<p>I really believe that these emails should be viewed as “likely letters.” I don’t think any school would go to the trouble of writing a personalized email to someone they’re going to reject. Plus it would be in horrible taste, indeed.</p>
<p>Just wanted to let you know that my daughter received her acceptance letter to Pitt (and Honors College) in the mail today without ever having received an email from Pitt prior to this acceptance. Just posting this so that people don’t mistakenly feel that not getting the email from Pitt equals not getting accepted. Take heart.</p>
<p>RMSkol,
My son did get accepted to Pitt. He received his offer of admission about five days after the email from adcomm. I’m sure if your daughter got the email from adcomm that she will be accepted as well. </p>
<p>To your other point, I guess the reason I thought Pitt was a reach for my son was because Penn State is also one of his top choices. From what I understand, Penn State takes your unweighted GPA and also does not superscore SATs or ACT. My son’s SATs for reading, math and writing combined was only 1670 (1730 if you combine best scores from both test dates).
I guess the fact that Pitt does not take writing into account probably helped my son. Penn State also does not seem to want essays or letter of recommendations (both of which we sent to Pitt). My son’s weighted GPA is also 3.7 out of 5. He is ranked 218 out of a class of 828 so he is also not even top 25%. Another reason I thought Pitt would be a reach. </p>
<p>My son’s first choice is Penn State. He really likes Pitt as well but I know he will be very disappointed if he does not get into Penn State.</p>
<p>motherto5 - I wasn’t aware that Penn State looks at unweighted. That would be difficult for my school since they only send the weighted, although they do send a transcript so a school could recalculate. Are you sure they look at unweighted? Two other things about Penn State. First, they offer the summer program for borderline students so that could be a possible avenue for your son. Second, they weigh the GPA 2/3rds and standardized test 1/3rd. I don’t know if that helps you, but I thought I would let you know. It’s funny, my daughter is also looking at both, but she was really impressed by this email she received and if she ultimately gets accepted from Pitt, it could be very significant to her.</p>
<p>Thanks for the helpful, information regarding Penn State. I am probably wrong about them looking at the unweighted. I mean, they must have some sort of formula. I guess they recalculate the gpa in some way. My son had two "C"s in honors courses which really hurt his gpa. I had heard that Penn State was 2/3 gpa which doesn’t bode well for him. When the representative came to our school he told the parents that to get in they would basically need a 3.7 and at least 1780ish SATs One of the parents asked if that was a weighted or unweighted GPA. The rep said unweighted which seemed really high to me. Maybe that’s where I misunderstood. </p>
<p>My son did say on his app that he would start during the summer. A few of his friends who were seniors last year started at Penn State during the summer. </p>
<p>I’ll admit I am pretty clueless about all this college app stuff as this is my first child to go to college.</p>