<p>Leaving aside recruited athletes and those majoring in the arts who have to audition or need to submit a portfolio, is admittance to the large state public schools based strictly on high school GPA and SAT/ACT scores?</p>
<p>I am guessing that the admissions offices couldn't get through all the apps if they were reading all the essays and looking at all the ECs. I can imagine those things might matter for those on the bubble, but not for most applicants whose stats either make the cut or don't.</p>
<p>Can anyone speak to this based on their knowledge of or experience with freshmen admissions at big state schools?</p>
<p>No. You can’t lump the ‘dreaded public U’ into one large pile and say they are all numbers driven. Some are, some aren’t. I could give examples but then we start with ‘oh, they are the exception’. I’m not stepping into that pile.</p>
<p>Concur with blueiguana. The UCs don’t even ask/require recommendations but the upper tier ones do holistic admissions, which means it’s not strictly by the numbers. I think at least UC Berkeley does read the app in depth for some things, as my S was interviewed for a Regents Scholarship there and was interviewed by a professor in the field that he wrote about doing his summer internship in, climate change.</p>
<p>Some are and some aren’t and even those that are and aren’t, aren’t and are at some points in the admissions cycle. Even non publics have some automatic accept/reject mechanisms in place at the peak of the applications frenzy. More in forms of a matrix than lines, however. And once a particular program is full, kids are automatically waitlisted or rejected, so yes, all schools have some cut guidelines for certain circumstances. </p>
<p>As a rule, with those schools that have rolling admissions, as many publics do, it is easier to get accepted early in the season when there are lots of seats to fill. As the seats fill, up, the admissions officers tend to get pickier as to who gets the remaining places. They want to leave some room for the late applicants with stellar stats, but they want to make sure that they have filled the seats as well. A balancing act of sorts. So some applications are eyeballed in every type of school more than others.</p>
<p>When they show those “A Typical Day in Admissions” as they do on NPR and other media shows, what they show are not typical. The average app does not get all of that discussion from a round table of admissions folks and advisors. Those are the apps that make it to “committee” because there is some discussion to be had. They also throw in some cases to make it a better show too, I suspect. </p>
<p>One large public I know has committee meetings for admissions too, and they do look at some apps carefully in those sessions. How they decide what makes committee and what gets a decision by the numbers or a 2 read, I don’t know. I guess if the reader feels there is some reason that the app should go against the grain of the numbers or the number of spaces is limited and there are too many good apps left, that could be some reasons. But I do know that though the numbers are how most kids there are accepted, there are some situations that do get a more careful looky see.</p>
<p>FindAPlace: It makes sense to me that for admission to an honors college within a large school or for a scholarship that there might be a thorough app review. I was speaking strictly of initial admission.</p>
<p>Cptofthehouse: With a admission by the numbers, that means you are in regardless of any ECs or other factors? Your GPA and SAT/ACT alone are high enough to get you in?</p>
<p>In Texas, they have auto admits at UT, A&M, UT Dallas, University of Houston, other UT schools. They all have specific rules for auto admit, mainly based on class rank in the school (top 9%, 10%, 15%, 20% etc based on the level of the school). Recommendations, ACT/SAT are no relevant for that. However, admission to UT does not automatically provide an admission into your department of choice or some high level programs. One has to apply to them independently and submit scores, recs etc depending on what is required.</p>
<p>They have a second group of admissions which may be OOS, International and also in state who dont meet the auto admit. These use the standard holisitic approach requiring scores, recs, and other factors that go into consideration.</p>
<p>If you’re talking about a state flagship university with 30,000 or so students, then I think your assumption is a valid one. When they accept roughly 2,000 applicants a year at Harvard, there are admissions staff for various regions of the country and the world who sort through all the supplemental materials and individually make a case for their favorites in the pool. I wouldn’t think that that would be possible at a huge public university. There just wouldn’t be enough hours in the admissions season to make it logistically possible. That said, there could still be ways that students with outstanding honors and other added values could get some favorable bump in the vetting process - it just wouldn’t be a truly holistic evaluation.</p>
<p>Michigan is adamant they are “holistic” in their review including the essay and recommendations. Based on their length of time they took to finish acceptance/denials/waitlist; it sure looks like they truly do review the whole tamale.</p>
<p>Again, delamer, there is no one answer. Different public universities have different admissions methods. It just simply doesn’t make any sense to try to answer the question “for large state u’s” in general.</p>
<p>My S applied to one private with rolling admissions. (He sent the app in early November along with his EA apps.) He heard back (was accepted) <em>way faster</em> than the advertised timeframe. He has very good numbers, and I’m guessing that they just saw his stats and they were enough to put him in the auto-accept pile. So even some privates are probably numbers-driven at at least some points on the scale.</p>
<p>Look at the Common Data Sets for each school, section C7. Schools that are numbers based should weigh GPA, Rigor, SATs and possibly class rank higher than other elements. Examples of schools that are like that are: Arizona (rigor and GPA higher than anything else), Arkansas (rigor, rank, GPA, scores higher than everything), Idaho (ONLY GPA and scores are considered). UNC-CH would be a good example of a holistic review (EVERYTHING is considered equally important except an interview).</p>
<p>SAY…what? The Michigan admit rate was 50% in 2010 and with the move the common app (20% increase in apps) and a reduction in admits in 2011 (5600 in 2011 vs. 6400 in 2010), the admit rate is estimated to be 40% in 2011. Regardless, what does the admit rate have to do with a holistic review?</p>
<p>It certainly spells out what a student can expect with regards to admission.</p>
<p>BTW, I don’t know anything about the University of South Florida other than what is on their website:</p>
<p>USF opened its doors in 1960 to 2,000 students. Today, the USF System welcomes more than 47,000 students from across the country and around the globe and is recognized as one of the nation’s top 63 public research universities.</p>