<p>Would anyone know whether applying EA offers any real advantage or disadvantage concerning one's chances for acceptance ? Would applying EA also help one's chances for any merit aid, if any is given ? Thanks.</p>
<p>I think that EA admissions use the same criteria for admission as RD, so it shouldn’t give you an advantage to apply EA (although you will know if you were accepted or not earlier).</p>
<p>Umass as a whole doesn’t give out merit aid, although some departments (like engineering and maybe CS) do. I’m not sure if applying EA gives you first dibs on the merit aid from departments that give it.</p>
<p>I don’t go here, but…</p>
<p>Engineering gave me a $5k “honors engineering” scholarships. Business gives out merit aid (didn’t apply there tho). CS doesn’t give merit aid. The institution gives out very few large scholarships to some students (i.e. national merit finalists). It doesn’t matter when you apply… if you are in the top 25% and have a 1100+ (out of 1600 of course) SAT (1200+ for engineering) you are basically guaranteed to get in here. A top 10% and 1350+ SAT would put you in a good position for merit. This place is not MIT or Caltech; if you are worrying about merit, you are certainly in.</p>
<p>I think the 1100+ guarantee comment is a little ridiculous. There really is no such thing as a guarantee. I went to Boston Latin many years ago when UMass was just beginning it’s trend towards higher selectivity and I knew a kid with 1400+ SATs who was rejected due to what he claimed was a bad essay that he didn’t spend much time on. His class rank wasn’t top 25% but that’s more a byproduct of the high school than a deal breaker. This same kid ended up at Tufts which as far as I know, rarely accepts kids ranked below the 75th percentile. In other words, look at stats with a gigantic grain of salt and never use it to comfort yourself.</p>
<p>According to the article, “more than a fourth” of the apps were via EA. If it’s not binding, I don’t see why you wouldn’t apply to all coveted schools early. Good luck.</p>
<p>[UMass</a> Amherst Office of News & Information : News Releases : Best-Ever First-year Class of 4,100 Joins UMass Amherst As Campus Welcomes Back Students on Labor Day Weekend](<a href=“News & Events : UMass Amherst”>News & Events : UMass Amherst)</p>
<p>Okay the 1100+ is definitely a stretch but the average is 1155 and there are many people above the average (and many people below it too). I think that if you have a combination of top 25% from a competitive high school and a 1150+ SAT score and are not applying as an english, business, computer science, or engineering major, you have a high likelyhood of being admitted. There are certainly exceptions to the rule in both directions. I am not saying anything about the quality of the school. </p>
<p>UMass is probably better than 90% of the institutions out there. However, as any state school, it has to admit most people who are academically qualified for the level of education they provide (and some who are not) and those who are not end up either improving thier skills or failing out. The state’s goal is to effectively educate many future workers and academics in Massachusetts, not to be an elite group and to attain this goal most effectively they cannot be as selective as Yale or MIT.</p>
<p>The mission of the school definitely does make it harder for it to achieve the level of prestige that it is aiming for. Nevertheless, that’s what UMass is trying to do. It certainly will never be as selective as Harvard but it could in theory be as selective as Maryland or even Illinois or a top Cal school in the future. After all, why not? If there are enough other Massachusetts state schools to accomodate the quantity of “qualified” Massachusetts high school seniors, surely we can allow for some meritocracy.</p>
<p>On a related point, high school seniors live in a he said she said reality that puts an unbelievably warped emphasis on reputation. In Massachusetts, this really works against UMass. It’s the local large state university after all and a lot of local kids here really just want to go far away to some mythical small picturesque college. Also, the mean SAT score of a UMass admit is equivalent to the mean SAT score of an affluent Massachusetts public high school. This doesn’t make you stand out. Let’s not forget that 18 year olds want to stroke their egos just like everyone else and the name of your college is really a final indicator of how awesome/unique you are.</p>
<p>Actually, I think the current level of selectivity at UMass is fine and that they don’t really have to make the school more selective. There is not enough demand for public education in MA (which is oversaturated with colleges) to create a worthwhile elite (very selective) public research university like University of Texas-Austin, University of Virginia, or UC Berkeley. Also, it takes takes at least 30-50 years to build an elite reputation</p>
<p>One of the reasons that I didn’t come here is because they don’t offer any interesting programs to top students. However, I might want to come here for graduate studies, as thier ECE and CS grad programs are kick-ass. For example, UT Austin offers a variety of selective honors programs like Plan II and Turing Honors Program that are funded well, while UMass’s Commonwealth College, while quite selective, has largely become a joke and a scheduling pain. It gets less than $2 million dollars a year in funding. There are many students who choose UT Austin over Rice. The same can’t be said about UMass and any Ivy League institution. Because of this lack, the school becomes a back-up for many and this contributes to its current undergrad reputation.</p>
<p>The state needs to pump in more money to make the programs interesting for good students and not necessarily make the university elite. They should make the engineering curriculum focus more on core aspects such as teamwork and projects. By making the school “uber-selective”, UMass would be taken away from many students who barely make the admission mark but who work hand and benefit a lot from the resources.</p>
<p>I think a lot of your points make sense. However, I do think some of them are very debatable. The current level of selectivity for instance, is certainly acceptable but hardly ideal. Sophomore retention was up to 87% last year. If you think about that, that means that after just 2 semesters, 13% of the class either aren’t able to keep up, aren’t able to afford it, had life altering circumstances or decided that they hated the environment. I’m coming off as a patronizing ■■■■■■■ when I say this but I would guess that a lot of that 13% comes from the first category of not being able to keep up.</p>
<p>A lot of people think that Massachusetts doesn’t need a top tier public university because of the abundance of top tier private universities. That makes absolutely no sense to me. You mentioned Texas over Rice. I would guess plenty of kids pick Berkeley or Michigan over a competitive private as well. Why shouldn’t UMass be that good? That’s like saying that plenty of families in Lexington or Dover can afford to send their kids to Exeter or Andover so they don’t need to work on making their public school as appealing or competitive as possible. I’m not sure if that was your point (lots of Exeters in MA vs. TX).</p>
<p>You are completely right though when you talked about poor state funding having a net negative effect. That’s not an accident. That’s apathy on the part of the state and it is exactly because we have other sources of higher education to yell about. I’m inclined to believe that this is worth fixing and that the state of UMass should never be “good enough”. It should be very good.</p>
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<p>The average retention rate for public doctoral granting universities is 73%. Even the vaunted UT-Austin’s rate is only 93%. So I think UMass actually stacks up pretty well in this regard.</p>
<p>I will agree that the ComCol is not nearly what it could/should be. At a bare minimum, it should provide housing and class registration preference.</p>
<p>Yeah the retention rate is good. And by the way, public/doctoral institutions include schools such as University of Minnesota Duluth, UMass Lowell, ECU, UT Dallas, Penn State satellites (not University Park), Arizona State (with its above 95% admit rate) and many other non-flagship schools whose admissions standards are far below UMass. A fair comparison would be with other state flagships. And I never meant to imply UT Austin is that amazing. It is ranked ~47 (below UCB, UCLA, UCSD, Wisconsin, UNC, UIUC, …). I just thought that they had model honors college programs that attracted particularly bright students to a school who would otherwise consider it a back-up (auto admit via top 10% rule).</p>
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<p>I have a friend in Texas who was complaining about the top 10% rule. It’s enough kids that they can completely fill the freshman class with auto-admits, meaning if you go to a competitive high school and finish in the 11th percent - you’re screwed.</p>
<p>It’s a prime example of the law of unintended consequences.</p>
<p>They just lowered it to top 8%, which will free up 25% of the class for other students.</p>