<p>“Your GPA and SAT/ACT alone are high enough to get you in?”</p>
<p>My D was waitlisted at one public where her GPA and SAT put her at the 92nd percentile of admitted students. (I had cautioned her that her chances at this particular Public Ivy were slight since she was in the worst possible demographic for the school, so the wait list decision wasn’t a shock.)</p>
<p>Holistic does not mean everything is weighted equally, it means all aspects of an application are considered. Wisconsin (Madison) is another large flagship U that not only looks at the numbers but at the other factors. A check of the CC threads will show numerous examples of students who did not get in with better numbers- gpa/test scores- than another student. UW used to have a chart of likelihood of acceptance for gpa/test scores but recently dropped it. Never a guarantee of being admitted, regardless of gpa, class rank or test scores. Two essays may be optional but from the threads seem mandatory. btw- if it were only by the numbers those schools wouldn’t bother with the extra paperwork by asking for all of the “extras”.</p>
<p>Some publics may be strictly by the numbers, but some of the world class public institutions are not. Just as all public flagship U’s do not fit into the same categories as to rankings. That generalization is like lumping all private U’s, or all LACs into the same pile. Or like saying all Ivies are better than all publics…</p>
<p>I asked the question expecting to get replies of the “your mileage may vary” type. And I was not implying that the quality of a public school was higher or lower because of its admissions procedures.</p>
<p>And obviously the EC info, the essays, etc. are requested by many by-the-numbers schools because even they must have kids on the bubble who they have to evaluate.</p>
<p>I find the specific examples of holistic and by-the-numbers public school admissions policies – or hybrids thereof – very interesting.</p>
<p>You will find a huge number of “kids on the bubble” at those schools if that defines your use of non-numbers. Anecdote- you can look for it if interested- student with good/excellent credentials, OOS, did NOT get into UW and reports it was due to his stated not caring in his application responses. Admissions at top flagships are much more competitive than they were just a few years ago, so much so that the “subjective” parts of applications are needed to sort out THOUSANDS of otherwise equal gpa/test score candidates. </p>
<p>All schools have a minimum gpa/test score that they use to screen students. But that still leaves far too many with the ability to do well at the school and other factors are used. Read the admissions site on the UW-Madison website for a discussion of how they do the process, definitely not just numbers- those only get your application read. Read the application/admissions pages of other publics and you will find those who definitely look at all of the materials sent.</p>
<p>But there are some (like Idaho) that only use scores and GPA. In that case it’s purely a numbers game. Kansas is another one that doesn’t use essays, recs or ECs. And while there may be little real difference between someone with an 84 or 86 average, for a numbers school it might make the difference in being admitted.</p>
<p>Our GC told us that of the large east coast universities, Rutgers and Penn State were numbers driven, while the rest (Maryland, Delaware, etc) took a more holistic approach. To that point, when we visited Rutgers and I spoke to the admissions officer, she confirmed that they focus on GPA and SAT, and ECs don’t count for much. This was the first year Rutgers required essays so it’s hard to say if they are read, but my guess is they don’t carry much weight.</p>
<p>delamer - we have one case of admissions at UT Dallas where just your SAT or ACT score can get you in (26 or 1200 in CR+M). It is a tier 1 university with a 141 rank.</p>
<p>[Admission</a> Process For Freshman Students - UT Dallas](<a href=“http://www.utdallas.edu/enroll/apply/fprocess.php]Admission”>http://www.utdallas.edu/enroll/apply/fprocess.php)</p>
<p>Public U has another dimension: Instate or out of state (OOS). NC for example has restriction on how many OOS can be admitted, so rules can be different for the two categories.</p>
<p>the UC system has to accept the top 12.5% from every public high school class in the state. this is the UC Regents rule that was pushed through after affirmative action ended. The affirmative action people cooked up the top 12.5% rule, this way a kid with a 3.5 gpa from an “inner-city” type school can be admitted to Cal while a 3.9 student who’s in the 13th percentile at a top performing suburban school is rejected.</p>
<p>granted the UC system is using UC Merced and UC Riverside as a dumping ground for a lot of these 3.5 type kids but there are still a bunch of Cal and UCLA students with relatively low gpa’s and SAT’s compared to kids rejected with higher stats from high performing California high schools</p>
<p>pacheight, the Eligible in the Local Context (ELC) students must be ranked in the top 4% of their high school class, not the top 12.5%. </p>
<p>Being ELC doesn’t mean an auto-admit to all UC campuses (e.g. Cal). It’s a boost, which is part of Cal’s holistic admissions process. </p>
<p>ELC helps students coming from high schools that aren’t large or academically strong enough to offer AP and/or honors classes. The kid from the top performing suburban school can get bonus weighting points from those classes; the kid attending the small rural school might not have access to those.</p>
<p>^you’re right it’s not 12.5%. they’ve lowered it to 9%!</p>
<p>Who receives guaranteed admission</p>
<p>Within this pool of applicants, two categories of students will be guaranteed admission somewhere in the UC system:</p>
<p>those who fall in the top 9 percent of all high school graduates statewide
those who rank in the top 9 percent of their own high school graduating class</p>
<p>[University</a> of California - Fall 2012 admission requirements](<a href=“http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/admissions/counselors/freshman/fall-2012/index.html]University”>http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/admissions/counselors/freshman/fall-2012/index.html)</p>
<p>“guaranteed admission”</p>
<p>And I can guarantee you that kids who work a lot harder and have much higher stats coming from competitive high schools in communities such as Palo Alto, Rolling Hills, Irvine, Lafayette, Palos Verdes, etc, etc are not getting admitted because kids who don’t work as hard and have lower stats are in the top 9% of their high school.</p>
<p>Oooh, that’s right, they’ve changed the numbers for 2012 onwards. ELC was boosted from the previous top 4% in the school to top 9% in the school, and overall guaranteed from the state was lowered from the 12.5%.</p>
<p>If you want to see an example of a public flagship admissions process that is NOT purely numbers-driven, take a look at the actual “rating sheet” used by Michigan’s admissions officers. It identifies 47 different categories that the reader of a freshman application should consider and rate (or grade) on a scale of “High Admit +” to “Deny -”. While some of these go to quantifiable figures like GPA, test scores, and class rank, most are “soft” variables like evidence of character, intellectual independence, and creativity as determined from teacher/GC recs; ECs; work experience; depth in one or more academic areas; writing quality, etc. </p>
<p>[Office</a> of Undergraduate Admissions: Application Review](<a href=“http://admissions.umich.edu/prospective/prospectivefreshmen/appreview.php]Office”>http://admissions.umich.edu/prospective/prospectivefreshmen/appreview.php)</p>
<p>(Click link to “Ratings Sheet”).</p>
<p>It has been our experience cruising the internet that public universities that have established thresholds for admittance are very clear about whether or not they practice auto admit. I agree with those posters who say that institutions vary in what criteria they put in place for admittance. Another factor would be the schools commitment to their in-state students. Most have some factor of preference whether it is mandated as in Texas with it’s top 10 program or courtesy. One of my kids applied to an out of state public and while in-state kids were admitted within 2 weeks if they met certain criteria he waited until early in the New Year for his admittance even though he was in the tippy top GPA/test score wise. Clearly they were giving courtesy to in-state kids. My oldest applied to a public liberal arts college and was told by the admissions rep that she was recommending for admit, but that those recommendations were “blessed” by the admissions director and at that time my son had not sent his essay in and she reminded him that was needed for his complete app before it went to the director. Colleges are different but in general regarding admissions the websites, if read thoroughly in conjunction with the common data sets, are illuminating.</p>
<p>SAY, if you parse the data I suspect you’ll find different “admit rates” at the very largest publics nationally that are wildly different for in-state, our of state and international. One percentage number cume does not tell the story. BillyMc, there would be admit rates for every school regardless of “type” of admissions. Even an auto-admit type public would have kids that fall below the threshold so I imagine no school, even one that doesn’t practice holistic admissions, would have a 100% admit rate.</p>
<p>Well, our in-state valedictorian was rejected by Michigan a few years ago.So I’d say admissions there are not entirely numbers driven.</p>