@oldUVAgrad Not as many kids seem to apply to W&M as to UVA from our high school, so I’m probably working with skewed data. The average accepted GPA at W&M, at our school, is a couple of points lower than at UVA, so I assumed it was easier, for a kid like him, with markedly better test scores than grades. I guess we’ll see! (By the way, I taught English at UVA a hundred years ago, and got my PhD there. It is a lovely campus, and just now, staring at the snow falling, I wish I were back there!)
@marysidney good luck to your son in the college admission process, I feel your pain as the parent of a prospective history major with a relatively lower GPA. Hopefully our sons will end up at the school that’s the best place for them.
W&M is HARDER to get in to by the simple fact that their freshman class is only about 1500 students and UVA’s first year class is about 3,700. Approximately 70% of students must come from VA. We are in state and maybe three from our high school get into W&M compared to about ten to UVA.
If you are looking for merit aid consider VCU. They give a lot of departmental scholarships. There is a big push on, according to our local newspaper, to enroll more African American students. Also University of Richmond, which is private, is known to be generous. They have a law school. Most lawyers here (Richmond) went there or UVA with a sprinkle of W&M.
@Charliesch LSU is simply a safety, if my son gets into UT then he’d go there over LSU or Alabama. Our family has deep roots with UT as both my wife and are alums and my sons grandfather is also a UT graduate. We think he has a pretty good shot, but nothing’s guaranteed.
We’ve struggled with the idea of whether to apply to the moderately selective schools. Schools like Boston University, Brandeis and Rochester University. My son’s preference has been to go to a public school and with all due respect to those institutions their academic ranking (a subset of US News overall rankings) is actually lower than schools like UT-Austin and Wisconsin- although they tend to have graduation percentage, lower admission rates and student to faculty ratios.
@ReadytoRoll We didn’t seek advice of guidance counselors when my son applied to UVa last year. He just loved the school. After we applied, we learned that no one from his high school had ever been admitted to UVa. We also learned how difficult it was to get admitted as an OOS but only a month AFTER applying. We didn’t realize that the stats for admission were different for OOS students. Oh well, we thought. He was admitted to SEAS as an OOS during the early action round. I’m glad we didn’t ask the guidance counselors and he just applied where he wanted to go. He is in his first year and loving UVa. He was salutatorian, 34 ACT, a few interesting extracurriculars he had a long history of dedication to (over 6 years). Even so, I think our guidance counselors probably would’ve discouraged him, they seem to push only in-state schools (his high school is a small rural one).
@neonpinklime - congrats to him! Up here, part of the formula of applying includes visiting. We are told that if the kids don’t visit, they have little chance of being admitted. This doesn’t hold as true for public schools but may for UVa, and it’s hard to work a visit in (the school is about a nine or ten hour drive) if one thinks the chances of admission are so slim! Did you visit the school before applying?
As of a year ago, at UVa, Dean J. said the admissions office didn’t track whether a student visited or not. She said they only added a sign-in sheet at the admissions office because so many visiting parents insisted that they had to be able to to sign in.
However, there are many other colleges that do carefully track “student interest,” because they are trying to lower their admit rates and increase their yield rates among admitted students. Those are often the same colleges that really push binding early decisions (which I hate). For those schools, unless you live far away, you should try to do an official admissions tour prior to an admissions decision.
At UVa, if you live far away and only have time for one visit, it is much better to do it during an admitted student day. You will receive much more useful information than on the standard admission tour, which wastes too much time on secret societies .Moreover, you lower the risk of a student really falling in love with UVa during the visit and then not getting admitted. It is better to fall in love with the place after an offer of admission.
Father of two – Boston U. does not meet 100% of need. U. of Rochester does. However, spending 4 winters in Rochester or Boston may be a real shock for someone from Texas.
Even though I live in a northern state, I discouraged my kids from applying anywhere in the snow belt of upstate New York and New England because I thought it would get really depressing by February and March. Also, Boston is a really expensive place, particularly if you need off-campus housing as an upperclassman.
You may find that some colleges that normally do not meet 100% of need will meet 100% of need for a highly qualified African-American student. (At some private colleges, it is often the student who just barely gets admitted or who gets admitted from the wait list who gets the worse financial aid).
There are tens of really great liberal arts colleges with excellent financial aid. I’m simply suggesting that you add a couple to keep options open, in case your son’s tastes change before April of his senior year…
If your son really wants a public university in the northeast, I 'd add University of Delaware to your list. It is about the same size as UVa, has many of the same academic offerings, is in a similar town, has a similar campus, and has a similar social life. They offer some need and merit based aid for OOS students. If they really want someone, they will meet 100% of need. They met 100% of need for my son but not my daughter.
UVa admissions has stated that they don’t consider “demonstrated interest” when considering applicants. So visiting UVa would not help your chances. However, my Son did visit but did not take a tour. We walked around Grounds and ate at a dining center. We stopped in Admissions to get a map but that was it.
Demonstrated interest in the way it is used today (logging contacts with students) hasn’t been part of the admission process in the decade I’ve been here.
[url=<a href=“http://uvaapplication.blogspot.com/2006/09/change-is-in-air.html%5DPre-2007%5B/url”>http://uvaapplication.blogspot.com/2006/09/change-is-in-air.html]Pre-2007[/url], applying ED would have been a way of showing interest…but we happily let that form of early go and are using EA now. 
Hi @"Dean J" I think I read an entry on the UVa admissions blog that you maintain that explicitly state as such. Let me state that I really have learned a lot from reading the blog. One of your admission officers who visited Houston, Texas last year mentioned it at a joint UVa, NC and Notre Dame information session that my son and I attended. Even with UVa likely been out of reach for us, I’ve learned a great deal from reading the Peabody blog.
I wouldn’t say your son is out of reach for UVa. I’d say he would be in the middle of a very competitive pool, and needs to have lots of alternatives.
For an unhooked applicant, OOS admissions at UVA appear to be at the level of Ivy League schools 5 through 8. Very tough. A friend’s kid was an unhooked OOS candidate that got accepted to Michigan, accepted to Tufts, waitlisted at Vandy, rejected (and not even deferred from EA to RD) at UVA.
Not sure how strong the male AA hook is as compared to other hooks, but that is a pretty good hook. You’d have a shot if the stats are not too far below wherever UVA’s 25th percentile stats are.
It doesn’t hurt to apply. Our local public high school was having more luck getting kids into ivies and Stanford than UVA. I told my son its ok to apply, but if they didnt take (fill in the blank), they are not taking you.
He applied and got in. He is a very happy first year student. One of his high school classmates (who is fantastic and very happy somewhere else) did not. I would have picked his classmate.
You never know. My son tells kids to really work hard on the essays. UVA has been a great fit for my son. Midwesterner who knew no one. Super happy.
Sounds like he has a good shot, but sir, I highly recommend talking to your son about getting a higher score on the SAT, as a higher, above average SAT will be more “persuasive” than an above average ACT. With higher basic numbers (GPA, SAT, etc), it is MUCH more likely that he might get in. Also, I don’t know if anyone has drawn your attention to the Jefferson Scholarship that UVA offers, but in my opinion it is one of the best programs in the nation. It is a full ride scholarship to UVA with extra perks, and if your son could start working to secure a nomination sooner rather than later, it might be in his best interest. Sorry for replying so late compared to the original post, and good luck!
The thing about UVa is that it accepts most of its students from Virginia. So OOS applicants–and there are many–are competing for a much smaller piece of the pie. We live in CA but my son got accepted this year, the trick being that he is a legacy, and at UVa legacies are considered part of the in-state pool.
Out of fairness to my son though, I should point out that he had fantastic stats and may have made it even without the legacy!
It is my understanding that during the admissions process the out of state legacy’s stats are considered with the in-state students’ stats. But, these legacy students are still out of state applicants and are counted among the out of state pool when considering how many out of state offers to extend. So, the out of state legacy (assuming he/she has the stats) has a better chance than a non-hooked out of state student.
UVA admissions stated a few years ago that they planned to continue to evaluate OOS legacy applications on a similar standard as IS applications. They don’t speak on the subject often, but that’s the latest official word on the subject. There does not appear to be any legacy benefit to IS applicants, which makes sense because no one would want it to become a self-reinforcing cycle of legatees having an advantage over other Virginians.
They are required by state law to put together a class that is at least 2/3 Virginians, no more than 1/3 OOS. (They actually skirt that line pretty closely, and got just on the wrong side of it in 2011-2013. Whoops.)
The OOS admission rate has been trending into the lower 20s, while the OOS application numbers have been exploding. 10 years ago they had 9,213 completed OOS applications competing for 972 seats, and 6,444 completed IS applications competing for 2140 seats. Last year it was up to 21,963 OOS completed applications for 1,217 seats, and 9,058 completed IS applications for 2503 seats. http://avillage.web.virginia.edu/iaas/instreports/studat/hist/admission/first_by_residency.htm
Just a couple points…
The agreement UVa has about the VA:OOS ratio isn’t a law, but was part of the charter agreement that was negotiated just before I got here. Every year, a few state legislators try to get a bill through that mandates a ratio, but it fails in appropriations.
The agreement is about the UVa population overall, so we don’t have to hit the ratio on the nose with each class, though we do try to.
Regarding how legacies are read, this isn’t a secret and we talk about it because some people assume they get Virginia privileges as OOS legacies (the tuition bill will make it obvious that they don’t have residency!). It’d be rare for this not to come up at an info session or evening program because it’s such a common question. I’ve probably answered the question half a dozen times in blog comments this season.
The ratio of out of state to in-state undergrad students has been pretty consistent for at least the last 40 years. The U. has increased the number of both in-state and out of state students during that time. However, a large part of the out of student increase has been comprised of international students. 30 years ago, there were very few undergrad international students at UVa.