thanks，we will wait for UC results, but it is surprising to see he got rejected with perfect GPA by a state university.
Of all the stats you posted, you missed the one and only metric that SJSU cares about. What is his CSU GPA? Your son is a great applicant and I’m pretty sure he land at a great school but SJSU is unusually transparent about how they select. They tell you how they evaluate your points and then give you historical thresholds to compare against. There should be 0 surprise.
Also, CSU’s give priority to their local in-service area applicants and in SJSU’s case they get a 0.25 GPA bump which can make a significant difference when calculating the Impaction index.
That is one thing I am a little confused. I remember after he finished his application, it is 4.3 something, The maximum honor/AP you got count is 8, if all classes is 4.0, took all the honor/AP school allowed, is there other way to improve capped GPA? Thanks.
Finally got the expected rejection last night.
CS
CSU GPA: 4.29
In state, non-local
No other point sources
The thing that can water down a GPA if you have maxed the honors points is more classes than required. After you max the honors points, all other classes (including the honors ones) are calculated as a 4 on the 4-point scale. And every 4 lowers the GPA since an all-A GPA with 8 honors credits is above a 4.
That happened to my son. He maxed out his classes and then also took summer school twice in order to get in all the engineering and CS classes he wanted. So his GPA is impacted by the extra units. It’s sad that students are penalized for going above and beyond, but those are the criteria and that’s how math works. But we wouldn’t change what he did. He got to do what he loved while still doing the classes he needed. But the result was was a rejection. Other schools will use other criteria as well and he’ll wind up somewhere good.
Did he take any community college courses that were included on the CSU application? To get to the maximum CSU GPA of 4.4 with all A’s and 8 semesters of honors points, you either need to have the 0.25 GPA bump for being a local or taking only 20 semesters of a-g courses with all A’s. Anything over 20 semesters starts decreasing the CSU capped weighted GPA.
This information is from a 2024 applicant that did not know why they were denied and I had a similar question posed to me this year. I do not know if they still recalculate the GPA as stated in the 2024 post and if they do not use CC courses in their recalculation. Also this was when they calculated the Eligibility index (test scores included) instead of the Impaction Index. I would email admissions and ask why he was denied and file an appeal.
I was told that they do not simply use the CalState GPA but calculate the GPA again for their impacted programs. They did not enter any of his community college courses because they were not shown in the high school coursework section. The community college classes are in a separate section on the CalState Apply form, just under Standardized Tests.
I think the system is broken. Basically, if he had AP courses that were listed in the high school coursework section, the decision would have been different.
We have been asked to file an appeal and should find out within 3 weeks.
If there is anyone else out there with community college course credits, please be aware that they were probably not included in the weighted GPA calculation at SJSU would result in an incorrect calculation of the EI.
SJSU said that they only included coursework in the “High School Coursework” section of the CalState Application. Since his community college courses were listed in the “Colleges Attended” section, they ignored those.
I think that it’s an oversight on their part to not look at the community colleges courses and include it in their calculation of the GPA, especially since CalState is already including them. Unfortunately, there is no way of fixing this oversight without going through the appeal process.
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The something part is the most critical. The threshold was 4.35. in your son’s case he might have missed the threshold by a whisker.
SJSU is a very good school but I’m sure you will have some good options to choose from eventually. Good luck!
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Thank you for clarification. Make it much clearer, Will this apply for UCs?
Thank you.
Thanks.
UC’s do not use an impaction index and they look at all 3 UC’s GPA’s including the fully weighted UC GPA. GPA Calculator for the University of California – RogerHub
They take into account 13 areas of criteria which includes GPA, HS course rigor, # of Honors/AP/IB and DE courses taken, PIQ’s, EC’s etc…. Much different criteria than SJSU and the Cal states.
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Thanks
Question is how do you even get 4.35? The max you can get is 4.33 with 6 A’s and 2 of them being honors. That’ll give you 3464, still shy of 3480
I believe you can get up to 4.45 or so. My son had exactly 4.35 based on 5 A-G courses including 2 APs in 10th grade and 6 courses in 11th with 4 AP courses.
There is the equivalent of +0.25 for being a local area applicant (will graduate from a high school in Santa Clara County), and +0.05 for each of a small number of other characteristics (eligible for fee waiver, military status, first generation to college)
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The thing to note is 95% of the majors need < 3.5 GPA to get in. The other 5% need you to take fewer a-g courses in 10-11 to increase your chances.
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The alternate major is kind of like a waitlist. They will use it if they cannot fill a certain major. By default first choice is what is considered.
At least they are transparent about how they admit, which is much more than what you can say about other universities.
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If you leave in East side San Jose you have the Spartan East Side Promise Program. You will have a place in SJSU if you get grades no less than C.
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There are also lots of majors that only required a 2.6 HS GPA to get in (index of 2080).
I hear from my S22 that the “Spartan Promise” will end next year (this is the last year).