Student Profile

                         

Image: A student from Architecture 351: Architectural Design presents her work over the past quarter (Fall 2019).

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Like other universities, Cal Poly follows the progress of its students — both first-year and transfer — by tracking annual cohorts entering in a particular academic year. The university makes yearly measurements of student cohorts' persistence rates and the time required for them to graduate after completing their degree programs. This time-to-degree metric is not an exhaustive description of a large group of students, but it is nevertheless a standard measure of institutional success in higher education, especially when disaggregated across several different variables.

In addition to this cohort-based approach, Cal Poly tracks academic information about its students at large — their class level (first-year, sophomore, etc.), unit load (full- or part-time), enrollment status (first-year, transfer, etc.), and academic standing (good or otherwise). The university also tracks a variety of demographic information about its students — including their gender, ethnicity, Pell Grant status (recipient or non-recipient), and first-generation status. These measures support the university's Strategic Plan 2019-2024 in making progress to "create and sustain a more diverse, equitable and inclusive university community that reflects and services the diverse people of California" (Goal 3B).

 

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Cal Poly defines an underrepresented minority (URM) student as one whose race/ethnicity is Hispanic/Latino/a/x, African American, Native American, Hawaiian/Pacific Islander, or multi-racial with at least one of those four ethnicities. First-generation students are defined by the Office of Institutional Research as students whose parents did not attend college.

These statistics were produced by the Office of Institutional Research. Many of these enrollment figures can be found in the annual Cal Poly Fact Book and Poly View publications. (These figures can differ slightly from those provided by the CSU or the U.S. Department of Education because of the different reporting dates and URM definitions used by Cal Poly, the CSU, and the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System.)

 

last updated March 2022

 

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Cal Poly Admissions information can be found here.