I thought it was very interesting that the head of admissions stated in his opening video for today’s virtual admitted students day, that the class of 2024 was their most competitive yet. He stated in the past VT’s admit rate averages about 70 percent. This year the admit rate was closer to 50 percent!
Wow. Doesn’t add up to what they had said a while back on number applicants. Maybe the person quoting that was using last years data. Be interesting to see the final numbers. If they did use the waitlist a little excessively that number then could rise (and be good for a lot of people here waiting on that)
Video was of Juan Espinoza, Director of Admissions. He very clearly stated they usually offer to about 70 percent of applicants and this year offered to closer to 50 percent, what he called “the most competitive class ever”. I would agree that they may have done a lot for waitlisting this year. If the yield is less than expected, maybe some get off the waitlist. Only time will tell.
But they don’t officially know who is in the class yet, right? They might be able to say that it is the most competitive group that has applied, or the most competitive group they have given offers to, but the incoming class isn’t set yet.
And hopefully for those here on the waitlist, they initially took 50% but will have to take another 5% or more to fill class.
Some stats for what they are worth:
2020
- VT received over 31,000 apps (I’ll use 32,000 as a round number)
- 6,675 is stated goal for incoming cohort
- 50% offered rate = 16,000 offers
Based on above, to achieve class size goal via straight offers then admissions would have to project historically highest yield rate of approx. 41.5%. (39% has been highest since 2012).
If published yield rates do not include later pulls from wait list, then:
- If comparable to 2019 (34.2%) then enrollees before wait list = 5,472.
- If comparable to 2018 (30.3%) then = 4,484.
The last year that approx. 16,000 were offered was 2015, and yield was 38.7% = 6,324.
What does this mean? Something… or nothing. Maybe trending towards extreme caution this year and wait-listed a bunch, or combined EA and ED matriculations showed firm trend towards that 40%+ yield number and that’s why so many RD’s were shut out.
@vamominvabeach thank you for sharing that video…somehow we missed it on Saturday when we watched the Hokie Focus. Juan seems very nice!
@ShenVal18 you are an amazing statistician! I wish my brain was wired like yours!
@pghmom72 Thanks. Working from home during the current situation left me some time to dig through old admissions and CDS data. How this plays out re: waitlisted students is going to be very interesting. In 2018, about 70% of the students who were offered a spot on the wait list took it, and of those a comparable % ultimately were enrolled. I was actually surprised that such a large number opted to stay on the waitlist. This year? Crapshoot.
@ShenVal18 my son is currently waitlisted at Clemson, but he accepted his offer at VT. The longer he waits, the more he is becoming invested in being a Hokie!
we were accepted at clemson, and waitlisted at tech, anxiously waiting for an offer, any chance you’d like to switch haha 
@UVAmomma42 Same here! Waitlisted Tech and UVA, and accepted Clemson, Penn State, JMU, etc, but praying for good news in the coming weeks/month.