The tens of thousands of students who apply to Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo often compete for a scarce number of available seats.
Nearly every year, the California State University campus sees applicant numbers rise. But Cal Poly is at capacity, meaning its supply of spots cannot increase to meet its demand.
Applications for fall 2022 were no different, with some impacted programs having room for less than 5% of the number who applied.
Overall, Cal Poly once again set a record for the total number of applications it received at 68,270, according to university data from April. The year before, 66,009 students applied.
Cal Poly sent letters of acceptance to 29.3% of the freshmen who applied, and just 18.5% of the transfer students, according to the university. The university typically banks on many of those accepted students to pick a different school and not actually enroll at Cal Poly, but it can also tap into its waitlist if not enough enroll.
The university was able to open up a few more seats for its fall 2022 applicants, but that amounted to just 102 more spots, or 5,981 total, the university’s data show. That means Cal Poly has space for just 8.8% of its applicants.
“One of the greatest challenges at Cal Poly is that we simply don’t have enough capacity,” said Terrance Harris, the university’s vice president for strategic enrollment management. “We don’t have the capacity to accommodate all of the many, amazingly qualified students that are interested in Cal Poly. And we know that there are a lot of really outstanding students we have to turn away.”
How space varies by major at Cal Poly
Each college and major is impacted by the limited space differently.
The College of Science and Mathematics, for example, has room for about one in 15 of its applicants — while the College of Agriculture, Food and Environmental Sciences has room for about one in five of its applicants.
The other four colleges at Cal Poly fall somewhere in between — with available spots vs. the number of applicants ranging from 8.5% to 13%, university data show.
When it comes down to the individual major, 23 programs have space for less than 10% of their first-time-freshmen applicants, and eight have space for less than 5%. Cal Poly offers 64 majors across its six colleges.
Psychology is the most impacted: 3,700 students applied to be freshmen with only 71 spots available — a rate of 1.9%, according to the university’s data.
The rest of those highly impacted majors include a wide variety across the university’s offerings — from marine sciences, to art and design, economics, public health and mechanical engineering.
“Selection criteria are the same across the board for freshman applicants, while for transfer students it varies,” Harris said. “Competition no matter what certainly can be different from one major to the next.”
The least impacted major for freshmen at Cal Poly is bioresource and agricultural engineering. A total of 122 students applied for 54 available spots — meaning there’s space for 44.3% of that major’s applicants.
The major with the most freshman applicants was business with 7,209 students competing for 585 spaces (8.1%), followed by computer science with 6,784 students competing for 210 spaces (3.1%).
The major with the fewest freshman applicants was Spanish (modern languages & literatures) with 38 students vying for five spots (13.2%), followed by dairy science with 39 students competing for 11 spots (28.2%).
When it comes to transfer applications — those who applied after already attending a college or university — the most and least impacted majors are different.
The 42 transfer students who applied to be a statistics major at Cal Poly were all competing for just one spot, the university’s data show. Still, that’s slightly better chances than getting into psychology as a first-time freshman.
And the major that has the most spots available for the number of transfer students who apply is manufacturing engineering: eight applied for the seven spots available, according to Cal Poly’s data.
This story was originally published May 17, 2022 1:35 PM.
