Current situation here is a daughter that was admitted and attending Cal Poly SLO last year for Business. She had good grades but not in the top 10% of her class (Cal Poly GPA was around 3.9 weighted) and took 3-4 APs. She and we did not expect admission to Cal Poly, but she got in.
This year I have another daughter who applied to Cal Poly. She is in the top 1% of her class at a competitive high school, has an outside job and ECs and has not heard back for Bio Chem. The high stats kids in her class that she knows also have not heard back. There are many kids from previous years that went to their high school that gained admission to UCLA, Berkeley, etc that did not get into Cal Poly.
I understand there are multiple admissions factors and things vary by major etc, but I have heard all these years that Cal Poly admissions are tricky and feel random and after two years in a row of going through the admission process (and after reading a lot of the comments on this thread) I believe that either 1) There is a component of randomness/lottery to admission and/or 2) They target kids likely to chose to attend Cal Poly for admission which are often not the kids with the highest stats (because they end up choosing other schools they were admitted to).
I truly hope that #2 is not the case, but there is no transparency in college admissions so we will never know.
There are so many smart kids that have a lot to offer so if you did not get into Cal Poly know that things will work out somewhere else!
With a kid already at cal poly and waiting for the final decision for my other for Poly Sci, I just look at this admission process like Vegas. It’s a crapshoot and you can follow “the book”, but doesn’t mean you’ll win. It’s not fair, but it’s the process and it is what it is. These same conversations and concerns are brought up for every selective school. As they say in Vegas, Good luck to all!!!
Cal Poly does not practice yield protection. Looking at the GPA of accepted students broken down by department it’s clear that the students selected are typically 4.0+ students.
With perhaps a couple of exceptions that appears to be true at most of the CA publics. The situation at Cal Poly can’t be worse than some of the UC’s like Cal/UCSC/UCSB for example. It is a reason OOS schools will be competitive with in-state for my kid.
I agree, but I’m assuming that acceptances are primarily a lottery between the top group of applicants in each major.
I’m still hopeful for another wave of admits, but it looks increasingly unlikely. As a Cal Poly alumni, I was hoping my daughter would get accepted. But that being said, congrats to all that have made it!
Yes, there’s a lot of variety so, as others have said, generalizations may not be helpful. (Our Bay Area public school also limits to a max of 3 APs per year and are limited to junior and senior year - so a high acheving student at our school would have at most 6 APs total, often less because of scheduling conflicts and other restrictions in place). This is not that uncommon in local public schools - I know a few SF have the same policy.
Also a HUGE generalization that may not in fact hold up under scrutiny. True perhaps in some cases, not at all true in others.
Perhaps we can step away from the private vs public discussion as it does not seem at all productive to me as it relies an stereotypes and assumptions that are often inaccurate.
EDITED TO ADD: Ooops didn’t see Gumbymom’s post before I posted this…
Yep and they used to be doubles; all dorms at SDSU were doubles then. In our tour we went in the small two story dorms next door and yep they were tiny as a triple. I can’t imagine the Zura dorms being any different. (Sorry SLO people for the hijack). SDSU has the highest on campus housing cost of any school we have toured.
I don’t know that I think of SLO as “selective” as much as it seems “random”. Kids with much higher GPAs and more APs getting rejected and others with lower GPAs getting in. I would understand it more if there was other criteria but they pretty much ignore every other criteria, such as test scores, essays, LORs, etc. One wonders if they are just throwing darts on the wall…
Problem is next week is finals and then the following week is spring break until April 2 when spring quarter starts. Staff and students will be gone.
You can call the CAED department and tell them your situation. The departments are usually very accommodating in these situations if there is staff around.
Same at our Bay Area public … AP is only offered to juniors and seniors, and even at that there are few subjects offered, coupled with only one or 2 classes of each. They used to have an honors math class section for sophomores but got rid of that a few years ago…. But we tend to get a fair number of admits to SLO and send upwards of 10 kids to SLO each year. Seems like admissions must look at the “rigor” of what kids take their senior year to make up lack of sophomore AP
Ummm, not true. There were plenty of 2 student dorm rooms this year. My student included. My students entire floor (12 rooms) except for 3 rooms is 2 students in a room.
Sierra Madre and Yosemite dorms have the most 2 student dorm rooms and then Red Bricks. Everyone we know who wanted a 2 got a 2 this year.
Rumors always start flying that there will be no 2 student dorm rooms. Think some of that is done to get a majority to pick 3 roommates (if not going random), so they can also accommodate 2/room.
The new dorm Yakitutu is only 3’s or 5 to a room. Those rooms are HUGE for dorm rooms though so 5 is comfortable besides for the lack of privacy. The quints come with a fullsize refrigerator also and every bed is lofted or bumked for space.
Thanks for the info. Triples are not necessarily bad and can be good socially, if the room was designed as a triple. The horror stories are doubles converted to triples, lounges converted to barracks etc…
When there are many more overqualified 4.x+ kids than there are spots (especially in the competitive majors), the result is somewhat random. There may be objective measures but they are in the margins. This doesn’t diminish the efforts or qualifications of those who got in though.
Cal Poly doesn’t convert lounges so that is a positive.
But yes those triples in red bricks, sierra madre and yosemite are rough for space when triples. At least in Sierra Madre and Yosemite there is ample storage space in closets to help the rooms feel alittle more spacious. Red Bricks not so much. Threes in Red Bricks is quite claustrophobic in my opinion and closets are armoires.
Not to mention how HOT the dorm rooms are naturally but then add more people, it can get rough. Fans are essential all year round.
