and figure out the two equivalent SAT scores)
ACT CR M
36 800 800
35 770 790
34 760 780
33 750 760
32 720 730
31 700 700
30 680 680
29 650 660
28 630 640
27 610 620
26 590 600
25 570 580
24 550 560
23 540 540
22 520 520
21 500 500
20 490 480
19 470 460
18 450 440
17 440 410
16 420 390
15 400 360
14 380 330
13 360 300
12 330 280
11 300 260
@lkg4answers Thanks for this. I just find these kinds of things fascinating even if it wasn’t relevant to our interests.
Although with the concordance chart, I assume there’s no info about how they are adjusting for the new SAT yet?
I assume classes one is taking as a senior count for the rigor. Does AP Comp Science count as extra math class? (It counts as a math class in our H.S.) Not sure what math class you mean by ‘finite’. Seems with my son’s extra math & science & music he should max out the Rigor points. Don’t need to worry about that extra English. 
Doubt if DS’s score is good enough to get him in a Engineering program. But the school as a reach maybe not be as much a reach as I’d hoped. Test scores seem to help more than I expect.
When we visited we were told Algebra & Geometry taken in junior high counted in the GPA count. I added those in when making DS’s calculation. The most subjective is the EC’s. How on earth do you count EC hours? Some sort of average? And what counts as a leadership role?
I don’t see anything about being a CA resident? Is it like other Cal States and in state & out of state just have a different cut-off level? Any idea what constitutes a good number to shoot for?
P.S. Really surprised by the “faculty/staff dependent” points. UC doesn’t offer that and the official line is because it’s a PUBLIC SCHOOL. I wonder how Cal Poly gets away with it. Those kids would also likely be in service area as well… I wonder if they get both.
@curiositycat333 I didn’t develop this but can tell you my understanding based on a newbie reading the SLO boards. @eyemgh is the best person to ask about SLO. I believe he is the one who originally posted the info that I copied and pasted above.
My understanding is that you get “credit” for taking 2 years of math in jr high but those grades don’t count into the calculation. So, if he took 2 yrs in jr high and 4 in HS, he would have 6 yrs of math. You include his math grades from 9, 10, and 11 but not the grades from 7 or 8. You can however add 500 points extra for the 4yrs of math, assuming he completed calculus. I’m not 100% positive but I don’t believe that CS counts as math.
@lkg4answers That is not what I was told in person when we visited last summer. I specifically asked that question when they mentioned it. I was quite surprised by the 9th grade grades, and even more so by junior high math ones. I asked for clarification about the pre-H.S. math classes because our H.S. doesn’t include those grades on the transcript. But things might have changed, admissions officers are known to have been wrong, and I don’t have access to the actual application. I also could be misremembering but as I said I did ask for clarification on this issue.
OH… I see the CS doesn’t matter because 2 semesters of pre-calc, & 2 of Calc already count as the 500 bonus pts. Yes DS has finished an AP Calculus course. A bit confusing that it’s written as “semesters”.
@curiositycat333, CS does not count as math. Only algebra, geometry, algebra II, pre-calc, calc AB, calc BC, and diff EQ do. Junior high grades are not counted in GPA, but rather credited as pass. They don’t require junior high/middle school transcripts. Good luck.
The question is though, once you figure out your likely MCA score, what does it really tell you? Is there a minimum MCA by major to compare against as there is with the EI at other California schools?
Very interesting though!!!
@endesmom I think the cutoff point varies year by year like it’s done for other Cal States. And probably one reason they eliminated ED. They had to set different levels. Give all kids scores. Take all the kids applying to X major You know how many you want to admit, and rank top to bottom & set a cutoff. Although scores from past years might give an idea. I can only find admits stats by average GPA.
This information has a very different slant then when we went to the admission information talk last year. I was given the impression GPA was the most important thing, much heavier weighted that test scores, rigor was important. But things like EC’s were only used for “tie” breaks. But this scoring system shows GPA only slightly higher ranked than test scores.
And I’m VERY VERY surprised by the faculty/admin dependent points.
OK one last post here on the Cal Poly thing and then I’ll shut up. 1) The MCA calculation posted above is 2 year old. information. I found the original post & it was from Nov. 2014. 2) I can find no information regarding the new SAT and how Cal Poly will be comparing it to the old SAT scores.
It’s not a big deal about the jr. high math grades. Now I don’t feel like I have to dig those grades up. My information comes from last year, and it totally surprised me at the time, and was verbal from a possibly misinformed admissions presenter. Although it’s also possible the above poster doesn’t know the latest changes. UC started requiring that student take Geometry last year, but does allow self reporting that it was taken in jr. high.
Oh and it seems like there is a 5000 cap. Still doesn’t tell you much.
Honestly of all the schools S17 is applying to Cal Poly is the one that Naviance is of little help. For most schools there are nice clusters in the graphs that make it fairly obvious if the school would be a reach/match or safety. But because of the range of students applying, that there is such a different GPA/Score needed for Mechanical Engineering than English, and many top students use it as a safety it’s very hard to tell.
@curiositycat333–It is really not difficult to get an idea on MCA thresholds for the most popular majors at Cal Poly. Simply look over the past couple yrs acceptance postings on CC (engineering is mid to high 4k’s (maybe less for majors like industrial eng.).
I took a peek, looks like 4200 was around the lowest reported admit and that was non engineering. Engineering looks like it needs 4400+ and there were not many under 4600.
I thought I found that 4800 was needed for CS.
Also, if most kids applying have the new SAT, they likely won’t convert it to anything. They’ll just use it. Because they’re just taking the top N. Because the new SAT is inflated, the cutoffs will just be higher than last year. (If you have ACT or old SAT, I would guess that will be converted to new SAT.)
For now, I think the most logical thing is to concord the new SAT to the old, calculate the MCA based on that, and then compare that to last year’s thresholds.
Also note - self-reported MCA’s are obviously self-calculated MCA’s - and I think some people make mistakes. Which makes it difficult to find the actual threshold.
@eandesmom, @thshadow, that’s why I said “idea” on MCA. There have been hundreds of posts trying to garner the exact cut-off of each and every major. I can tell you that yes, CS will be high 4K’s, but some majors admit in the 3K’s (not more popular majors).
It’s unlikely to matter much for us, we’ve one there now but I don’t see the other two applying. S17 has zero interest which I guess is good as he’s unlikely to get in even if he went for environmental science over engineering, S19 has now switched from physics/astrophysicist to film/ business lol.
But it’s still very interesting. In a way I’m glad I didn’t look at it this closely when SD14 was applying as it would have stressed me out.
On the positive side I love that extra music and EC’s can really help you at CP. sure that made a difference for her.
Yes I think it’s hard to predict. I calculated S17 between 4100-4200 depending on how you count EC’s, SAT. Clearly a reach, and extremely doubtful for Engineering. The cutoff are hard to figure out. Lots of I got in posts, not as many denied posts. So it hard to find out what the lower bound might be. I also think the EC portion of this is subjective. I’ve also seen students with TOP grades not get in. (I wonder if they didn’t fill in the application correctly?)
Did find a post that says…
This seems in line with what they said on the tour. But who knows how that is affected by not having ED this year.
@curiositycat333 Cal poly will not be doing ED next yr, so not sure how extra points (local, vet, etc) will factor in. I don’t think the EC is subjective (it’s all point based-I guess they could deny points?). As far as “top grades denied”-- This is probably due to…lack of the odd rigor requirements, no substantial credit for EC’s, no LOR, and no essays.
If anyone has questions about CU-Boulder I’d be glad to help if I can. Oldest D and her fiance (got to get used to that – they were just engaged today!) both go there and we’re local. She’s integrative physiology and dance. He’s a physics grad student who did undergrad there as well (math and physics).
And yes, CO Springs is waaaaaay conservative. Boulderites consider it the anti-Boulder. Fort Collins is less liberal than Boulder (not hard to accomplish), but I would not call it conservative in the least.
@curiositycat333, personality fit is very important to my D. Liberal and geeky/nerdy is what she wants. Acceptance and inclusion of all kinds of people is also important – different races, LGBTQ, religion or lack thereof, neurodiversity, etc. I think it’s very important that she can feel like she fits in, as she does not have good social skills.
@Tyberius, I’ll admit I don’t know how far skiing is, but some cold climate schools that are similar in size and stats: Clarkson University, Rochester Institute of Technology, Gonzaga. We have visited Clarkson and RIT and D loved RIT and liked Clarkson quite well. Gonzaga sounds very promising, but we won’t be able to visit before spring.
How important is skiing vs. size? CU-Boulder and CSU are near skiing, but they’re big universities.
@thshadow, my D looked pretty seriously at Oregon Tech because of their renewable energy engineering program. We visited and she enjoyed it. The class she sat in on was great. We did not love the town. It looked like it was from a documentary about how small downtowns have fallen to the big box stores. After visiting a few other schools, she agreed with me that the campus looked like a small office park and not a college at all. I think that’s what really took it off the list – town and campus.
CO Mines is in-state for us, so D considered it. But then everything I heard about it from previous students and also parents did not sound promising for my D. Keep in mind this is hearsay, mostly from people who left: It is very serious and super competitive. Kids who don’t study nearly 24/7 are looked down on. Constant stress. Just a very dreary place.
Having said that, if they had the type of renewable energy she wants, we probably would have visited since it’s close. It would have been interesting to see if our impression matched what I’ve heard.
@snoozn Do you know much about Colorado Collage? Don’t know much about it except it runs on a schedule where you take only one class at once? I know it doesn’t have Engineering, but does have other STEM majors.
Congrats to your D on her engagement.
Here I am worried my older D won’t have anything to do in a month and yours is getting married. Mine graduated college in May, moved home, and has a summer job till mid August. And then… nothing. Has no plans. Barely goes outside her room except to go to work, or hangs out with me. I do appreciate having her around now but not for the rest of her life. And I have no clue how to teach/motivate her to become a self sufficient adult.
I disagree that Colo School of Mines is dreary. There are some students who have little or no social life, but there are some of those in the engineering school at CU too, and those students would probably be the same no matter where they went to school. Are there more at Mines? Probably. However, three of my sorority sisters at CU married Mines guys, so they aren’t all spending Saturday nights gaming. What I remember about Mines was that they are pretty studious all week, then they party on Friday nights, do some social or sporting things on Saturdays, party again on Saturday nights, and then hit the books again on Sunday to the next Friday. Repeat. The parties I went to were pretty wild, with live bands, themes, games, trivia contests. In many ways, much better than the throw together parties at CU.
There are more women on campus now than in my day, so there might not be as much interaction with the Boulder crowd. I have some interaction with one of the sororities at Mines, and they seem like nice people to me, maybe a little nerdier, and a lot smarter than most, but otherwise normal college kids who study a lot, ski, go to football games and socialize. One of the alums I met recently is a petroleum engineer, worked for few years on an oil platform in SE Asia, spent a lot of time traveling Asia during her 2 weeks off, and now is a salesman for an oil company. She was headed to Hawaii to attend 2 weddings of fellow Mines students, and was just going to stay the 5 weeks between weddings because, well, why not? It’s Hawaii.
My daughter attends a school like Mines, and it is not like Boulder but it is not dreary and really isn’t competitive (student v student) for the majority. She doesn’t feel pressure to ‘beat’ someone else in class but of course wants to get good grades and have good opportunities for internships and jobs. I think she’d be the same student no matter where she went, somewhat nerdy, somewhat social.