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Before, these students may have chosen ED at UVA, gotten in, and bam, UVa got itself a great applicant at a low cost.
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<p>I don't see the stats of UVa rising as a result of the elimination of ED. I do see UVa's costs rising as a result of a nation wide recruitment campaign of oos students of low income.</p>
<p>H & P are private institutions. UVa is public and should not compete with private ivies to the detriment of local students. IMO five students was not worth the effort and expense compared to the dislocation caused to thousands of applicants.</p>
<p>I understand everyone's middle-class worries, and I am thoroughly against the removal of early decision, but:</p>
<ol>
<li>People really need to take a Stat class... One year of data is NOT enough to draw conclusions.</li>
<li>There is also a class offered here (or was in past years) as a Common Course on poverty and I think it would really open your eyes and you would reassess your views on college application fees being a real hardship. You have the option of getting a part-time job to help pay for these things, especially something like babysitting that is not a lot of work and pays big, versus the 25% of Charlottesville that lives below the poverty line. Just saying.</li>
</ol>
<p>I agree that one year is probably not enough time to judge how beneficial this change will be in helping to attract qualified low-income students to the University.</p>
<p>I only hope that the Administration at UVa will keep an open mind to bringing back ED if the preponderance of evidence proves that its elimination didn’t materially facilitate recruitment of low-income students. Like HartinGA, I’d prefer to see a multi-faceted approach that uses ED as part of the program to attract the desired mix of incoming students.</p>
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Those of us who have friends who are great low income students are familiar with the difficulties they face. Imagine having no money...none. Everything has to be done by waivers. Your parents do not keep records of anything. You cannot get proof of income or tax forms.
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<p>That is the way my mom grew up and so I am familiar with the process. She couldn't get the documentation to prove her situation so worked three jobs in high school. Actually she started working at 14. Her situation was so bad that the principle of her school told a lie to the county so she could get her working papers early. She got through college by working both a full time and part time job.</p>
<p>The good news is that there are programs like Access UVa that actually reach out to low income students. The bad news is that FAFSA is a complicated mess, and the interest rates on student loans are way too high.
And schools look for ways to cut FA.</p>
<p>Here is an example. My friend was eligible for some FA her first year. Her mother paid the balance. The second year the mother sold a CD or some financial instrument in her meager 401k to pay for what she expected to be the same FA package. Problem was when she reported that sale that money was viewed as income which eliminated the FA! </p>
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I’d prefer to see a multi-faceted approach that uses ED as part of the program to attract the desired mix of incoming students.
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<p>Me too. There has to be some outside of the box thinking to make this process more effective, efficient and fair.</p>
<p>I believe some of you may be overlooking the creation of AccessUVa in 2004 and the College Guide Service in 2005. Eliminating ED wasn't a first step.</p>
<p>My daughter toured UVA and fell in love with it during her junior year - fully expecting to apply early decision this past year. However, without ED, my daughter applied regular decision at which point she was also accepted to Duke and Penn. While she loved UVA, the added time and evaluation period caused her to change course and ultimately, she accepted the offer from Duke. I am confident that she would have been at UVA today if ED were still available.</p>
<p>Her situation was compounded by the fact that UVA didn't have a presence on her high school campus (a top 100, midwestern public high school), and as a result, didn't have an opportunity to meet an admissions rep covering the Minneapolis area. It was more difficult to communicate her passion for UVA without ED, and in my opinion, this is one of the greatest weaknesses of UVA eliminating ED - the inability of the schoold to "close the deal" with kids who love the school, but instead, end of applying regular decision and end up with multiple choices.</p>
<p>As an OOS student, the best element of UVA's admissions process was Dean J's blog - a great tool for all interested parties. The other schools my daughter applied to did not have such a valuable resource (that I am aware of).</p>
<p>I was shocked to read Dean Blackburn's quote in The Cavalier Daily...that if Princeton and Harvard hadn't done it (eliminate ED), it's unclear if we would have done it. Argh! Where's the leadership in that statement! Commit to the issue of attracting low-income students on its own merits. Are we to believe that if P&H bring back ED, so too will UVA?</p>
<p>I hope things go well for your daughter at Duke. She's a good example of some of the well qualified applicants UVa lost to other schools by eliminating the Early Decision option. </p>
<p>I thought the comments Dean Blackburn and Dean Roberts made about UVa's decision to drop ED were open and honest.</p>
<p>I found their candor refreshing, and not particularly "politically correct". I hope UVa evaluates this issue on its merits over time, and then acts in the University's best interests, independent of other schools' influence.</p>
<p>The elimination of ED is a real problem. As others have said, it adds unnecessary stress and expense for alot of kids for whom UVa is clearly their first choice. My son was ED in 2005 but may have gone elsewhere if ED had not been available then. Some sort of Early Action option would help.</p>
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Some sort of Early Action option would help.
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<p>The President of Stanford wrote an article for the NY Times arguing that non binding early action is actually more advantageous to low income students as it provides more time to compare aide packages.</p>
<p>My D was accepted ED and is now a second year. My son has applied this year and would have applied ED if available. I agree it increases the stress level but if UVA is where you want to be, as in the case of my D and my S, it is not an issue. Contribute to AccessUVa as I do and give it a chance to make a difference. It is a very worthy cause.</p>
<p>Poor Dean J, who is wonderful to come on here and help us (and put up with a lot of nonsense), is really taking a lot of flak on this one. Hopefully we can all agree, including Dean J that:</p>
<ul>
<li>One year is not enough time to make an evaluation of the new process, but..</li>
<li>The change did not achieve the desired result in the first year, and...</li>
<li>There are other, positive, attributes of ED, and...</li>
<li>There are other ways to attract lower income students, and...</li>
<li>If in time, elimination of ED does not achive the goals, then the University should revisit the decision and look at alternative methods.</li>
</ul>
<p>I don't think anyone is aiming the positives and negatives at Dean J, just UVa in general, as well as the other schools who made the move. Very good points though, Hartin. I don't really know how the move has affected UVa yet, but I do know that there are good and bad points about ED. Hopefully UVa will re-evaluate the situation in a few years, and either keep no ED or bring it back.</p>
<p>to those of you who feel the need to constantly repeat "...one year of data..." please keep acting like you're more aware of things than those who have criticisms, it's quite entertaining.</p>
<p>data speaks, don't discredit what has happened - that would be a big mistake. the admission's office has a lot to prove next year, and for the sake of all students, past, current and future, I hope that we can see movement towards the intended goal.</p>
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to those of you who feel the need to constantly repeat "...one year of data..."
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<p>To be honest it seems to me that AccessUVa would be the better barameter of sucess. First it is four years old and second it is an aggressive (I say that because they contacted me repeatedly to ask if I was eligible) mechanism to identify underpriviledged students and attempt to fund their education.</p>
<p>One year of no ED is not a lot of time, although I am still a proponent of non binding EA, but I would be interested to see the progress AccessUVa has had over the past 4-5 years.</p>
<p>re: wazhoom: ok, take a stat class, and then make that argument. because there is no way you can make that argument in any statistically valid way. make a null hypothesis that the number of low-income students is the same with or without ED. this year's data is unable to reject that claim, but it does not prove that the two populations are the same - we failed to reject the null hypothesis, we did not accept it. and to accept it would require much more data than one year of data could give us, to have any kind of decent significance level.</p>
<p>Also, ED affects UVA in many, many ways. The enrollment figures, no matter how many years they span, are only a slice of the pie. But one year is definitely not enough...maybe the other factors of ED, removed or not, should be concentrated on, such as how the non-economically-challenged students are being affected. I'm kind of tired of being put at a disadvantage just because I'm middle class, and I'm sure many other die-hard-would-have-been-future-ED-applicants that will never even see a penny from FA/AccessUVa feel the same way.</p>