Applied as biology major but made it clear in my “why Madison” essay that I’m shooting for genetic counseling, not premed.
33 act (36’s on both English sections, lower on math and science)
4.0 uw, 4.8 w with several ap’s
My personal essay was pretty good and unique, and my why Madison essay was hands down the best essay I’ve ever written. I’m a white female from Illinois.
My theory is that they somehow knew I already committed to Indiana University. I also never visited the campus because IU was always my #1.
It’s much more difficult to get accepted from out of state. In addition, I think a lot of schools defer people if they think they might not be their top choice. If Wisconsin was your top choice you’d likely send a letter of continued interest, your next quarter grades, etc. They might be waiting to see if that comes from you. Also, if they are concerned you might have applied ED somewhere else they will defer you to see if you withdraw your application (you are required to do so if you were accepted somewhere ED). School rankings depend in part on the percentage of students are accept their offer of admission so they will not admit or defer if they are concerned they might not be your first choice. Out of state people often choose their in state school, especially when it’s a strong one like Illinois, because it’s cheaper. Or…it’s possible that they just weren’t ready to admit you right now for whatever reason. Like I said, Madison is not easy to get into for out of state applicants.
Also just got deferred from Wisconsin with a 33 ACT. I do have a sister currently attending UW but being a white male from suburb of Chicago doesn’t help me stand out. I did apply early decision to Vanderbilt but got denied so i don’t know if that is a reason why they deferred me.
@tytoalba no, I’m not. It’s not paranoia, Madison does track campus visits as well as website visits. Which means that they’re able to measure interest of each applicant based on the number of times they visit UWMadison-affiliated websites. I’m unsure if they know that I committed to Indiana, but there were other ways for them to know I wasn’t that interested.
Huh- how does UW track campus visits? Never heard of that. Never heard admissions would find out if you met wit a professor either as I doubt any would waste their time reporting that to anyone. Being premed versus another end goal is irrelevant as well.
I doubt that essay was as spectacular as you believe it was. ALL essays should be unique as every person is unique. Yours may well have been very good- as were thousands of others.
Disagree with your theory unless that came out in the essay, in which case it was not a great essay.
Do agree with posters who point out fallacies in logic. You may be a great candidate but there are far too many of those for UW to accept them all. A deferral is not a rejection- it just means being in the pool with the rest of the students who apply by the deadline. Remember, some who have yet to apply have the best stats but wanted to go elsewhere but did not get in early action to another school.
OP doesn’t mention what area of IL but some suburban Chicago high schools might be quite competitive just due to the sheer number of applicants who apply to Madison. Also, it’s possible that her school’s yield is low, suggesting that Madison is a backup or a second choice for many or most of those kids with certain stats. Barring clear evidence of demonstrated interest such as an admissions visit, they may defer until they have more information. In OP’s case they would have called that one correctly. We were worried about the same due to my son’s stats but he had paid a visit and wrote about it in his essay.
^ There is value in this thread. As outrageous as OP’s post #7 appears at first, she does have a point. For instance, I was a bit unnerved when my son received two pretty targeted marketing e-mails shortly after setting up his CA account and adding UW-Madison (but before submitting the app). No way would they know to send specific stuff about the majors he had clicked on since he was interested in something completely different until shortly before applying to colleges this fall. Clearly, they had received info from Common Ap. itself. CA acknowledges as much when you actually look into it:
CA claims that schools can’t see the other schools to which you are applying. But there’s an awful lot of data gathered by this “convenient” application method - by Naviance, too - and it’s naive to think that schools aren’t getting some form of “helpful” data - perhaps segmented by geographic area or even high school - in order to assist them in targeting their marketing efforts. If that data is also helping them in the decision process, I wouldn’t be surprised.
Seasons Greetings! My daughter is committed so I have been using her CA to poke around the supplements for her brother’s apps for next year. As soon as I added all of his schools she called me because those schools sent her emails.