My son was deferred EA. He already sent his ACT scores, wrote the essays and sent Teacher recommendations. Is there anything else he needs to do to get reviewed for regular decision?
If he is deferred EA, does this mean he won’t qualify for scholarships?
I’d ask Mr. Graves on the UGA admissions blog as he’s generally super helpful!
Hi @MomMartha - I was also deferred. When I read the admissions thread, it indicated if your file was complete, you didn’t need to do anything else to be considered. Good luck to your son!
Mr. Graves is helpful but of course has to be careful with what he says/promises because people will be quick to make assumptions and hold him to it. So, does anyone have a feel for how many deferred they ended up accepting last year from a number or percentage standpoint. Or a feel for if they will be accepting many this year? Someone did ask this to him and he wouldn’t answer.
As an OOS student, a deferral is almost akin to a denial since a March notification would be too late and by then will likely feel invested in another school, may want to make housing deposit, etc. Kind of a bummer having a 34 UGA ACT (real is 33, but they only take math/eng) and a solid GPA for our school. Unweighted it’s only a 3.7, but that’s with all honors classes (that get no UGA bump) that are extremely challenging to get an A (they only hand out a handful, and these are kids going to T20 type schools). It’s hard when you hear other schools have grade inflation and that’s likely why the deferral happened. Extracurriculars are stellar, so with a holistic read, there’s a chance, but it feels very doubtful at this time.
@MomMartha I think it’s a very good assumption that deferrals from EA would be unlikely to qualify for a scholarship. Perhaps unless it’s something very unique that the holistic view brought to light.
Thank you. That is very helpful - but disappointing. The fact that our NOVA High School is one of the top in the country, and the AP/Honors classes are really difficult, I was hoping GA would want this caliber of students.
@MomMartha your son still has a good chance of gettibg accepted and qualifying for a scholarship. My son is currently a oos freshman at UGA. Although he was accepted EA, I recall several people last year that were deferred, but eventually accepted with scholarships. The majority of oos, including my son, received the “classic scholars waiver”. I realize that it’s disappointing to not have received an acceptance, especially for someone who has excelled and probably deserves to get in, but don’t give up! I don’t know the number, but I recall that there were a large amount that were initially deferred, and eventually accepted with scholarships. You may actually be able to google this info. Best of luck to your son!
Hi. We visited UGA’s first look day 2 weeks ago. A lot of people asked the same question you have, and we were told that deferral just means you go in with the pool of regular applicants. You will still be eligible for merit scholarships if you meet the score/grade criteria for them, and you will find out in March along with your decision letter. The scholarships are not automatic though, (as they are in some schools if you meet the criteria.)
We are also OOS, and my son was deferred too (32 ACT, 3.9, lots of APs). Another student from our school was accepted with slightly higher scores than my son (34 ACT, 4.0 GPA). But… This accepted student only received 9,000 in scholarships from UGA, which was disappointing. His parents were very surprised as he has been offered full tuition at other similar schools. With that information, we have decided to go elsewhere as my son liked another school equally as well and received a great scholarship offer from them. So basically, we realized that even if my son does get accepted at UGA, the scholarship will most likely be less than half of what he has been offered at another large, equally great Southern State school.
When we were at UGA, it was hard not to notice all of the building going on. It looks like the school is working hard to invest in the facilities right now. Although it is a beautiful campus, many of the buildings are old and in need of updating. (We especially noticed this in the Engineering department). We thought that it looked like a lot of the funding was going into repairs and upgrades instead of into scholarships… Just an observation we made. Maybe in future years it will change, but as for now it looks like UGA is not offering some of the top kids the same amount of money they can get at other similar schools. And incidentally, one girl in our tour group even approached the admissions officer after our session and asked if UGA considers matching a student’s offer from another school. The admissions rep said “No, we do not.”
I hope this information helps you. Someone a while ago told my son to take his good grades and scores and “Go where the money is”. Fortunately for us, that turned out to be a school that he loved equally as well as Georgia.
It appears from our high school UGA did a hard cut at 4.0, regardless of ACT or rigor of classes. My son was deferred with a 32 ACT and 3.85 GPA with mainly Advanced and AP classes whereas a classmate with a 29 ACT and 4.2 GPA with mostly regular classes was admitted. Sadly, I think my son has moved on, he feels that their acceptance plan is flawed. And his classmate that was accepted decided on another school as well. From our standpoint, it doesn’t seem that UGA is taking their acceptance process very seriously…GPA is all that matters.
Hi @Margaret1995 - I’m in-state with a 33 super (32 natural) and a 4.18 UGA GPA - lots of rigor etc. I ended up getting deferred.
While they claim there is no quotas by school, at our school no one under a 95 unweighted GPA was admitted. Some of those who were admitted had an 30/31 ACT, which really confused me.
I think they had a formula that used unweighted numeric - as I can’t figure out how I would have been deferred with stronger ACT - especially in english and math. My As are 91-94 for the most part, which makes me think that is what got me.
Onward to regular admission!
I thing Georgia follows their statement on EA’s very closely. For the most part, they treat their EA as if they were a numbers school. What matters to them is GPA (heavily weighted), rigor (heavily weighted) and test scores (lower weighting). They tell you they would rather base their decision on 3 years of demonstrated work (grades) than 3 hours of testing. Seems like they just take the top X thousand of applications and offer them admittance. The next X thousand are deferred, and the bottom X applications are rejected.
It is not until the regular acceptance process that it becomes a more holistic process.
I do agree that deferring top students probably makes them less excited about going to Georgia (unless its your #1 choice). I know my son definitely feels this way. He was excited up until the deferral came out and then has lost all excitement as there was really no additional direction given or any further communication from Georgia to keep the momentum going. UGA has moved from a #1/#2 position to #4/#5 so even if he gets accepted, there is at least a 50% chance he will not accept.
I honestly dont think there is a cut and dry formula. My child was accepted with less than a 4.0 weighted but close and to it and has the equivalent of about 13 AP’s with stellar ap scores and a 35 act. Only they know why they do what they do. If I recollect they were also doing some holistic admissions during early action.