When they publish the average GPA for admissions, is it their recalculated GPA or the unweighted student reported GPA? I’m curious because my twin girls both applied and their recalculated GPA is higher than their transcripts, and within mid range for the CalPoly published average for their respective majors.
Recalculated SLO GPA with 9-11th grades and the 8 semester Honors point cap if you are referring to the Freshman profile page. First-Year Student Profile | Cal Poly
I can rest assure you as a parent with a current CP student, you would not want this right now. CP needs to deal with housing issues, staffing issues and availability of classes.
They do not have the housing needed to admit more students. They will be knocking down some current dorms (Engineering dorms) this coming summer to rebuild. They have no new dorms already being built. Off campus housing is hard to come by and prices are outrageous. Think $1600+/mo to share a room on a 12 month lease and not all utilities included.
They have a VERY large need for more classes and professors. They have begun to offer many more Asynch and Synchronous classes online because they are getting professors from outside of the state to teach remotely in order to meet the needs for many GE classes. They however, need many more classes and professors as many of students cannot get many of their GE or major support classes in a timely fashion. Physics and Chemistry are notoriously hard to get (takes upward to 4+ quarters to get into and waitlists can be 50-60 students deep). Many students have resorted to taking GE classes thru online community college classes in order to keep the forward movement towards graduation and also to meet any financial aid requirements. My student has supplemented each quarter this year with CC classes in both GE and major support. I know of several others are taking 2 classes at CP and 2 classes at 2 different CC’s in order to get what they need (basically attending 3 colleges at once).
Until they can address these issues, adding more student body would be the worse thing they could do.
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Thanks for all this great information and your perspective.
D21 hasn’t always gotten her preferred professors, like this quarter, but she’s gotten all her classes. And she already has senior standing as a junior, which helps get classes.
A sample of one.
Wow, thanks and a bit sad/depressing. Curious if others are experiencing this? Specific to the impaction with Engineering? Thanks in advance!
DS24 has been eyeing Poly since he was young. Result of two parent alumnus that brought him on campus often. Rent in SLO and class selection was always a challenge but didn’t realize it had trended this way. It wasn’t unusual for students to grab some classes at Cuesta but the remote learning did not exist. Pulls a bit at the “learn by doing”.
Seriously, thanks again. Very much appreciated.
My S23 had junior standing as a freshmen, came in with 90+ credits (AP and DE).
Registration times are based on “actual academic progress” which only takes in consideration classes towards degree (major) not GE’s. So standing doesn’t mean much coming into Cal Poly since most AP scores and DE will likely be applied towards GE and not specific major classes (with the exception of Major Support classes which are only usually a few per major).
The key to registration priority is taking more classes in your major then in GE so they count towards your academic progress to move you up the tiered registration scale. But one cannot take alot of the major classes unless they have done the prereq’s for it which often times is a GE/major support class. This is where it becomes a vicious cycle, with the physics, chemistry,bio and math classes for alot of majors.
Flexibility is key at Cal Poly. Taking any professor and any class time (7:00 am until 10pm).
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Don’t get me wrong. I really love Cal Poly for the “learn by doing” and ironically the class sizes.
I just hope they fix the problems first before bringing more students in. Getting classes should not be as hard as they make it. The stress they put the students under while registering is not necessary.
Engineering is a tough one because the major is built around sequential classes. Can’t step out of the sequence much so getting the classes is very important. Where in other majors in AG or liberal arts and Business they can rearrange classes alot more then engineering when they can’t get certain classes and then come back to later to the ones they didn’t get into.
Good luck to your son. It’s still a great school, especially for the instate price.
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Then I don’t understand. In my D’s case, her AP credits got her out of various prerequisites in both GE and major support classes. She’s taking physics and chemistry classes.
Again, she hasn’t had one problem getting her classes. Just her preferred professors and her schedules for 2+ years have been pretty good. She did take a couple 6:00 PM classes off the top of my head. And she’s had 7:00 or 8:00 AM classes too.
She’s going to pick up a minor, otherwise she would finish her degree early.
ETA: Ah, engineering. D21 is getting a science degree, but not in engineering.
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Yes the AP scores did get him out of alot of GE classes but those were not his major support classes, so they didn’t cross both off. For example, AP Psych counted for GE but not a major support for him, same with APUSH, AP GOV, AP Spanish, AP Human Geo, AP Euro, etc.
There were several levels of Physics needed in the major support as well as chemistry and Calc, so AP’s don’t knock them all off, just entry level. The Physics department is the one of the hardest hit for staffing at Cal Poly, which is one of the reasons the waitlist for most physic classes will easily be 50+ students at the beginning of each quarter.
And without fail every quarter, he has had to choose one or 2 major support classes over others because they all seem to be offered at the exact same time rather then spread out throughout the day (all 4:10-6 and 6-8pm).
FYI. And you may know this already, but if you’re a Chemistry LA (learning assistant), then you get priority registration. The spots are super competitive to get for obvious reasons, but you get first crack at registration over everyone.
Maybe physics dept. has the same thing.
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I think there is a library position that also gives priority registration.
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Wonder if it still exists since the library is closed for the next 2 years. Being rebuilt.
I think it is the Library Advisory Council. Not 100% positive that is what it is called.
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“If your degree requires Free Electives, then the actual academic progress level percentage will include these excess units up to the number of Free Electives required for your degree. If your degree does not require Free Electives, or if you have met your Free Elective requirement, then those units will not count.”
Major dependent?
There’s also “chem workshop leader” that also gets priority registration. Also hard to get.
My son is but one example in Engineering but I want to chime in because I would have been afraid if I read this thread when he was applying and accepting.
My understanding is that academic progress includes GE and support classes required to graduation… I could be wrong.
That said, my engineering sophomore son came in with AP or DE credit for 1 physics, 2 calc, 2 English, 1 Econ. Decent but not crazy number of credits. He has not had his top pick of professors or times but he has registered for every class he needed each quarter. He will graduate in 4 years if this continues.
There seems to be an issue with GE availability but he chose to take one over summer and one during a quarter through CC as he wanted the flexibility. All other classes have been in person with one engineering class on zoom and one GE asynchronous, which he liked for flexibility.
It does seem like CP doesn’t offer a lot of interesting GE options and those that are desirable fill up quickly. He found more interesting GE options at CC. He did enjoy his Bio GE where they collect bugs and that one had plenty of availability.
They def need to work on class availability for sophomores but he has had no problem his classes and getting physics, chemistry and calculus every quarter… maybe because he was one quarter ahead of some peers in physics and calc, I dont know.
Engineering classes are great overall and all classes are small, relative to other large schools which I think is a huge plus.
Housing off campus is expensive but I have seen many shared room options at about 1k, some less. Single room norm seems to be about $1300+ with many at $1500ish. Some students find better but they aren’t available for all.
Hope this helps someone here.
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Some majors (engineering!) have no elective units required and in this case, those won’t help at all.
So yes, major dependent. You can find links to all major flow charts here to see what your AP and DE credits will count for. They are generous with AP credit.
That’s what I thought. The engineering majors are not fighting the general campus for classes because I would assume engineering courses are restricted to the major. But thank you for the insight.
Sorry. Deleted.