The only cs in state I could find on the final status thread had 4853, so yes, 4827 might not have been high enough this year. Another thing to consider is that we do not know how they treat the new SAT. If you look at the csu eligibility index, they subtract something like 50 points from the new SAT. If new sat scores are converted to old, then many mca estimates would be overstated.
@MelloG @CopperlineX2 I will call and ask again tomorrow. I remember the clerk’s name whom I talked to since I asked for her name, so maybe I will ask someone different. It’s possible that I was given the wrong information, since you both seem pretty knowledgeable based on your many helpful posts. Thanks.
@thexumaker congrats on your admissions to SLO. Don’t let my posts confuse you about your acceptance. You got accepted because you deserved to be accepted. SLO is fortunate to have the students they accepted since you all will contribute to SLO’s success and reputation.
@Americanoplease I don’t know any more than you do. None of us do. We are guessing based on 5 year old information. Some of us just refuse to believe in yield protection conspiracy theories to explain every negative admissions decision.
FWIW, when my daughter was filling out her app we called many times for clarification on various parts. I found that I got as many answers as people I called, so eventually stopped calling.
Please let us know what you find, it will help next year’s applicants.
@MelloG I don’t believe in yield protection theory either. If anything, SLO may have gone the way of “holistic” evaluation, which is their right to do so with so many high achieving applicants, but they need to advertise it as that, so waitlisted and rejected applicants don’t have to question the process.
I do.know that most campuses, if not all, had problems with retrieving data from the new Cal State Apply system. My mom’s campus had to do a lot of manual verifications because there were a lot of errors with the course matching for the A-F requirements. They wanted to be careful that they don’t deny anyone by mistake. I hope all campuses are that careful with that and also with their admission process this year. I know I did my application correctly, so I’m certain I didn’t get waitlisted for application issues.
Waitlisted
In state biological sciences
4.2 capped gpa
1460 SAT (Superscored)
4815 MCA
I don’t think that the high stat waitlist is necessarily classical yield protection. I am wondering if especially after last year and the problems they have with predicting who ultimately accepts they have to be extra cautious and waitlist. I think the admissions officers have a mind boggling job to get to their goals and with so many students applying to 10 or or even 20 schools it has gotten very complex. Also, I am thinking that Cal Poly wants diversity in terms of academic performance too? They may want a mix of students and not necessarily a group of all super elite students–may be a mix of really good to super elite students… .
There is definitely opinion in this, but at a certain point there are just too many students applying and too few slots. When you try to manage something like this with all the other objectives there are with diversity, etc, it becomes almost seemingly random. I have seen on this thread numbers like 5000 applicants for 130 slots.(can’t remember the major). If they have accept roughly 3 times the number of slots that is less than 400 acceptances for that major or less than 1 in 10 chance of getting accepted.
It is entirely possible Cal Poiy has changed how they calculate the MCA. The MCA presentation we are all going on is years old.
And your also right that Cal Poly is seen by the powers that be in Sacramento as being too white. But, it is not clear to me how the admissions office would rejigger the MCA calculations to obtain racial results in accord with state’s desires.
Ultimately I think Cal Poly will be forced to adopt “holistic admissions” as this allow proxies for race (high school location, careful reading of essays, etc), to be used without violating prop 209.
@Americanoplease I wasn’t trying to imply that you were claiming yield protection. You were asking a perfectly reasonable question. Sorry I didn’t make that clearer.
@EncinitasJAK I can buy the fit argument at the UCs where they at least have the essays to go on. I just think that we still haven’t seen a clear case of anything at work here beyond just the sheer numbers of excellent students applying for so few spots, resulting in the threshold being insanely high this year.
@EncinitasJAK I hope that they are being extra cautious and ultimately will pull a lot of these amazing kids off the waitlist. I cannot believe the caliber of students applying these days. So different from my experience in the 1980s. It is heartbreaking to see kids work so hard and be faced with rejections.
I still do not think there is any yield protection. It would literally be a criminal conspiracy. You can do that sort of thing hiding behind holistic admissions. But, for Cal Poly to do this they would have to program their admissions computers to randomly reject high stat kids. Having arbitrary rejections by a computer would subject Cal Poly to all sorts of litigation.
I know what yield protection looks like as my oldest son just finished the med school admissions process (successfully, thank God!). There yield protection is alive and well out of necessity. Because with med schools you have 10,000 people applying for 130 spots and every single admit has to be interviewed, essays read, letters of recs read, and then discussed extensively by the admit panel. So med schools conserve resources by only interviewing kids they think will likely attend the school. This is not the case with Cal Poly. The entire admissions procedure takes the same amount of time (give or take a few seconds) no matter how many applicants there are as it is completely computer driven.
Will Cal Poly send out freshmen applicant denials now? Since there was already two waves of acceptances and waitlists? or will they do that along with Transfer decisions?
@AudaciousGooner it’s hard to say. If they follow past years’ patterns, then I’d expect denials to come out next week. But given how late they are this year, they could come today or tomorrow. It seems like they are trying to get through the freshman before starting on the transfers, which is a big change for them.
It’s absolutely possible that they do things differently now. They just haven’t released any info to suggest that.
I don’t see why though that this is any different than any other year. They projected almost 4500 applicants for 130 spots in CS. There simply aren’t enough spots. They have to draw a cutoff line somewhere. With that ratio, the bar is obviously going to be set VERY high.
There is something that we know is different, the elimination of ED. Prior to that, they would fill a class in three waves, roughly 1/3 from ED, then the second third from RD using only the regular MCA, finally rounding out the last third by adding in the non-academic points like Hayden Partner School and re-ranking. How they do it now is anyone’s guess.
To suggest though that this is some Tufts style yield protection ploy doesn’t pass the smell test. First, plenty of very high students have been accepted. More telling, their yield is classically low.
I firmly believe this is simply an ultraconservative response to what happened last year. Offering fewer acceptances and filling from a waitlist gives them more refined control.
To anyone who believes that any school simply admits the highest stats students in order from top to bottom, go look at Naviance plots. It’s simply not the case anywhere. The difference between Cal Poly and holistic schools is that you at least know what they value and within that construct, they rank objectively. You may not though agree with what they choose to put emphasis on.
That of course is assuming the MCA as was outlined in 2013 is still active.
The other thing that’s being overlooked is that CP is competitive BY MAJOR. There are always students with lower stats accepted in less competitive majors.
As I read through this thread and see the kids with incredibly strong stats getting waitlisted it is disheartening. I think if I was an administrator I would look for solutions and find ways to build the CS program from 130 spots to 200. This is a great problem to have that other schools would love to have. Great program but maybe too small to serve the needs.
BTW - I know you are just a parent but like your advice and wisdom at SLO and for the record I don’t have a CS applicant. My D is waitlisted for Psych - another tiny but good SLO program.
Agree with @ningve, @giddyup, @eyemgh . Students with high MCA scores (4800+ out of 5000) not being accepted is really discouraging for a Cal State University and I just wish it was more transparent whether 1) the MCA score is being used, and 2) what is the current calculations are (like the eligibility index). If my son had known how hard it was to be admitted (or they were looking for characteristics he didn’t fit), I would have encouraged him to apply to other schools.
Maybe a clue into what the admissions committee is looking for is in the CSU’s overall goals: “Seeks out individuals with collegiate promise who face cultural, geographical, physical, educational, financial, or personal barriers to assist them in advancing to the highest educational levels they can reach”. These factors seem to reflect some of the points in the MCA calculation.
Looking back at the application, did any parent find it strange that CSU asked for very detailed financial and demographic information? (i.e. parent adjusted gross income and untaxed income, month/year that a parent moved to California)? I assumed most of this was for financial aid, but could it have been used for anything else? Why would they need to know month/year when a parent moved to Cali? (UC just asked if parents had resided in CA at least 3 yrs).
And totally agree that binding early decision could have addressed the overenrollment issue by allowing students to declare Cal Poly their first choice and commit!
@BayAreaMom15 They did away with ED because they considered (and I agree) it unfair to lower income students. It’s fine and dandy for a private school to have ED but I don’t think it appropriate for a public university to do so. My kids certainly didn’t apply ED anywhere and it was because we need to know the financial details for a school and there’s no way I’d commit to a school without knowing exactly how much I need to pay.
@my2caligirls My S is a waitlisted CS candidate. The small class sizes and accessibility
to professors is what makes Cal Poly’s program stand out. I know they are struggling to serve the students they already have, so I really don’t see them expanding their program. There are plenty of other CSU campuses where kids can study CS. Disappointment is just part of life. We can’t shield them from it forever, as much as we wish we could!
@eyemgh To your post # 2152, where did those projections (4,500 apps for 130 spots in Comp Sci) come from? I have heard that CS is just about the hardest major to get accepted to at Cal Poly, but you are one of the few who has tried to quantify it. Is there some source you’re using? Thanks for all your stellar input on various Cal Poly threads, by the way.
@parent365 https://ir.calpoly.edu/content/publications_reports/targets/index They should be releasing the 2018 projections soon.