Cal Poly students get more A’s, have higher GPAs than decade ago. See the data

Today’s Cal Poly students earn more A’s and hold higher grade point averages than they did a decade ago, according to data provided to The Tribune by the San Luis Obispo university, in line with a trend seen at colleges around the country.

In November, a Yale University economics professor Ray C. Fair released a report that showed a marked increase in the number of A’s and A-minuses given out in 2020-21 compared to a decade earlier, The New York Times reported.

And the change wasn’t unique to Yale, or even elite colleges. Harvard University has seen a rise as well, and now at both ivy league colleges, A’s or A-minuses make up nearly 80% of all grades, the Times reported.

Meanwhile, college GPAs have been increasing nationwide by about 0.1 every 10 years for the last several decades, Stuart Rojstaczer, a retired Duke University professor who tracks grade inflation, told The Times.

At Cal Poly, officials were not entirely sure why GPAs and grades have improved over the past decade, but they noted the university’s various academic performance initiatives may have contributed, spokesperson Keegan Koberl said.

Cal Poly’s Institutional Research team assembled the data, which analyzed the grades and GPAs across the school, departments and colleges from 2012-23.

Koberl cited the California State University’s Graduation Initiative 2025, a statewide program intended to provide increased educational resources such as free tutoring services and meeting basic needs for students at CSUs.

The program was launched in 2015, and graduation rates at CSUs have increased for four-year students from 19% in 2015 to 35% in 2023 and from 57% to 62% in the same time span for six-year students, according to CSU data.

Koberl said requiring first-year students to live on campus, the expansion of cultural spaces, study-abroad programs and internship and research opportunities have all likely contributed to student success.

Cal Poly applicants, students have higher GPAs than decade ago, data shows

Koberl said a likely factor in current Cal Poly students’ successes were higher high school GPAs.

“Admission to Cal Poly has become increasingly competitive over the past years,” Koberl said. “The students who now attend Cal Poly may be even more high-performing than before.”

The average high school GPA of an applicant in 2012 was 3.87 while the average high school GPA for the freshman class in 2023 was 4.03, according to the university’s PolyView data on admissions.

Meanwhile, once they are at the university, students’ GPAs are also higher than a decade ago.

Students at Cal Poly held an average GPA of 3.41 in the 2022-23 school year, compared to the average of 3.15 in 2012-13, according to the data.

There was some variation between colleges, with the Bailey College of Science and Mathematics having the lowest average GPA at 3.11 and the College of Architecture and Environmental Design having the highest average at 3.40 in 2022-23 academic year. Over the past decade, the average GPA of the College of Agriculture, Food and Environmental Science was 3.34, the College of Engineering was 3.27, the College of Liberal Arts was 3.34 and the Orfalea College of Business was 3.26.

GPAs also varied between individual departments.

The department with the highest average GPA in the 2022-23 school year was Military Science, with an average of 3.9. Meanwhile students in the Chemistry and Biochemistry department had the lowest average GPA at 2.61. In the 2012-13 academic year the Military Science department had the highest average GPA of 3.88 while the average GPA of the Natural Resources Management department was 2.43.

Cal Poly students getting more As, data shows

Grades among Cal Poly students have notably improved across the colleges in the past 10 years, the data shows.

In the 2012-13 academic year, 38% of all grades given were A’s, 39% were B’s, 17% were C’s, 4% were D’s and 2% were F’s.

A decade later in the 2022-23 academic year, grades improved on almost all categories — 54% were A’s, 29% were B’s, 12% were C’s, 3% were D’s and 2% were F’s.

Across colleges, the College of Architecture and Environmental Design averaged the highest percentage of A’s, 53%, over the past decade while the Bailey College of Science and Mathematics earned the lowest, 33%.

Overall, the Teacher Education department earned the highest percentage of A’s while the Chemistry and Biochemistry department earned the lowest.

Cal Poly student grades peaked during COVID pandemic

Though students in the 2022-23 school year outperformed their 2012-13 counterparts, they actually did not do as well as students during the height of the coronavirus pandemic.

According to the data, Cal Poly students actually performed the best in the 2020-21 academic year when the campus was partially locked down due to the COVID pandemic. Many students attended school virtually while on-campus housing was limited.

Koberl said the pandemic impacted the 2020-21 academic year “uniquely,” but did not have specific insight on why students had higher grades that school year.

During that year, 60% of students received A’s and held an average GPA of 3.45, the data shows.

Performance during the 2019-20 year was also slightly better than in 2022-23, with 55% of students receiving A’s and an average GPA of 3.43, according to the data.