How tough is it to get into Cal Poly? Some majors have room for less than 4% of applicants

Cal Poly’s record-breaking number of applications for fall 2024 made for the “largest, most competitive applicant pool in university history” — with some majors having room for less than 4% of those hoping to attend.

That’s according to new data showing how many first-time freshman and transfer students applied for each of Cal Poly’s 64 available majors, and how many actually made the cut and were offered admission.

According to university spokesperson Matt Lazier, Cal Poly received 79,015 applications for the upcoming school year, up from the more than 74,571 who applied the year prior.

The university usually accepts roughly 30% of the students who apply, but it has space available for significantly less than that.

As a result, those nearly 80,000 students were competing for fewer than 6,400 freshman and transfer spots, an 8% enrollment rate.

With that level of competition, it’s no surprise that this year’s applicants were also some of the highest achieving of any previous class, with an average GPA of 4.05, according to Lazier.

The university also ramped up its local recruitment and transfer student acceptance efforts, with 30% more local students being accepted to Cal Poly for the fall than in 2022, as well as a 10% increase in the number of transfer students accepted since 2023, Lazier said.

He noted that students from Cuesta College and Allan Hancock College were “admitted at a higher rate than the overall transfer admittance rate” with 52.7% of Cuesta students and 66.8% of Allan Hancock students who applied being offered admission.

What colleges have the most, least amount of space for incoming students?

With a growing number of applicants, getting into Cal Poly is becoming even more competitive — even as the university expects to enroll more students.

In all, the university is aiming to enroll 5,400 first-time freshman students and 956 transfers, according to its enrollment target numbers for 2024-25. That’s up 6.2% from the 5,981 total the university anticipated enrolling for the 2022-23 school year, the most recent data The Tribune analyzed.

This year’s enrollment target has room for just 8% of those who applied to attend in the fall — down slightly from the 8.8% it had room for in 2022-23. That includes 7.9% of first-time freshmen applicants and 9.2% of new transfer applicants, according to data provided to The Tribune.

The number of available spots can vary widely by major.

The largest number of seats is available in the College of Engineering, which has room for an anticipated 1,383 first-time freshmen in the fall and 217 transfers, according to the data.

The fewest number of available spots is in the College of Architecture and Environmental Design, which has space for just 427 new freshmen students and only 45 transfers.

Here’s how those compare:

What are the hardest majors to get into at Cal Poly?

Of the nearly 69,000 freshmen who applied to Cal Poly for fall 2024, more than one-third were vying for a spot in just 10 of the university’s 64 available majors.

Once again, the major that had the fewest number of spaces available compared to the number of freshman applicants was psychology, with room for just 2% of the applicant pool, according to the university’s data.

That major has routinely been the most impacted at Cal Poly.

The other hardest majors for first-time freshmen were:

• Computer science: 3.2%

• Marine sciences: 3.2%

• Software engineering: 3.3%

• Biological sciences: 3.3%

• Aerospace engineering: 3.7%

• Kinesiology: 3.8%

• Biochemistry: 4.5%

• Microbiology: 4.6%

• Political science: 4.7%

Meanwhile, the major with the fewest spaces available compared with applicants for transfer students was biochemistry, which had room for only 1.3% of the applicant pool, according to the data.

The next hardest for transfers were:

• Public health: 1.6%

• Political science: 2.9%

• Statistics: 3.4%

• Physics: 3.6%

• Psychology: 3.8%

• Construction management: 3.9%

• Kinesiology: 4.2%

• Software engineering: 4.8%

• Communication studies: 4.8%

What are the easiest majors to get into at Cal Poly?

On the flip side, some departments had more space — and fewer applicants — making them slightly less competitive to get into than Cal Poly’s most impacted majors.

For freshman applicants, that least impacted major was plant sciences, where there was space for three out of every 10 students who applied for fall 2024.

For transfers, the least impacted department was dairy science — but only because for the two spaces available, there were just five applicants to choose from.

Though these majors were the least competitive when comparing applicants to space available for the upcoming school year, the field does seem to have tightened even on this end of the competitive spectrum.

For the 2022-23 class, the last time The Tribune reported this data, the ratio of freshman applicants to spaces available among the top 10 least competitive majors ranged from 27% to 44%.

For the incoming 2024-25 year, the ratios for the 10 least competitive departments were much smaller, from 21.7% to just over 30%.

This indicates that even the university’s “less competitive” majors are becoming harder to get into.

Search database of Cal Poly majors

You can search individual majors using our database tool for freshmen here:

Or our database for transfer students here: