Well, it’s getting to be that time.
Here is some info that I hope will help the High School Class of 2016 students who want to attend UMDCP. I’ll try to cover Applications, Admissions, and Decisions.
I am not associated with UMDCP. I didn’t attend UMD, but my D is going into her sophomore year there.
APPLICATIONS
UMD has 2 application deadlines, an Early Application (EA) deadline of November 1 (also called the priority deadline) and a Regular Decision (RD) deadline of January 20.
http://www.admissions.umd.edu/apply/ApplicationDeadlines.php
If you are serious about attending UMD, I STRONGLY encourage you to apply EA. Last year UMD had about 28,000 applicants for a freshman class of about 4,000. About 12,000 were accepted (I got that number from a 2014 Washington Post article).
http://www.admissions.umd.edu/counselor/FreshmanProfile.php
BTW, UMD has released the 2016 essay prompts
EA applicants have until May 1 to make a Final decision, but you can actually enroll earlier than that.
EA applicants are automatically considered for Merit Scholarships and the Honors College and Scholars program.
RD applicants have until May 1 to make a Final Decision.
RD applicants are NOT considered for Merit Scholarships, the Honors College, or the Scholars Program.
All application related material should be received by the stated deadline. That includes the essay, LORs, resume, Transcripts, and official test scores.
Every year, I see some students miss the EA deadline because they didn’t think everything was needed by that date. Make sure that things are sent to UMDCP. UMUC and UMBC are different schools.
There is a document tracker on the UMD application portal. Use it to make sure that your documents have been received. Things can, and do, get electronically misfiled. That happened to my D. Email your local Admin Rep, after a reasonable time (5 days or so) to ask why it isn’t showing up on the Document Tracker (nicely of course).
http://www.admissions.umd.edu/requirements/AdmissionRepresentatives.php
Don’t wait till the last minute to submit your EA application. You never know what can happen with the internet. I would shoot for mid-October. There is no benefit to submitting any earlier. They will not even start looking at applications till after Nov. 1.
ADMISSIONS
This is a subject of confusion and consternation every year, so here is my take on it.
EA applications are first reviewed by the UMD Admissions Committee (whoever that is). They will have one of 3 decisions - Denied Admission (I don’t know if there is a waitlist), Accepted for Spring 2017 (more on that later), or Accepted for Fall of 2016.
As far as I can tell, the next step is that the Accepted for Fall of 2016 applications are sent to both the LEP Admissions Committee (if you applied to a LEP) and the Honors College/Scholars Program Admissions Committee(s). I don’t really know if there is just one Honors College/Scholars Program Admissions Committee for both or if there are 2 separate ones. In the end it doesn’t really matter.
The LEP Committee and the Honors/Scholars Committee evaluate the applications completely independently and without any consideration of what the other decides.
I don’t know what the LEP Ad Coms look for.
I do know that the Honors College admission and the Scholars Program admission are Holistic evaluations. Stats alone will NOT get you into the either (but Honors College students do tend to have high Stats - 1450+ SAT and 4.0 UW GPA)
I don’t know what will get you into a LEP. LEP’s, by definition, are limited enrollment. They literally do not have enough seats for all the students who apply. Remember those 28,000 applicants and the 12,000 acceptances. Well, assume that there are 700 spots available in the Clark School of Engineering and 1200 of the 12,000 acceptances applied to Clark, then there are 500 applicants who do not get into Clark. They are assigned to Letters and Sciences (L&S).
It just comes down to numbers. No matter how good you think you are, you will never know how many of the other 12,000 were better.
The Honors/Scholars Ad Coms do not consider what the LEP Ad Coms decided and the LEP Ad Coms do not consider what the Honors/Scholars Ad Coms decided.
So at this point the possible results are
- Admitted to UMD Spring 2017
- Admitted to UMD Fall 2016
- Admitted to UMD Fall 2016 + admitted to Scholars
- Admitted to UMD Fall 2016 + admitted to Honors
- Admitted to UMD Fall 2016 + admitted to LEP
- Admitted to UMD Fall 2016 + admitted to Scholars + admitted to LEP
- Admitted to UMD Fall 2016 + admitted to Honors + admitted to LEP.
Every year, parents and students will say - I got into my LEP but nor Honors, I got into Honors but not my LEP, I got into Scholars, but my friend with lower Stats got into Honors. And so forth.
The decisions are what they are. I’ve read on here that some can be appealed. I really don’t know. That’s pretty much all I can say, except that Honors and Scholars REALLY are Holistic evaluations, and essays and LORS and ECs count.