Chances of getting into A&M? *help*

Colleges and Universities A-Z Texas A&M University
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Hey guys! I’ve just been feeling really anxious and checking my Howdy portal for the past two weeks every hour of the day. Could you guys chance me based on my stats? Thanks!

GPA and Rank: 4.07 W (80/224) (Top 35%) / 3.58 UW (67/224) (Top 30%)
SAT Score: 1200 590 W / 610 R
ECs : NHS Vice President, FBLA Treasurer, Class Officer, Theatre Club Thespian, Band member, Student Council, Fitness Club
Volunteering: 100+ hours
Awards: Band-related state level competitions
Essay: Wrote about coming from Vietnam at a young age, being poor, and how its led to me wanting to be an entrepreneur
Major: 1st choice: Mays (Marketing) 2nd choice: Liberal Arts (Economics BA)
Applied date: 9/04 and was “complete and in review” on 9/11
Extra: First-gen college student, qualify for affirmative action, poverty level income family

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@futureaggie405 : Scores and class rank are 50% of what is considered for TAMU admissions. Your class rank and SAT score are below the Academic Admit threshold. But hopefully your essay and LORs discussed how you have overcome growing up in poverty and are demonstrating a strong drive to succeed. That is the other 50% of the review process and is the part that we can’t see on the forum. Hopefully, you have touched the heart of the reviewer.

There are posts on this forum which breakdown the chances for Review Admissions based on past years’ statistics. I can’t seem to post links but maybe you can find those posts or someone else can post the links/data.

If you can take the SAT again or the ACT (they offer one at TAMU that is only scored for TAMU) and improve your score, that could help.

Mays only takes 1,000 Freshman and almost all of those seats are filled by Top 10% Auto Admits and Academic Admits. Sometimes very high scoring students who are outside of the Top 25% get into Mays. From what I have read on this forum for the past couple of years, most Review Admission candidates who want Mays are asked to choose their second choice Major, IF they are offered Full Admissions. Getting into Mays Business School at TAMU is just extremely, extremely competitive. When the 1,000 seats are filled, that is it.

Just for comparison: My HS Class of 2017 daughter with 3.5 unweighted gpa, high 4s weighted, SAT 1250 (580M, 670R), ACT 27, ranked in 53% of her class, received an offer of TAMU Blinn-TEAM in mid February 2017. She originally planned to Major in English.

Blinn-TEAM is a great opportunity. Full Admissions is always “Plan A”, but I consider Blinn-TEAM and Gateway both as “Plan A-” as those offers keep you living in CStat. You should also have a Plan B and apply to other safety schools. You might be offered a PSA and it is a good idea to know about the other schools in the TAMU system. You can transfer into TAMU later if you aren’t offered Full/Blinn-TEAM/Gateway, as long as you plan ahead and take the appropriate classes and make great grades. But transferring into Mays is supposed to be harder than getting in as a Freshman. There is also the PTA program, check that out on the TAMU website. Just be prepared for any type of offer. Don’t depend on only receiving a full admissions offer. It really doesn’t matter where you start out, if you finish college at TAMU, the diploma and ring are the same.

If you can improve your SAT test score, that will help. Can you channel the energy that you are putting into checking online towards studying to improve your score?

As a review candidate, you are probably not going to receive an offer until possibly Feb.2019 or later. That is a very, very long time from now! There are just many, many thousands of applications and the Automatic and Academic Admits are notified first. Checking the Howdy Portal repeatedly, many times every day, doesn’t make the process go any faster.

And don’t miss out on enjoying your Senior year, it will go by quickly and can never be repeated.

Good luck, keep us posted.

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@futureaggie405
I really encourage you to have a back up school that is a safety, meaning, you know you have a good shot at being accepted, especially if you want to be accepted into a business school. The likelihood for any review applicant being offered admissions to Mays Business School is almost non existent. That you are in the 2nd quartile of your class decreases your chances of Mays even further not only for Mays, but to the University as well. That is not to say that applicants in the 2nd quartile of their class do not get accepted to the university, because they certainly do. Getting into A&M is very, very competitive for any review admit.

There are applicants in the second quarter of their class who are offered admissions to A&M and also to Blinn Team and Gateway. Blinn Team has pathway agreements for Mays that has guaranteed transition to Mays if the criteria is met. Unfortunately, the links to the agreements is not currently working, even if I access it directly from Blinn’s website. Blinn Team is an admissions offer and not something that an applicant can apply for.

Another option is the PTA program. https://admissions.tamu.edu/PTA Mays Business School is not part of PTA but other majors are. Many offered PSA go this route and attend Blinn Jr College. This is a program you must register for before you begin classes. There are other Community Colleges to participate with as well.

The breakdown for class 2022 is as follows. This is total applications received and the admissions offered, not enrolled. 41,760 total applicants
Admissions Offered:
11,159 Top 10% (26.7%)
4646 Academic (11.1%)
4115 Review full admissions (9.9%)
3813 Review Alternative admissions (blinn team, Mc Allen, Gateway) (9.1% )
11,518 PSA (27.6%) PSA
6509 Denied (15.6%) (incomplete or late applications)

If you take out the number of incomplete/late applications, and the number of auto/academic admit admissions offers,
That is 27,323 review applications that were reviewed for admissions.
of those review applicants, 4,115 offered full admissions (15%), 3813 were offered Alternative admissions (13.9%), and 11,518 were offered Pathway to System Admissions (PSA) (42.1%) of all review applicants are offered PSA.

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Your stats are a little below average. Even if you get in, the business school is hyper-competitive to get into. I think the real problem isn’t getting rejected. It’s getting accepted. Trying to get into Mays business school from the outside is near impossible. That’s why they admit almost everyone to the business school as freshmen. Otherwise, most of their business applicants would get rejected and be forced to transfer out, and their graduation rates would go down. They’re gaming the system. Unless you have near perfect stats, it’s designed to set you up for complete failure to keep their stats artificially high.

That being said, if you want to study business, you don’t need Texas A&M to get your degree and get a decent job. Metropolitan schools are the best places, because of the access to internships and job opportunities. Try University of Houston. Also, there’s UT-Dallas and UT-Arlington. There’s UTSA as well. An underrated school to try is Texas State, which is located halfway between Austin and San Antonio.

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@AggieMomAgain Thanks for the in dept feedback. I already got accepted into my safety school with is University of Houston. And yeah i’m retaking the SAT on October 6 and I’m aiming for a 1360. Not sure how much that will raise my chances of getting accepted, but we’ll see!

@Thelma2 Thanks! I didn’t know that Blinn TEAM offered an auto admit way to transfer to A&M Mays! I’ll definitely check it out once the site is back up and running.

@coolguy40 Oh wow I never thought of it that way. And I applied to UT-Dallas and Texas State already. I’ll check out the other schools as well. The reason why I want to get my degree at A&M is because of all the networking opportunities and the Aggie network is amazing.