Not sure, but my daughter was accepted to 5 UC’s so far but not SLO, with something around 4.56 GPA and a ton of AP’s. Admissions doesn’t make much sense at a lof of these schools. Beware, SLO is a disorganized mess with admissions. We were among the unfortunate who had to wait more than 2 weeks after acceptances to be denied. A friend’s daughter was admitted but didn’t know she was until she received something inviting her to admitted student’s day- in May.
I can assure you that they are organized. They just don’t operate on a timetable that’s very friendly to waitlisted and rejected applicants. Waitlist, I understand. They know immediately who they are rejecting though. Why they don’t let them know immediately is beyond me, but it’s like this every year.
BTW, a 4.56 GPA is not possible for Cal Poly. The highest a 9-11 GPA can go is just over 4.3, as the extra year dilutes the power of the honors/AP/IB bonus.
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This is very helpful, but not the whole picture. It doesn’t tell yield. For that, we typically use a rough approximation of university wide yield 1/3 because the math is easy. It also doesn’t tell the quality of the applicant pool, and thus, where the MCA cutoff will be. Because of that you can’t compare to majors head to head and assume it’s an accurate reflection of difficulty of admission.
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I’d rather believe they are disorganized, than to think they knew the names of all rejected and didn’t tell anyone. But it’s their show, we’re just applicants. And if they are as organized as you say, it’s hard to explain how one of their admits didn’t know she was accepted for weeks, but I was giving them the benefit of the doubt that maybe things weren’t running as smoothly as they wanted. This particular student is diligent and forthright, so I don’t think she would have missed anything or made this up.
As for the GPA, I forgot they have their own method of calculating. 4.21 would be the number if you’re using the calculator online.
This was the same experience that my D20 had. She had a 4.4 UC GPA. She did not receive any communication from SLO after acceptances and waitlists went out. They updated her portal with a rejection, no email or anything, sometime after all the UC decisions went out. So on one hand the sting was lessened with other more exciting acceptances, on the other it left her with a very negative impression of SLO.
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They seem to look at applicants differently it seems. I don’t know what is happening with Cal Poly acceptances but my son’s best friend got into UCB and UCLA engineering and got denied at Cal Poly but his classmate got into Cal Poly and got denied by every single UC, including Davis. 
UCLA and UCB are holistic. Cal Poly is not. They make their decisions on different criteria. There’s more subjectivity in the UCLA, UCB and Davis decisions than there is in Cal Poly’s. For example, those UCs require an essay. Cal Poly does not. So, it’s possible that a student qualified enough to get a high algorithm score and get into CP, didn’t write an essay that moved the UC AOs. It is also possible that a student who wrote a great essay that got them into one of those UCs, didn’t score high enough on the algorithm to get into CP. It is really an apples and oranges comparison.
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It is different. In this case the boy is a leader of a robotics club with 10 APs with 5s and almost as many DE classes. Some of those decisions are just bizarre even with an algorithm.
When you look under the hood, there’s always a reason. The most common one in this scenario is that the student left off middle school classes. Cal Poly’s application is peculiar in that it doesn’t look at the top math and language classes, but rather counts them. Since HS sequences can start in middle school, their application asks that they be listed. It gets missed regularly by students who don’t carefully read the instructions. The net impact is a substantial reduction in the rigor portion of the algorithm score, and thus rejection.
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Cal Poly’s application process is unique, and I believe it’s mostly about the metrics as others have stated. I suggest the student print out the requirements to get into Cal Poly with the intention of maxing out each academic category.
The thing to keep in mind with Cal Poly is to max out each academic category with the highest grade possible without going over in the number of classes so that the student does not dilute their application capped GPA. Ideally this should be done before or at the beginning of junior high so that they can plan for extra math class(es), that extra fifth year of English, and second year of Visual/Performing Arts that Cal Poly would like to see – and without taking more than the required number of classes per year (which usually works out to 10 semesters per year during 9th through 11th grade for Cal Poly) also minding to hit the required extra honors/AP GPA points. If they find toward the end of 11th grade that they haven’t hit the extra Cal Poly preferred classes, then plan on taking the classes during the senior year of high school if possible so that it doesn’t dilute the GPA that they put in their application, while showing that they are planned/in-progress.
On the application there are many Cal Poly-specific questions including those asking about extracurricular activities, leadership and work experience, so make sure the student has something to put in each of those categories.
Caveats: The Cal Poly application may change by the time the student applies. Also by hitting all of these items for a Cal Poly application the student may potentially put themselves at a disadvantage for applications at other institutions like the UCs and privates.
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Quick update: Kid has sent his UC and CSU apps successfully. For SLO, he applied to Gen E. Will keep you all updated on the outcome. Thanks all for your inputs so far.
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To close the loop on this thread, kid got off the waiting list for UCI and will be committing to go there. Got rejected to Calpoly which was a bummer, but in the end it all worked out well!
Thanks for the CC community (gumbymom, eyemgh and many other regular contributors). I learnt a lot from this process and you make the lives of many other parents( including me ) a little smoother, less anxious by sharing your knowledge. Thank you!!
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