<p>One of my science teacher's daughter is applying to engineering schools next year, and he knew that GTech was one of the best, and he wanted my input on whether GTech would be about as difficult to get into as previous years, or a lot more difficult.</p>
<p>I'm lucky enough to have been accepted this year, but I don't have enough information to give him an educated answer.</p>
<p>Does anyone have any input, or maybe can cite some precedence, where joining the Common App caused a massive influx of applications, or a higher SAT score range? This year itself was the toughest it's ever been, with the acceptance rate dropping to 39% from 52% last year, and the 75% percentile SAT for other years being the average for this one.</p>
<p>I can’t say about sat score range, but I’m pretty sure using the common app does cause application numbers to rise. USC is one example, if I remember correctly, they switched to the common app for the 2012 cycle</p>
<p>Yeah, The Common App. will cause a deceptive drop in admit percentage because of the app. number rise. For example, places like MIT, Georgia Tech, and MIT traditionally have a more self-selected niche like applicant pool, but with Common App., more people who don’t fit this profile and simply say “why the heck not? it’s prestigious and the app. is easy” apply. I believe Chicago’s numbers shot up after it altered or eliminated its “uncommon app”. I would just assume it’s a little harder than last year to get in.</p>
<p>GT used to think it had a self-selecting pool, when it only had ~8,000 applicants, and at the time that seemed fine. The current Admission/Enrollment Services staff is amazing, which has helped applications roughly double since the days when GT was satisfied with 8k/year. I hope those days (and attitudes) remain in the past. </p>
<p>This is a new era for GT, as it grows significantly in stature and influence.</p>
<p>It seems great, but it can have its limitations. To some point, simply getting more apps. is just primarily a mode of keeping up appearances. It would on the other hand, mean more if you are actually getting better apps, selecting them, and then enrolling them as well For example, MIT lags far behind its peers in terms of prestige, the top Ivies and Stanford) with app. numbers, but still enrolls a similar student body to these places. This suggests that you don’t really need 30-40k applications if you are attracting the right types of students in the first place. The non-engineering privates, for example, are mainly keeping up appearances of selectivity by encouraging the ridiculous numbers of apps. they get each year and essentially selecting the same part of the applicant pool (their incoming stats. will go up slightly and their admit rate will decrease), yet people claim that they are getting so “competitive.” The competition level hardly changes because most of the applicants seriously don’t have a chance in the first place. The other apps. are mainly good for maintaining the rank and allure (aka, to say, we’re popular, look…). Plus a large part of getting hordes of apps (even ones that won’t really even be considered as having a viable shot) is marketing schemes of various sorts. It makes the institution look nice at the expense of the students who are in some cases “tricked” into believing they could get in.</p>
<p>Thank you everyone for your responses. So the general consensus is that, because of the introduction of the Common App, while this will create a great influx of applications to GTech, the caliber of students that is already high will remain so without a significant change. What will change however, is GTech’s position and outlook on the world, which may become more UC Berkeley and Stanford like, entering that ring of prestige especially for engineering where every “Joe-shmo” adds GTech to his/her Common App as they would Harvard or Stanford for the sole reason that they were told that smart students at some point in their lives, and smart students go to those universities.</p>
<p>Georgia Tech has become more and more selective over the past decade. I anticipate the competition to stiffen every year. This year, both UGA and Georgia Tech saw about 4k more applications than the year before. </p>
<p>This is a good thing! The brighter, the better!</p>
<p>Wikipidea has a good compilation of various academic measures between schools. It’s well-cited. </p>
<p><a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_colleges_and_universities_in_Georgia_(U.S._state)[/url]”>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_colleges_and_universities_in_Georgia_(U.S._state)</a></p>
<p>Yep, I’d say you have it. </p>
<p>Many more applicants, but I doubt the profile of the average admitted Tech student changes too much.</p>
<p>It sure has. Every year since about 2005 GT has posted a higher average SAT score than the previous years. GPA, of course, goes up as well. </p>
<p>The University System of Georgia(USG, the governing board for our state institutions for you OOS people) publishes data sets for all of Georgia’s public schools including gradation rates, GPA and SAT scores, transfer profiles, faculty data, enrollment figures, demographic breakdowns etc. </p>
<p>GT and UGA have been on a steady rise since about 1989, however, both schools have shot up since 2000. </p>
<p>Plus, the actual number of applicant grows by year simply due to a larger GA population and more applications from all around.</p>
<p>They do post a higher average, but it’s like what I mentioned. It’s not ridiculously higher than the last year. At some point the returns kind of diminish (like Harvard or MIT isn’t going to substantially increase their scores each year, only by a certain amount. And unless Tech starts wooing students away from its high caliber competitors, it won’t either). It appears UGA has much more to gain. For example, one year, having a 1365 average and another 1370 does not make some huge difference in “brilliance” of the student body. If you go from 1250 to say 1300, now that’s interesting.</p>
<p>Well GTech’s difference in SAT score was substantial between this year’s and last’s. It’s score out of 1600 was around a 1365 last year (for some reason their website said it was a 1430, while everyone else said it was lower), and this year, it was 1457. Out of 2400, it was a little over 2050 (once again, GTech claims it was 2105 last year), and this year it was 2150. I’m really not sure why there is a discrepancy between every other source and GTech, but either way, it seems that there was a somewhat large difference, which might mean that GTech is approaching its peak in terms of sat scores and I hesitate to say, student caliber, which it might hit next year due to the Common App? Thoughts?</p>
<p>That is for admitted students (what you saw them post. Many schools post stats right after they finish selecting so you know these numbers cannot be those of enrolled students), not enrolled. Not everyone has enrolled yet, and that average will be significantly lower like it is at most institutions (because given the competition, many places aren’t going to yield the top of the selected students from the app. pool). Be very careful about this. Usually on admissions websites, they only give admitted student data. You need to look at the common data set (easy to access) and use your best judgement. For example, Emory and Georgia Tech attract and enroll the same caliber student (though not the same type) in terms of these scores, but Tech just admits some students with higher SAT’s hoping that many will enroll. Many places do this. Emory will generally try to admit closer to the average that it expects to yield. I guess it has a more realistic view on who will enroll and doesn’t want to risk its yield. However, the Tech method has done places like Vanderbilt, JHU, and Duke very well (Don’t know if it’s working as well for Tech though because the drop between admitted and enrolled is, in general, even more stark than Emory’s which is like a 40-50 point drop. As you may have heard we got in trouble for this BTW, because the admissions folks were apparently reporting the admitted students’ data on many of the CDS forms for a long period of time). Engineering entities are known to set higher thresholds for admission, even those that are just a single entity of a larger UG program. For example, those applying to Duke engineering will have a harder time that those applying to arts and sciences. </p>
<p>Also, many schools pull from the waitlist over summer and even lower their admitted student data. I would always look at a mixture of the enrolled students and the admitted student data. Ideally, you should aim for the admitted students data, but if the average of the 2-3k students enrolling in a freshman class is 1360-1380, then obviously a huge number of those people people were indeed admitted despite that admitted students average (you also don’t know the median. For example, our median is higher than the mean for enrolled, it’s possible that the median is lower than the mean for admitted. It’s not like the admissions people will always, if ever, yield a curve where the mean is equal to the median). So if I see that the previous year posts a 1430 admitted student average and the next year’s in the 1450’s(?), then I would look at the mean of enrolled(1365), and maybe shoot for 1385-1400. It’s not absolutely safe, but again, obviously a crap ton of these people are admitted</p>
<p>I think the number of highly qualified applicants will go up because of the common app. However not all of those extra applicants are going to end up going to GT. But the end result will be that if you are on the edge you will either be deferred or rejected next year.
It is going to be harder to get in to GT next year. The only way it won’t be is if GT assumes that more of the kids they accept will decided not to go GT and so they offer acceptance to more than they did this year.</p>
<p>Thank you bernie12, that does clear things up significantly. I guess at the end of the day, this entire process, regardless of the college, seems to be built around rankings and prestige rather than some of the more straightforward aspects of the admissions process we might expect.</p>
<p>Yeah, sometimes places try to put on “facades” (Again, we tried to do this. The school is still great, but has been exposed as weak in some areas and needs to work on that. Luckily at least they are trying to learn from these series of gaffes and scandals that happened/were exposed. In particular, they seem to have figured out that you have to actually do well and not just appear to do well.). Some of this is perpetuated by a prestige/rank obsessed student body and alumni network which fall into the trap of always wanting to see a lower admit rate each cycle, not thinking that this may actually screw over many students, who probably have higher stats. than they did when they applied, from receiving and taking advantage of the awesome experience they had. I mean, does a student with a 1400 really have so much more potential than one with a 1350 or even 1300? Not if the institution is doing what it is supposed to do, challenging the student at levels much higher than AP, SAT/ACT, and other majority multiple choice tests can (An ideal institution would even give the top 75% of test takers an academic challenge. I think the top engineering schools, including Tech, are likely better at this than their similarly calibered non-engineering counterparts). In addition, when already over that say, 1250-1300 range, the potential in the Extracurricular arena is quite unpredictable. A lower scoring student can have lots of success in this arena and do something very meaningful with their education instead of just “crushing” exams.</p>
<p>Indeed, and the truth is that the entire application process is, to use a stretched definition of the term, rather corrupt. A lot of applicants receive the short end of the stick when their less deserving peers are admitted to many universities on the basis of race or alumni status. I especially saw that during the application process, as people who I far outstripped in terms of academics, extra curriculars, and test scores, were admitted to universities that I was not. In the end, I consider myself beyond lucky that GTech admitted me, because applying to an internationally renown Engineering school as an out of state male student, who is Indian born, and applying for Computer Engineering, can only be described as a shot in the dark. Picking the right student with my demographics is like trying to pick out the right needle in a stack of needles. Either way, I’d be remiss to assume that my 2300 on the SAT had nothing to do with my acceptance, which lends credence towards the idea that GTech has begun its path towards the “prestige obsessed” position as you so appropriately described it. Hopefully in the upcoming years, GTech won’t forget to focus on overall merit.</p>
<p>I agree with FreeLancer. I too noticed that many students who I outstripped academically had gotten in to schools I didnt (THis was especially true with Ivies). Another coincidence is that I too had a 2300 on the SAT and am an applicant from India. I am also glad Tech accepted me because I am starting to realise that it is one of the perfect schools for me. Looking forward to seeing you at TEch!</p>
<p>I look forward to seeing you as well! I was born in India (Mumbai), but then I moved to the US after a few stops in between. Where are you located, and what’s your major?</p>
<p>In Bangalore. I am planning on biomed as a major with comp sci as a minor</p>
<p>Well Ga Tech has tons of Indians there. I’m one of them too but I’m ABCD(American born confused Desi). I live around Atlanta and am comp sci major.</p>