Does anyone on this thread with older students have any experience with the Art & Design admission process?
My S24 received an invitation to submit a portfolio - His GPA is average, so we were surprised that he received the invite to submit one. Does anyone here know if SLO A&D invites everyone with a 3.0 or above GPA to submit a portfolio? Trying to determine how much a a moonshot this is for my student. I understand that talent/portfolio based admissions are different than regular admissions, but trying to figure out how much to manage his hopes!
No they never post a decision date other than all decisions will be posted by April 1. SLO historically drags out their decisions by doing a wave of admits, then waitlists and finally denials over a period of several weeks.
Yes, last year the main admit wave was March 10, Waitlisted March 24 and Denials March 30.
2022: Admit wave started also on March 10.
Since I have been following SLO admission decisions, the increase in applicants has pushed back the decisions. One son applied in 2013 and found out February 14. My niece applied 2 years later and was admitted February 25.
For 2024, I would expect decisions to be posting in the 2nd week of March.
Yes, super important when providing feedback on experiences to state major. I do not believe this is the case for other non-engineering majors. They only accept 90 kids for political science so I don’t believe kids have a very challenging time getting classes.
I am a current freshman at Cal Poly SLO, majoring in Business administration, and I wanted to quickly come on here to ease some tension of any high school seniors worried they aren’t going to get accepted into Cal Poly. I wanted to speak about my experience with the application because last year I checked my own discussion thread constantly. I was so scared and anxious that I wouldn’t get into my dream school, but I defied the odds and did.
I turned out to be one of the last rounds of students to get accepted (around March 13th), and I only had a GPA of 4.08 going in. I only had taken 2 AP classes my whole 4 years in high school (the boring ones biology and environmental science) while my peers who applied to business college took multiple AP classes going in. So don’t feel worried if you didn’t take a lot of AP classes, or if you don’t have the “right” GPA, it changes every year. They might be taking a wider range of GPAs this year compared to last year. The freshman profile when I was applying showed that my GPA was below 25% of the freshman profile, and I still go in.
Also, if I can save at least one person through this, is that to check your spam box in your email!! Constantly. Cal Poly sent me my acceptance letter through my spam folder and I didn’t realize I got in until three days later when I opened my Poly Profile. So please, check your spam folder!!
I also understand that each major is different, and it’s impacted differently for different majors. Business is certainly not as competitive as architecture or engineering, but don’t get caught too much in the statistics. They change every year and they are only an estimate. Don’t start stressing too much and thinking about what the probability you have of getting in until you get that acceptance/rejection letter.
Thank you for this response! It’s so helpful! How do you like it so far? Did you have issues getting housing? Is it easy/hard to get the classes you want?
My son is a 3rd year Business Major with a Finance Concentration at Cal Poly SLO. He is having a great experience. He is on a competitive club sports team, in a fraternity, and a club for his major. There is definitely something for everyone.
The fact that you start with your major classes in your first year and Learn By Doing has been a game changer for him. He is now fully in his major and minor (Real Property Development) and is learning so much and is very engaged. He was in the dorms year 1 then in a house off campus. Business does not require 2 years of on campus housing and he was glad to be in a house with is friends, a yard and BBQ.
First year they block you into classes to help get you on track (you can change them if you desire). 2nd year is the most challenging regarding class enrollment but he has been able to get the classes he needs each quarter. You just have to have a list of several options in case classes fill before your registration date and be flexible with professors and time of day. I don’t think he has had a class on Friday yet so he has been pretty happy with his schedule.
He also participated in Quarter Plus (the early start program) where you take 2 classes before most students come to campus. The head start really helped get him acclimated to the quickly moving quarter system, campus, and helped him meet a big group of friends. Highly recommend checking it out.
The summer classes are lightly attended. D21 took a popular course last summer and there were only about 20 students.
And she got a lot of face time with that summer professor throughout the 5-week course and he will be writing her an LOR for grad school. D21 also helps out as a grader now for him.
Yes, @5Rios is correct. There are 1/10th the OOS applicant vs In-state so from this much smaller pool, the admit rate was 41% but overall the OOS admits only make up 11.5% of the admitted students. 85% of enrolled students are in-state CA residents.
This is informational only since another poster upthread asked about admit rates for OOS students. You have to take all this information into context since the OOS student applicants are probably self-selecting mainly due to costs. OOS students get little to no financial aid so that will eliminate many students that cannot afford to attend.
All the CSU’s have much higher admit rates for OOS students and they also have lower yield rates (enrollment rates) so more are admitted to meet the campus enrollment target.
If a student is denied admission into their first choice (highly-impacted) major, does SLO ever offer admission to a different major? Or does SLO only consider admission by first-choice major?