<p>Is it true that it's harder to get into UVA from Northern VA than it is from out of state?</p>
<p>LOL, no. It's not. Rofl.</p>
<p>Where did this one come from? Please name a source...people never say where they get this info, so it's hard to nip it in the bud. </p>
<p>Honestly, if you hear it from a neighbor, kid at school, or someone who graduated years ago, it's probably not true.</p>
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Where did this one come from? Please name a source...people never say where they get this info
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<p>Do you know where they hear it? From pushy, idiotic soccer moms. You should hear some of the rumors I've heard from my mom's friends about UVA and other schools.</p>
<p>You are right, very small sample size, a parent who's child had been rejected despite straight A's and SAT's near 1500.</p>
<p>Yeah that's insane. I would think NoVa students almost have the easiest time, since they have the wealth of APs, SAT classes, ect. Not all NoVa kids take advantage of those resources, or are able to enjoy them. But on average, the NoVa-applicant has had many more opportunities than others from more rural areas. I think this makes for a better applicant in a slightly unfair way, but all the same. And until they establish quotas for ensuring certain numbers come from each area of VA, I still think NoVa/FFX county students will prevail. So no worries, OOS is still ridiculously hard.</p>
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despite straight A's and SAT's near 1500
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Well, darn. If that's all we care about, I wonder why I bother looking at the program, recs and essays.</p>
<p>The "this is how UVA admission operates" experts are going to be making up even better policies in another month. We should actually try to document the rumors. It might lighten the mood around here while everyone's waiting for us to finish the review process.</p>
<p>Heh, I laughed out loud when I saw the first post.</p>
<p>No one from my school has been rejected with straight As and a 1500...if you look at the list of stats it just hasn't happened. If they have straight As and a 1500 they usually have essays in line (if they actually spent time on them - perhaps that may be the problem) and hopefully they would have shown participation somewhere, UVa isn't asking for you to be class president all four years or something. Someone with a 1500 would generally be in IB classes - if not, there's another big problem. Typically the rate has been much better at my school for IB diploma candidates, as one would imagine since they are taking the most challenging courseload. </p>
<p>Basically, I'd imagine there's more to the story of a straight A, 1500 rejection. Someone can easily have a disciplinary infraction and not tell for instance, or maybe they did their essays in a few hours the day the application was due, or maybe they waited until the last minute on their recs and the quality was consequently poor. Maybe all of these things. Usually when I hear these stories eventually such threads start to emerge. Well...it was weighted...and there was that problem last year...etc.</p>
<p>Edited: I should probably add that I don't actually know anyone personally who got a 1500 in the last few years, although I think there have been a VERY few. Anyway I would expect these people to be in IB classes but if not that raises a red flag. High potential and low motivation. However our IB program is fairly booming so a lot of people are in at least a few classes period and someone with scores that high likely basically wouldn't be allowed to just stay in all regular classes with no questions asked.</p>
<p>Dean J...let's not kid around here, there has to be something seriously wrong with that application to have it be rejected in-state. GPA and SAT are by far the most important factors.</p>
<p>Case in point: at TJ, a 3.7 and a 1450 (under the old system) equals a ticket to UVA, unless the essays are incomprehensible and the recommendations are awful. believe me, I know, this is not a "rumor". we had a database of almost all tj college acceptances where kids posted their numbers and where they got accepted and rejected. It was virtually unheard of to be rejected with those numbers or above, and very difficult to be accepted below those thresholds.</p>
<p>I think a little more transparency is in order here. Only in extreme cases will essays and recs overcome numbers below an unspoken limit. </p>
<p>of course this does not apply to legacies or minorities.</p>
<p>bigdirs,</p>
<p>I think Dean J was being slighty facetious when he was talking about the fictional "straight A 1500 SAT student from NOVA." The point he was making is that UVa admissions are holistic and not based solely on a 3 hour test score and your GPA.</p>
<p>The mythical instate kid with a 1500 SAT and straight A's seems to pop up every year. If such a kid even existed, and you were to dig deeper, you'd find that maybe he had terrible recommendations, a criminal record or, most likely, a "4.0" weighted GPA that barely put him in the top 20% of his graduating class (or worse). </p>
<p>Dean J probably doesn't have the numbers (or isn't willing to divulge them), but I'd be willing to bet that nearly every instater with an SAT above 1450 and a top 5% transcript gets in. UVA doesn't really have any business rejecting or waitlisting those people. But the ones with weighted "4.0s" that don't even rank well among their classmates? Sure.</p>
<p>um, NoVa comprises 33% of UVA! Out of State comprises another 33-35% Its much harder to get in from out of state because they get on average over 5,000 more applications from out of state then from in state....so ye...ur shot is better if you are in state especially if you are from a feeder high school like TJ, Yorktown, Stonewall Jackson, etc etc...i know all this cus of my friends, and im not even from Virginia</p>
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there has to be something seriously wrong with that application to have it be rejected in-state.
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With 18,000 applications for 6000 offers (3000 spots), there are plenty of good kids from Virginia getting denied.</p>
<p>One word: program</p>
<p>We talk about this at every information session. If a school is offering AP/IB/magnet and college credit classes and the student isn't taking them, the As aren't so impressive.</p>
<p>There are some other rare cases where a student with stellar academics would be denied. For the most part, those cases are clear cut.
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I think a little more transparency is in order here.
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Aside from posting videos of us reading applications on Youtube, I don't know how much more transparent we can get! I sense that people just don't want to hear what we say: there are no quotas for northern Virginia, there are no quotas for specific high schools or types of schools, and there are no GPA or SAT cut offs.</p>
<p>I have a suggestion, in the interest of transparency without Youtube. Why not release the average SAT scores for accepted students disaggregated by: out of state, Northern Virginia, and the rest of the state? If there is no bias against NOVA then the out of state scores should be higher and the scores for the other two categories should be essentially the same. This test works unless you believe that Northern Virginia students systematically write worse essays, get worse recs., get worse grades and take less demanding course loads than the rest of the state.</p>
<p>I know many are desperate to reduce this to a quantifiable process, but it makes no sense to do so.</p>
<p>Dean J:</p>
<p>I'm afraid you folks in the admissions department will always fight a battle with this sort of stuff. There are WAY too many kids and parents who invest WAY too much of their self-esteem in those acceptance letters. So, you get the parent who exaggerates the rejected kid's accomplishments to begin with. This gets passed on in the parent community and every parent adds 20 or so points to the SAT score and a tenth of a point or so to the GPA. In the end, you get a myth about some poor schmo of a student who got a 1550, won the Siemens Intel, has straight As in high school and straight As in the quantum mechanics courses she's taking on the side ... and DIDN'T GET IN TO UVA!!!!</p>
<p>Part of this is the pschology of the anxious. After all, if the future Rhodes Scholar didn't get into UVA, then it won't be so bad when MY kid doesn't get in, right?</p>
<p>Still, it is a problem for you because Virginia legislators, never the sharpest knives in the drawer, get angry letters from constituents and then feel a need to act on this nonsense. Good luck with the problem ;-).</p>
<p>BTW, don't publish the out-of-state, in-state, and NOVA vs. the-rest-of-Virginia numbers. It will just increase internal strife at the U and give you more headaches with the GA than you want. The NOVA GA reps will complain that kids from other parts of Virginia get in with lower stats than NOVA kids. The rest of Virginia will complain that NOVA is getting half of all the slots allocated for Virginians.</p>
<p>You can't win that battle.</p>
<p>Tarhunt - you hit it right on. Job well done. There is absolutely no way to make everyone happy. GA wants 75% IS, OOS applicants wants it 50/50, NoVa kids have sometimes ridiculous stats, but southern VA kids feel neglected and overlooked. Meanwhile, people at UVA are banging their heads against the wall with all the angry parent calls.<br>
I must say, even as I fill out my application for transfer right now, I already feel bad for the adcoms over my application. I've been contacting their admissions office/SEAS office left and right since november, im sending in a huge application, and i'm probably one of those "well the numbers arn't totally there, but then theres the rest of the application which is outstanding", and im IS, so once again, they'll be fighting the NoVa/IS battle.
Then, you always get the sobbing calls from the ED rejected, going nuts about what they should send to increase their RD chances, and the parents flipping out about why they didn't get in ED...man, it must be a very rewarding, but very nerve-wrecking job to be an admissions worker at UVa.</p>
<p>Curious, there is more than one problem with that kind of assessment. The SAT is a good measure of aptitude on a whole, but it is also a measure of privelege and resources. Even some differences on the test are easily explained by the fact that NoVA has many more people who are able to pay for SAT classes or other kinds of preparation. Heck, I bet NoVA even has more parents paying for those people who write or give advice on essays. Also, with UVA's quest for diversity, less-African-American-diverse NoVA will obviously have people with higher SAT scores being admitted than the rest of Virginia, where many more black applicants are being admitted. </p>
<p>If you really want to know those numbers, look it up online somewhere. I remember seeing something months ago where a bunch of other complainers came up with some numbers. I couldn't tell if they were real or not... probably not.</p>
<p>sv3a:</p>
<p>Exactly. The numbers don't tell the whole story. It's like looking at the times for a cross-country race without understanding that every racer ran a different course. The times mean nothing without an understanding of the course.</p>