Hello, I am a high school senior who is looking into going to University of Maryland - College Park. However, one thing I regret is not trying my freshman year and doing poorly. Right now I have an 89.6 GPA and only an SAT score 1230 but I am also taking the ACT and hoping to get a higher score on that. My grades have gone up from freshman year to about an 85 GPA to 93 GPA junior year. I am also varsity on my high school track team, volunteer at my church nursery/pre-school, and have volunteered at a festival raising awareness for mental health and suicide prevention, and have went on a study abroad program camp after my sophomore year. I know my chances are within and/or below the 25th percentile but would I still have a small chance? I’m thinking to improve my chances I should apply to one of the schools that are easier to get into like music, art, english, etc. and then transfer to the business department later on since that is what I want to do. Would this improve my chances to get into University of Maryland - College Park or am I just screwed overall?
@sarahakin - Please read the following thread and its included threads If you are in-state, your odds are better and I believe that applying by Nov 1 also increases your odds. Some people may disagree with that. Also note that the Smith School of Business is the most competitive LEP at UMD. both for direct admit and internal transfer
Good Luck.
@SoofDad I am an out-of state student but I also saw that my intended major, Economics, is in the Behavior and Social Sciences Department of UMD so I would transfer into that instead and I am applying by the Nov. 1 deadline. Do you know how competitive that department is?
@SoofDad or do you know which departments are the least competitive to get into?
I don’t think it’s a good idea to apply to a major you don’t want. If you get accepted to the college, are you prepared to stay in that major if you aren’t accepted to the one you really want?
@sarahakin - Economics in the Behavior and Social Sciences is NOT a competitive major. You should apply directly to that major. When you mentioned Business in your original post, I assumed that you meant the Smith School of Business which extremely competitive. If you are accepted to UMD, but not Economics, you can do an Internal Transfer.
The competitive majors are those which are Limited Enrollment Programs (LEPs). They always have more applicants than they can accept. See the following link for the list of LEPs
Let me just clarify that the major that you apply to has absolutely no effect on your admission to the University of Maryland. Everyone is first evaluated on their own merits by the general university admission standards, not by the major they are applying for.
The first step is to be admitted to the university itself. If you are admitted to the university…then, if your major is a LEP (limited enrollment program), your application is then reviewed by the LEP by their own standards.
If your are admitted to the university and your intended major is not a LEP, you will be “admitted” to the major of your choice.
For those applying to LEP majors, it is entirely possible to be admitted to the university and not the LEP you select. Despite the question of second choice and third choice majors, if you are admitted to the university but not the LEP, they will automatically assign you to Letters and Sciences, not because you are undecided, but because they assume you will still want to try to transfer into your first choice LEP major, and the letters and sciences program has advisers that help you do that. That process is called internal transfer. As SoofDad said, the school of business is the absolutely the most competitive admissions for internal transfers.
As for “staying” in a major…not an issue for non-LEP majors, I promise. I changed my major at least 5 times when I was a student (ok, it was last century, but the principle still applies because my son also had several friends that changed a couple of times). That’s the beauty of Maryland - there are so many majors to select from, they are all solid and many of them rank among the top programs.
Note, there is one more aspect to the entire admissions review process…if you are admitted to the university and apply by Nov 1st priority deadline, your application will also be reviewed for special programs and merit scholarships. Again, that is independent evaluation and does not use same criteria as the general admissions review, nor the same criteria as the LEP review. I have seen every configuration of admissions results, and nothing can be predicted with any accuracy, nor can results posted from previous years be reverse-engineered to figure out the criteria. They really are holistic in their evaluations.
Finally, let me note that there is also one type of admission for students that have one aspect of weakness in their application, but the admissions committee really likes the applicant and thinks they would be a great fit for Maryland - it’s a spring admission, with the opportunity to still take classes in the fall through Freshman Connection.
Best of luck in the admissions process - and be sure to get your application in by Nov 1!!!
Your GPA seems more than adequate for Freshmen connection, which is technically a spring start, but you start in the fall with the only difference being that you take classes later in the day. UMD likes to keep their admitted Freshman GPA high, so if you only have a 3.6 or a 3.8, you might get Freshmen connection because they don’t want to calculate your lower gpa into their reported statistics. If you get in through Freshmen connection, you are automatically in Letters and Sciences and will have to transfer to an LEP. My sister attends UMD and her GPA was not close to a 4.2 because we go to an EXTREMELY competitve school in NY. She did FC and has a 4.0 after 3 years and was easily admitted to the business school. I would get that SAT score up though.