Yeah, it just caught me as funny. Clearly you can’t be both. And my guess is that a legacy high-donor may carry more weight than a legacy non-high-donor. But, of course, they can’t publish that. 
Do you think the stats for entering freshmen 2020 will be similar to 2018 level? For example, GPA/SAT (50 percentile) in 2018 were 4.09/1280 for College of Sciences. Perhaps, GPA/SAT (50 percentile) will go up slightly (ex. 4.12/1290) this year? By the way, my son’s SAT is at 75 percentile but his GPA is at 25 percentile based on 2018 data. Please comment on his chance of getting acceptance this year.
@ShenVal18 can you explain that holistic list a little bit more? I do not fully understand the list.
@PLO2020 wow from what I see, ur son’s stats are exactly the same as mine. If I had to guess, the stats will begin to flatten out and stay stagnant at their current stats.
2019 college of sciecne were similiar at 1280 SAT and 4.07 GPA. I think this year will tick up since last year staying about the same meant over acceptance. I think non-biology majors may stay similiar but biology related majors were a definate over-acceptance last year and I could see them moving up bringing the overall average up. Biology last year was 1260 4.08 I could see that getting up to the over 1280 4.1 range easily.
Nothing drastic but will be more difficult this year vs. last.
IMO, the little fluctuations seen from year to year really don’t add up to much in terms of predicting admissions or enrollment, since all the public sees is stats for final enrollment. We don’t know the stats of the kids who were offered but did not matriculate. I don’t subscribe to the idea that a relatively flat avg. between 2018 and 2019 caused over enrollment, but that’s just me. The % increase of offers year-over-year stayed in a pretty consistent range from 2015 -2019. In 2018 fewer than predicted accepted the offer, but in 2019 more than predicted did so. That said, I don’t see average stats regressing this year.
@Volty123 Here’s how I was looking at it (two applicants applying to same major):
Assumptions - competing applicants all have the requisite boxes “checked” for HS extracurriculars (job, volunteer, sports, band, clubs, honor societies). Holistic review then looks for unique blips on the radar.
1.) Both apps do well on their essay prompts, but app #1 ties one of their responses neatly to a unique aspect of their assumptions list above. Advantage to app #1.
2.) App #1 is caucasion, high income, parents both college degrees. App #2 is underrepresented minority, lower income, first generation. This trumps app #1’s advantage so now both are even.
3.) App #1 GPA is .25 higher than app #2. Advantage #1, right? Maybe, maybe not (see next factor).
4.) App #1 HS/district has rep for grade inflation. App #2’s course rigor exceeds app #1. Combo of these two trumps app #1 advantage listed in 3.
Who gets offered? To me it’s app #2 - course rigor and high rank on essays (even if not as unique as app #1). And I should have listed SAT scores further down than I did. You can almost bank on the caucasian high income kid having taken at least 1 prep course and maybe taken the test multiple times. Low income first gen kid? Potentially 1x, unlikely to have been able to afford tutor or prep course.
(Disclosure: My kid is the caucasian high income kid who took a single writing prep course and took the SAT 2x. That’s nothing though - we know CoE and CoS kids who’s parents spent over $2,000 on prep and one of them took the SAT 4x. Are they better students than their peer(s) who didn’t have that advantage? Nope.)
@cbl1 @ShenVal18 - Really appreciate for your comment. Case like my son’s and Volty123’s (GPA at 25 percentile and SAT at 75 percentile), will good SAT (high 1300s) + heavy rigorous course load + good ECs and essays make up for low-end GPA? By the way, his GPA trends up a lot during junior and senior year near 4.3 average.
I would guess that if the years of the rigorous course load coincide with an upward trend in GPA, that would be viewed very favorably by admissions - it shows a combo of challenge and good performance. But senior year doesn’t matter (they aren’t looking at mid-year grades). If you were to exclude rigor from GPA, and consider GPA and SAT equally, then your son is at 50th overall percentile. From there, essays and demographics would probably take over, with “quality” of EC’s factoring in. (“Quality” meaning is there a unique EC that tells a story or dovetails into what VT is seeking for their student body). I think most applicants have plenty of “quantity” re: EC’s. But if you weigh rigor into that 25th percentile GPA, combined with 75th in SAT, maybe that pulls him into a 60th cumulative “rank” based on those two stats?
I know the waiting game stinks. My son applied RD when there was only ED and RD available.
How would you guys rank these schools in admission difficulty? Penn State University Park, Purdue University, and Virginia Tech.
Im only asking because I was accepted into Penn State UP and I was deffered by Purdue.
Depends on your major. Engineering/CS would likely be Purdue, VT, and Penn State…especially OOS. Any other major…no idea.
Hopefully since I got deffered by Purdue and accepted by Penn State UP, Virginia Tech will be a perfect fit in the middle. Fingers Crossed.
3 weeks exactly left…
Here is my take on admission difficulty in general: Purdue (hardest), VT, and Penn State UP (easiest).
The acceptance rates listed online appear to rank Purdue and Penn State-UP at around 55% and VT at 70%.
Respectfully, acceptance rates are the single most misleading statistic related to college admissions. In many cases, they are just an indicator of an abundance of under-qualified applicants.
And they don’t take into consideration the major or whether the applicant was in-state vs. out-of-state. My earlier ranking of Purdue, VT, and Penn State were specifically for OOS and Engineering, btw.
Purdue admissions data for Fall 2019 shows approx. 23,000 more applications than VT, to fill a class that was only approx. 1,400 more students than the desired class that VT wanted for 2019. That’s why acceptance rate isn’t reliable as a stand alone measure of difficulty. Interestingly, based on the chart Purdue showed, the combo of OOS and Intl students is darn near the amount of IS.
ea and rd decisions are released only 2 weeks apart, does this mean there isn’t much of an advantage applying ea (both reviewed at the same time)?
Does anyone know when RD notifications are released? My son applied at the deadline after becoming aquainted with VT at the last minute. Of course, that does not mean that it’s not his first choice. Just slow to reach his radar.
March 5th (I would expect on that day)