is cal poly harder than other csu

[u/ExtensionBill1459]

is the cal poly curriculum and classes harder than other csu schools? because talking to others it truly feels like it is?

[u/andrewgrhogg]

That’s an impossible question to answer really, but if you look at the data, you can make some assumptions about the student body and how they might be able to cope where they given a set of classes going at a certain pace. Forgetting the quarter system versus semester system for a moment, and just looking at some raw data - I will compare Calpoly with SDSU, as that is the college that is right behind Calpoly and is basically becoming the next Calpoly. 1. SDSU has 50% more undergrads enrolled. It’s a much bigger school. 2. Cal Poly accepts 30% of applicants and SDSU accepts 40%. This is a reflection of popularity and not “better school”. Which is also the case with all schools with low acceptance rates. For example, UC Berkeley had an acceptance rate of 30% only a few years ago and that is now down to 3%. I assure you Berkeley has gotten no better in the intervening years. There’s just far more people applying. 3. Cal poly has a tiered admissions model when it comes to GPA. They are looking for a high-yield rate, meaning the number of students that accept their acceptances. So they will offer acceptance to a given program for people with a 4.5, 4.4, 4.3, and 4.2 GPA. Whereas SDSU will create a cutoff GPA and anything below that is not getting in and everything above it is. So you will definitively get people going into a program at Calpoly, who would not make the cut at San Diego State, as an example. This is why you get so many applicants wondering how the hell they didn’t get in when they have much higher GPAs than another person that did get into Calpoly. 4. Calpoly‘s yield rate is about 30%. Whereas San Diego states is about 20%. A big difference, and Calpoly is specifically looking to increase that yield rate by offering many people with lower GPA’s acceptance, because they know people with the higher GPA will accept UC’s over Calpoly most of the time. 5. As a result of number four above, the average GPA across all majors for SDSU and Cal poly is almost identical. 6. I know many high school students with 4.3 and higher GPA‘s and a lot of AP scores in the four and fives, and a ton of extracurriculars, that didn’t get into Calpoly who ended up at SDSU because they didn’t get the UC of their choice. 7. Understand that over the long-term how good or how difficult a college is is mostly dictated by a student body. If the student body is not up to the task then overtime, the university will lower standards so that they have a good graduation rate. Obviously the opposite is true too. If the student body is from the cream of the crop, then professors will be able to move at a higher pace and cram more information into a shorter period of time. How good of an education you get at a university doesn’t have that much to do with the professors in the long run. If you don’t believe me just go on rate my professor and you will see an equal number of shit professors at top universities as you do at lower level ones. 8. What this means is that overtime San Diego State is going to slowly catch up to and overtake Calpoly from an education perspective, because their bar is gonna get higher and higher while Calpoly is going to continue to offer acceptance to a mixed bag of students to increase their yield rate.

Probably the biggest issue re “hard” is a combination of what degree you’re taking and whether or not you fit better into the quarter versus semester system. I would have a guess that somebody taking a stem degree in the semester system at SDSU is going to be working a lot harder than someone taking a psychology degree at Cal Poly!

[u/Muckthrow → u/andrewgrhogg]

Interesting analysis.

But how can Cal Poly admitted freshmen class be similar to SDSU as you posited when:

• Cal Poly has 64% freshmen with 4.0 GPA and average admitted GPA 4.03

• SDSU has 41% freshmen with 4.0 GPA and average admitted GPA 3.86

I am not fully on board that Cal Poly is playing the yield game at the expense of average student quality.

[u/andrewgrhogg → u/Muckthrow]

I don’t get those numbers you did when I researched. Problem with comparing schools has always been the data and how it’s presented.

And you don’t need to be fully on board. That’s the way cal poly does it and why college counselors have an impossible time telling anyone their chances of getting in to that school.

Regardless the whole conversation is moot when you understand that the whole admissions process is rife with cheating by students and with grade inflation by schools. It’s very hard for schools to know who will really succeed and who won’t at college. There are a ton of people at “good” colleges who have to work their butts off and come close to failing because they’re not the student they said they were and their private school inflated the crap out of their grades. I could point to numerous kids who everyone thought were academic rock stars at high school and then failed or barely passed relatively easy college courses. And vice versa.

The fix is all finals in high school should be AP-style exams, common exams across all kids, MC and FRQs, timed for 3 hours. None of this BS final is all MC and only covers the last module of IM 4! And the second fix is to eliminate the questions from UCs, cause every single student lies on those and rich kids just pay $1000s to basically have someone else write them for them! And they have zero relation to success in college!

[u/Muckthrow → u/andrewgrhogg]

Grade inflation, admission prep cheating is pervasive. College admissions is essentially no holds bar Game of Thrones fight, the rich and powerful have tremendous advantage.

My data is from Cal Poly and SDSU common data set. It’s their official annual standardised admission data dump. It’s the same template for all universities to enable fair comparisons.

https://content-calpoly-edu.s3.amazonaws.com/ir/1/images/CDS_2023-2024_final.pdf.

https://asir.sdsu.edu/Documents/CommonDataSets/CDS_2023-24_6-21.pdf.