California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo

California Polytechnic State University, or Cal Poly, is a public university located in San Luis Obispo, California, United States. The university is one of two polytechnic campuses in the 23-member California State University system. Cal Poly was established in 1901.

The Cal Poly Master Plan calls to increase student population from approximately 17,000 students to 20,000 students by the year 2020–2021. To maintain the university's "Learn by Doing" philosophy and low class sizes, the master plan calls for an increase in classrooms, laboratories, and professors.

Campus

Cal Poly is the second largest land-holding university in California, with holdings totaling 9,678 acres (3,917 ha) (2nd only to UC Berkeley and 1st in the CSU system). Part of the Cal Poly property is the Swanton Pacific Ranch, a 3,200-acre (1,300 ha) ranch located in Santa Cruz County, California, outside the town of Davenport. The ranch provides educational and research opportunities, encompasses rangeland, livestock, and forestry operations for the College of Agriculture, Food, and Environmental sciences, and fosters Cal Poly’s teaching philosophy of “Learn by Doing” with emphasis on sustainable management of agricultural practices.

Colleges

Comprising six distinct colleges, the university offers 70 undergraduate programs, 26 graduate programs and 6 teaching credentials/certificates.

The university currently offers bachelor's degrees, master's degrees, and one joint-doctorate in six colleges:

• College of Agriculture, Food and Environmental Sciences
• College of Architecture and Environmental Design
• Orfalea College of Business
• College of Engineering
• College of Liberal Arts
• College of Science and Mathematics

Ranking

Specifically, the university's engineering, architecture, and agriculture colleges consistently place at the top of United States national academic rankings. In U.S. News & World Report's 2012 America's Best Colleges report, Cal Poly ranked as the No. 1 Public Master's University in the Western United States for the 19th consecutive year. U.S. News describes the university's admission process as "more selective", yielding an overall acceptance rate of 29% in fall 2010 (freshman acceptance rate: 32%, transfer acceptance rate: 13%). Cal Poly now has more than 140,000 alumni living and working everywhere from New York to Washington D.C. to Wisconsin to Idaho to Hawaii to Hong Kong.

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