<p>"I didn't realize the school was one-half hour away from Pismo Beach. Pismo Beach is a very nice beach."</p>
<p>It's actually 10-15 minutes away, which is even nicer. :)</p>
<p>I wanted to make a couple of comments, as someone who has lived in SLO for many years and teaches part time at Cal Poly. I also received my M.A. in English there, so I may be a bit biased :-).</p>
<p>Regarding students who said taking 3 courses is the maximum, that simply isn't accurate. Most students take 4 or 5 (unless they can't get that many due to scheduling conflicts). Engineering students, for example, routinely take 19+ units.</p>
<p>As for the campus being ugly, I can't really imagine anyone saying that. The buildings themselves aren't particularly beautiful, but the setting is unbeatable as far as natural beauty. (Maybe UC Santa Cruz or Pepperdine could top it, but that's about it.)</p>
<p>The weather in San Luis Obispo is about as perfect as you can get. So if your son or daughter enjoys the outdoors, it's a wonderful place to go to school. While the downtown is nice and clean, the city doesn't offer much in the way of entertainment for the college crowd.</p>
<p>One last comment: I believe the class arriving in fall 2006 has an unweighted GPA of 3.73. It's a tough school to get into, especially if your son or daughter is choosing a popular major, such as engineering or business. But Cal Poly deserves its high rating within the CSU system. It's an excellent school, with small classes and hands-on learning--unusual for a state school.</p>
<p>Sloparent, what kind of gpa do you think it takes to get into the business school if yout SAT score is around 1400 (2100 on the new sat)?</p>
<p>dstark, I don't know. I would recommend calling the Admissions Office or looking for statistics on the business school's accepted students.</p>
<p>Sloparent, thanks. </p>
<p>How is the school spirit at the school?</p>
<p>Do students go to the football games? </p>
<p>Do they wear Cal Poly clothing?</p>
<p>dstark, I would say there's a good amount of school spirit. Whenever I have attended football games, for example, there are a lot of students in the stands. Sports are not a huge focus of the school, but students definitely wear their Cal Poly gear. There's a strong contingency of agriculture students here, so you'll see plenty of cowboy boots and big belt buckles, too.</p>
<p>I don't know how I missed this the first time around; thanks everyone for the info. Can anyone comment on admissions for OOS students? (I see there aren't many of 'em.)</p>
<p>SLO is one of the few state schools that offer an animal science degree along with UC Davis, although a different state system. Which falls into the Ag school. SLO also offers an architectural engineering degree, if I am not mistaken, and has a great aerospace engineering program. The mistake we made was the animal science degree was much more industry (meat, poultry, soil and crop science) than pre-vet. Some schools (DDs current school) differentiate between the two, having one be a pre-vet degree in AS vs. an industry focus in AS.</p>
<p>School is in very pretty surroundings, dorms okay for a state school. Classes difficult, easy access and availability of profs. Many of my kiddo's friends applied but did not get in and yet got in to the UCs. Definitely depends on the major. 9th grade does count towards GPA. DD's good friend graduated last May majoring in English and now writes for a big paper (her dream). She was in the architecture/engineering major dorm and she did say they worked all the time and classes were very time consuming. In comparison to some of her friends at some of the UCs, they had little free time.</p>
<p>SLO is gorgeous, great beach time. </p>
<p>Kat</p>
<p>There is a lot of info here. </p>
<p>I'm glad this thread was revived. A friend of my son just visited Cal Poly, UCSB, USD, LMU, University of Washington, Puget Sound, and Oregon and liked this school the best. Haven't had a chance to ask why.</p>
<p>Great info. We did a general tour of Cal Poly last summer with S, but we didn't know there was a special tour for engineering. Darn. But the education major did a fine job showing us the best places on campus for pizza. LOL.</p>
<p>The one thing that concerned me about Cal Poly was how tough it was to switch majors. You apply when you're 17-18 years old and have never taken an engineering class in your life. You just know you like math. I've heard of lts of freshman in other schoold we try engineering, hate it, then switch to something else.</p>
<p>Any thoughts on switching majors within engineering and outside of engineering?</p>
<p>hiker: As a part-time faculty member there, it's my impression that it's easy to switch out of engineering and into another major (as long as it's not an impacted one, like business). Not sure how difficult it is to switch into a different engineering concentration, unless it's into one that is not as popular as, say, mechanical, electrical or computer.</p>
<p>Okay I'm a third year materials engineering student and let me just say graduating in 4 years is very possible. Likewise, averaging 16 units (4 classes a quarter w/o summer school) or 12 units (3 classes w/ summer school) is all you need to average to accomplish this (hopefully you took at leat AP calc). As for me, I am actually minoring in histoy along with my major while writing a weekly column for the school news paper (check out a column called the Right Way, runs on Tuesdays) and being the treasurer for the Cal Poly college republicans. As an engineering student, I have also taken 20 units in a quarter (this is very difficult!) and made it out okay, luckily a lot of the classes were GEs and the engineering wasnt that bad. Typically I take 16-18 units depending on the quarter. </p>
<pre><code> The main reason engineering is so challanging (why people also graduate in 5 years) is because simply put the classes are very very difficult and very very time consuming. For instance, a 3 unit engineering class (such as Statics or Dynamics) (which is 3 hours in class) will easily consume 20 hours outside of class (and you will probably still struggle) compared to say 4 units of history which requires (2 hours total the entire quarter). Likewise, there are many 1 unit labs which take 3 hours a week with lab reports.
If you are looking to major in engineering, I strongly recommend that you have at least taken AP Calc 1/AB so that you have an adequate backround in math, because Cal Poly is on the quarter system and you basicly will get 9 weeks per math class. (so in a year if you started at calc 1 by spring quarter you will be at calc 3, compared to highschool where you probably spent the whole year on calc1 ie 3x + teachers who go fast + very difficult tests) I honestly feel very sorry for the calc 1 people, becuase you really cant do that topic justice in 9 weeks and you need that knowledge for everything in engineering.
At the first engineering session during the week of welcome, I remember the dean of engineering telling us to stand up then look to the left , then look to the right, and saying only 1 of the 3 of you will make it. This is sadly the truth, (and for minorities even worse, the statistics are available if you search cal poly's website). However, I guarantee that if you work hard, ask professors for help, put in the time to study, you will succeed, I guarantee it. The people that drop, usually switch majors or go to community college and come back later. These people slacked a little bit (maybe quite a bit) or simply couldnt keep up with the pressure, (ie they thought they were buisness students or history students and partied all the time).
So why should you take engineering after reading this? You will make a ton of money! Median salary is 55-60k, thats even with a gpa just above 2.o (most engineering students are 2.6-3.0). Plus, many go on to graduate programs increasing salary potential even higher. Finally, for all of you morally conscoious people, engineers help society and are on the cutting edge of technology (so you get to make an impact on the world, woohoo!). If you have any other questions just shoot me an email: bbeller@calpoly.edu
As for switching majors, sadly the rumors are true, you need a high gpa to switch, thus it is difficult (but if you had a high gpa, then why would you switch? ie catch 22). The logic behind this: Cal poly doesnt want somone sneaking in as a theator major to switch into engineering, and the other departments want to look tough (still many engineers do manage somehow to escape to buisness).
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