<p>My neighbor said girls from Maryland have the lowest acceptance rate at W&M. Is this true? And, how could he possibly know this? I've looked all over. Those data aren't in the CDS.</p>
<p>It’s bound to happen. Our well meaning neighbors, aunts, uncles, grandparents,co-workers etc. like to participate in parents’ college app anxiety. We heard some of the same chatter. “Our 4.0+ was denied.” “Not enough EC’s.” “It’s harder for the girls.” We looked at all the data available and it finally came down to me being confident in our S and his application. This process is so worrisome.And I must confess, I was a nervous wreck on ED day until he received the acceptance email at 9pm. Hang in there!</p>
<p>
He probably knows one girl from Maryland who was rejected. From his point of view, that’s 100%.</p>
<p>W&M reported on its most recent CDS that 39% of male applicants were accepted and 27% of females were admitted. So statistically, on the surface, girls have a tougher road into a school that wants to maintain a gender-balanced student body. I also recall reading on CC at some time in the past that the stats for OOS admits was higher – I have no idea by how much – than in-state admits.</p>
<p>As for Maryland girls having the lowest acceptance rate? I always heard it was New York! Or New Jersey! Or Connecticut! </p>
<p>I would relax. You aren’t likely to find that information and even if you could what difference would it make? Things will work out fine in the end (from a father whose NYS daughter with >75th percentile stats was waitlisted at W&M 3 years ago).</p>
<p>I am a caucasian girl from Maryland, and I was accepted ED with a 1310 SAT (CR+M) and a 3.7 Gpa. W&M does get nearly twice as many applications from females as from males, and States like MD NJ and PA are overrepresented, but of course that would never rule out one particular demographic. Girls from Maryland just need to find different ways to stand out, as geographic and gender diversity won’t provide them an edge. Good luck!</p>
<p>DougBetsy:</p>
<p>I don’t know whether it’s hardest for Maryland girls, as opposed to girls from some other state, to get into W&M. </p>
<p>However, here are two data points.</p>
<p>(1) Maryland neighbors Virginia. I have observed over the years that many students end up going to a school that’s, say, no more than a 3-4 hour drive away. This may mean that there may be more Maryland applicants (after normalizing for state population), than applicants from most other OOS (except possibly New Jersey)</p>
<p>Note the following numbers of enrolled students from states neighboring Virginia + PA, NJ, NY & CT (taken from p. 248 of the 2010-11 W&M course catalog)</p>
<p>Connecticut - 107
Delaware - 27
Maryland - 253
New Jersey - 290
New York - 247
North Carolina -110
Pennsylvania - 265
Tennessee - 29
West Virginia- 9</p>
<p>Given the large number of enrolled students from Maryland, W&M must have a correspondingly large number of applicants from Maryland, as well. </p>
<p>(2) Also, check out the following PSAT cutoffs for 2011:</p>
<p>Connecticut 219
Delaware 215
Maryland 220
New Jersey 221
New York 217
North Carolina 214
Pennsylvania 216
Tennessee 212
West Virginia 202</p>
<p>Maryland is second behind NJ in this list. I would imagine that the admissions committee seeks a “balance” of girls from various states. And since they likely have lots of applicants from Maryland, it is inevitable that a given Maryland girl who is academically very qualified may not get in, simply because there are so many other academically very qualified Maryland girls.</p>
<p>Best luck to you/your daughter etc.</p>
<p>I’m going to hijack this thread for a moment and just spent a moment to complain about how much it stinks to be a female college applicant from NJ. This situation with W&M having the most applicants from NJ, therefore it being most competitive to be accepted from NJ, is one I see at almost every school I have applied to. My PSAT score would have made me a NMSF in almost any other state but NJ (and my PSAT was definitely a fluke, because my SAT score was through the roof in comparison). And don’t even get me started on the New Jersey stereotypes.</p>
<p>NJ and Md both suffer from the same deficiency: Other than our flagships, the public U’s are rather mediocre. That’s what drives our students out of state. Sad and ironic considering our K-12 programs are quite good according to PSAT scores. </p>
<p>Thanks for the data, sjb.</p>
<p>I completely agree, DougBetsy. College Park and St. Mary’s are great schools, but they represent the complete opposite ends of the spectrum, with CP’s population of 25,000 and St Mary’s of 1500. The lack of a happy medium was what drove me out of state.</p>
<p>bandgeek… I guess we should chalk your post up as another reason not to live in new jersey =P</p>
<p>Justa quick note to clarify a few points.</p>
<p>We are not more selective for students in MD than we are for students from any other state. We do our best to admit out-of-state students from a wide variety of regions/states. Posters are correct in that we do get more applicants from particular states/regions than others but we do not set quotas for any particular state or region (thus we would never not take a particular student from MD just because they were from MD).</p>
<p>The overarching point here is not whether you’re from NJ or PA or MD or any other state. We have more out-of-state applicants in our pool than in-state. Combine that with the fact that a smaller percentage of our class is out-of-state (35%) and it makes things more competitive for any out-of-state applicant, regardless of what state you’re from. We do make some very tough decisions recognizing that we cannot admit a lot of really great students. That in no way diminishes your accomplishments. It simply speaks to how many accomplished students are in our pool.</p>