I am a nerve wreck and needed your guys help in understanding what my chances are and the likelyhood of me making it in to TAMU
Here are my academic stats: 1410 SAT and 3.5455 GPA and a class ranking of 80/600
Oh and my sub scores on the SAT were 650 r/w and 760 math and an essay score of 16/24
With that 650 r/w, you don’t qualify for academic admit. Being a review applicant decreases your chances into the university as a full admit. You however, may be offered engineering at Galveston. In the past, a lot of high SAT but not auto admit applicants received this offer. Not that full admission isn’t possible, it is just more difficult as a review and it is impossible to say which reviews will get in.
For engineering, they are going to look for a lot more than your SAT scores, GPA and class rank. They want to see your what you readiness is for Engineering Calculus and Physics.
If you retake the SAT, you only need 10 points (660) in EBRW for academic admit (keeping your math at or above the minimum of 620). In years past, supporting documents and test scores had an extra week for their deadline (Dec 8). Still, that won’t guarantee admission to engineering. You’d need some other qualifications as well.
@Thelma2
But for engineering I thought academic admission and auto Admission doesn’t matter since it is all review anyways. I’ve seen many people get in with lower sats and class ranks so are you sure?
@Thelma2 also I’ve taken ap physics 1 and 2 as well as all preap maths and ab calc. I’ve taken all aps throughout high school.
@SitDownBeHumble I realize this is long and I hope it isn’t tl:dr I want you to understand the difference of where you are and where you could be coming from.
Other people’s stats do not matter. As easy as it is to do, you should not base your possibility as a review applicant against someone else. You do not see their whole application file and essays, and the AO’s do.
Being Auto or academic admit gets you into the university. You are a review admit. Here is how it goes down.
Before you can be reviewed for engineering, you need to gain admissions into the university. As a review applicant, your chances are diminished over being an auto/academic admit.
As a review applicant, do you have a shot at full admissions to College Station? sure. So do a lot of other review applicants. For last year’s incoming freshman class, there were 27,000 review applicants. Twenty Seven Thousand. 14% of them were offered full admissions, which included Engineering at Galveston. That is roughly 3800 across all majors. Are you going to be one of those around 14% that gains admission? Maybe. Is 10 points from being an academic admit worth that chance? That is why I said, if you can retake the SAT and qualify for academic admission, with your follow up post of your math & physics readiness, you are likely to get into engineering. General Engineering does fill up, just not by rolling admissions but by the qualified auto/academic admits.
------------------------AGMomX2 did a great job with recording and comparing admissions info. I edited out the comparison to the TAMU class of 2018. Here is the post with the whole stats. http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/texas-m-university/1974794-tamu-class-of-2018-vs-class-of-2021.html#latest
For the TAMU class of 2021, there were 42,000 applications received. 19,800 (47% of total apps) were offered full admission.
16,000 of those offers were to auto/academic admits (81% of full admissions offers).
3800 of those offers were to review (holistic) applicants (19% of full admissions offers).
Number of review applicants: 27,000
Here’s the Review Admit category breakdown: ( the quoted numbers for 2021 do not add up nicely, so estimates)
14% Full admission (College Station any major and Galveston Engineering)
9% Blinn Team
2% Gateway
39% offered PSA
26% no offer of admission/denied admissions
New categories for Class 2021 with mix of admits due to holistic review of all engineering:
Galveston Engineering 1,200 (Galveston is considered full admissions since it is a branch and not a system school)
McAllen Engineering 580
Auto and Academic admits are going to be reviewed for engineering before review admits. Most review admits for engineering will not receive an admission decision prior to December 1. A&M has to accept the auto/academic applicants and must put them somewhere if they do not qualify for engineering. Those that do qualify, will begin to fill up the number of spots allotted to incoming freshmen. They will reserve a few spots for review applicants, just as Mays does.
TAMUAdmissions on TexAgs from a July post said the following: TAMUAdmissions 8:26a, 7/25/17 AAG
“It is not an exact science, of course, but Mays may fill up about the same time as Engineering - perhaps late November or early December”.
In the past, as I said above, many review engineering applicants who had good class rank and high SAT/ACT but out of the auto/academic admit category, were offered Engineering at Galveston (again, considered a full admissions offer). At Galveston, you complete your first year courses there and auto transfer to College Station sophomore year (if you qualified for entry to major).
You have a very good SAT and class rank and are so close to academic admit. I just wanted you to understand the competitiveness as a review applicant into the university and all of the potential possibilities as such. You are soooooo close to academic admit that it would make your path a lot less nerve racking if you were to become one.
Good Luck.
@Thelma2 so can I update my SAT score after the early deadline? I will have my results 5 days after the Deadline, and it’ll take a few days to send I believe. Do you think it’s possible to update then?
@SitDownBeHumble
Here is the tricky part for me, because the early decision was implemented last year and my student’s cycle was the year before, so it was new for everyone and we were not sure how it would play out and all the details have not stuck with me, I am sorry. I need to go back and read the results thread, unless @rvhappynow or @lessonwitch2 (or anyone else) can recall if ED for engineering actually affected review admits. My memory wants to say that even though they applied by Oct. 15, the majority of review admits received decisions after Dec. 1. anyway, and more like Jan 1-Feb 19. There was a glitch and I know some auto/academic admits were differed until after Dec. 1.
Every other applicant for any major can update their admissions file through the deadline for supporting documentation (Application is Dec. 1 and supporting docs are usually a week after, but I’d do it the very day) and those qualifying for academic admit will then be accepted and your file will move to the head of the line for review.
In all other majors, the “apply early” (Aug 1 and now July 1) was for the academic/auto admits because competitive majors fill quickly. In fact, for Mays, the spots would fill before the application deadline and auto/academic admits who waited too long, would be asked to chose another major because there were no spots left in Mays.
I believe the next SAT date is Oct. 7. I would register for it and take it and submit the scores the day they are released. In the meantime, study for the EBRW portion and get those 10 points!!!
Meanwhile, I will go look at the results thread and see if I can get a glimpse if early decision applied to review admits and get back to you.
Step one is admission to the university. Step two is review for engineering. Last year, there were some hiccups in the new procedure . Engineering got ahead of the university acceptance cycles, which created problems(some students were offered engineering before they got the acceptance to the university).
My guess (and only a guess) is that will be addressed and not be the case this year. So yes, there were some review students who got notification much earlier than they normally would have. The problem they ran into was the number of applications received AFTER the first deadline, still entitled to automatic admit to the university & most likely higher rated students that they had to then figure out what to do with them. Review students are NOT required to wait for their decisions, there have always been a few reviews that hear early in the process – this new engineering process bumped that number much higher with their early answer promise.
The original (no longer valid) plan was to have the early applicant deadline be for anyone who wanted the College Station engineering campus - HOWEVER, that was overturned but the early date remained ( IMO no idea WHY it still exists – no additional commitment on the part of the early applicants). This made more sense for the review applicants to get an early answer with the OLD plan since applicants after the date would NOT be considered for CS Engineering. The current plan evaluates everyone up to Dec 1 as eligible for CS Engineering, early applicants just get early answers with no commitment needed on their part (?!) which last year did include review applicants. That does open the loophole of admission to the university given earlier to engineering review applicants – the way the system works, those students once admitted to the university can switch their major (it’s just a button you push online) so you could beat the system of the rolling admissions to major in popular majors. Did anyone do that last year? IDK, but it certainly was an easy option given there is no administrator approval involved to switch majors.
I haven’t seen this year’s info – did they promise a decision date again? Did they say those admitted to the university or just those who apply by this date? when they use to allocate the last 15% of the slots by holistic evaluation, they set a date ( if memory serves me it was Jan 15th), that you had to have admission to the university in order to be in the engineering major last 15% review pool. That had both automatic admits & review admits competing against each other BUT if you had not been admitted to the university by that date, you were out of the running. By the time those slots were being evaluated, the highly desired non-engineering majors were already full so it wasn’t an issue. New procedure, new timing, new problems – I wouldn’t count on a repeat of last year’s results. Each year they tend to tweak the process of admissions.
FWIW, you can direct submit your scores from the ACT or SAT by naming the school when you sign up. Those get processed the fastest. We had kids in our NSC who had scores at TAMU before they even were advised of their scores themselves. TAMU only counts the highest scores & ignores the rest - so it is not a risk to direct send( & it is cheaper 
)
@Thelma2
“All applicants who select Engineering as a first choice major, including those who qualify for automatic admission to the University via Top 10% or Academic admission, will be reviewed holistically for placement into General Engineering. To qualify for Early Action notification, your admission file must be complete by October 15.”
and
“Early Action
Applicants who select Engineering as a first choice major and have a complete admissions file by October 15 will be notified in early December.”
Seems like anyone can apply early and will be reviewed holistically.
Let’s say I take the October SAT and submit my score 1-2 weeks after early deadline, is that fine as long as they haven’t reviewed my application?
@SitDownBeHumble
Hello! I reccomend you turn in your full application asap before the EA Deadline and update your SAT scores when they come in . But for now just use the SAT score you have to complete your application. Because the early action deadline is for having a completed application. Doesn’t necessarily need to be a final one.
I was review and got into engineering November and the university December 3rd after doing early action.
@SitDownBeHumble Have you taken ACT? TAMU offers a residual ACT that you can take at any time (during the week, some saturdays, etc.). The deal is, they score immediately and you find out next day. TAMU uses this as an official test but you cannot use that score for any other colleges. You did really well on SAT, thought this might be a chance to show what you can do on ACT and it shows TAMU how interested you are in them.
Also, I knew a student last year (current freshman) that was top 2%. He applied for engineering. He got into TAMU (obviously), but he did not get into engineering. He kind of blew off the SAT and essays. SO… make everything count. Write all 3 essays if you haven’t already. Call the testing services if interested in taking ACT at TAMU. Show how much you want it. It will help. Good Luck. Keep us posted!
TAMU doesn’t send out denials until after the deadline for additional docs to be submitted. They do deny majors if they are full prior to that date, but not admission to the university or engineering major. They don’t change their decisions, so they wait until applicants have the opportunity to submit updates to their files. Information after the deadline dates are not considered for admission. Basically any news before the Dec 1 deadline will be good news, but don’t wait thinking …well if it’s a no-go I’ll then sign up for the test… it will be too late.