New UVA Office of Admission website

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of Virginia
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Dean J, what's the quickest an application will be read? I'm talking at both extreme - the future Echols Scholar with the 4.0/1580 and the stoner with the 2.8/980.

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The fastest read would be those that don't have essays. Believe it or not, once in a while, a student will just send a "personal statement" and ignore our essay questions. Those are usually a quick read...maybe 4-5 minutes.</p>

<p>As for an application with three solid essays, teacher recs, activity sheets, etc., I think the fastest I could read would be 10 minutes for the first read. We have to make notes on each part of the file, so it'd be hard to cut corners and skip any part.</p>

<p>In the first round this past year, I considered reviewing five or six applications in an hour to be reading at a fast pace.</p>

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<p>But surely you get some where you immediately say "hayyyllllll no!" or "Heck yes!"???</p>

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<p>Under "Take a Look at UVa," you all have a pretty old picture of Scott Stadium (pre-Bryant Hall/HooVision)</p>

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We don't read by territory at UVA. What's more, your application will be read by at least two different people (and at most, the entire office).

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<p>Thanks! Again, great looking site!</p>

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But surely you get some where you immediately say "hayyyllllll no!" or "Heck yes!"???

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Sure, but we still have to take notes for the second reader on why we think that way.

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Under "Take a Look at UVa," you all have a pretty old picture of Scott Stadium (pre-Bryant Hall/HooVision)

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I'll fire up the chopper this weekend and get a new picture for you.</p>

<p>Honestly, we didn't take every one of those pictures. They're part of an image library. The Office of Admission doesn't have the funding to hire a plane to take aerial shots for us. :)</p>

<p>UPDATE: This is actually pretty funny...I mentioned the stadium photo to my colleague who oversees the web content and she said they noticed it and have another one coming.</p>

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<p>oh..the stadium comment wasn't meant to be a criticism or anything. just a random observation I made when I was looking through the pics. :)</p>

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<p>I have to agree with the poster who said the Admissions Office should be as transparent as possible. And while the Data Digest provides a lot of useful information for prospective students, the one statistic is does not have, at least to the best of my knowledge, is the average statistics for incoming transfer students. Other than this, it is an absolutely wonderful site that provides lots of useful information and really makes UVA stand out from other schools' websites that I've visited.</p>

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<p>Very few admissions offices provide much data. Princeton, Rice and Brown have provided some in the past, and there's no reason UVA can't - unless they want it that way.</p>

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<p>I run some basic stats around May 1, so we know what the class looks like in general, but that's about it. The rest is done by Institutional Assessment. When the new student information system is online, that will change. </p>

<p>What statistics do you think are most important in the college search process?</p>

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<p>Data should be published about the applicant pool, the accepted pool, the rejected pool, and perhaps the relative odds of admission for various combinations of SAT and GPA. Information along the lines of the data in this report would be helpful, too:</p>

<p><a href="http://www.ceousa.org/pdfs/VAS%20Report.pdf%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.ceousa.org/pdfs/VAS%20Report.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

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Data should be published about the applicant pool, the accepted pool, the rejected pool,

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As I wrote, I hope that with the new system, we'll be able to run more numbers, but at this point, we're not generating a lot of the numbers you think we do.<br>

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and perhaps the relative odds of admission for various combinations of SAT and GPA.

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Of course, I have a hard time with this one, seeing that there's much more to the process at UVA. While students with high SATs and GPAs are often successful in our admissin process, it'd be wrong to lead students to think that at a certain point, they're a "shoe in".</p>

<p>Anytime you include GPA in a stat, there will be problems. We see everything from traditional 4.0 scales to 7.0 ones with odd weighting. Some schools recalculate GPA (I'm sure you can imagine the benefits and drawbacsk to this), but I don't see us doing that in the near future.</p>

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<p>If you ever need help crunching data, I'd be happy to help ;) .</p>

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<p>For data reguarding GPA and SAT I think a simple bar graph that depicts the percentage of admitted students in each range (e.g. 800-750, 740-700, etc) would be a good idea. Also, I think that the emphasis on TJ and the UVA history is a little over the top. I think the admissions office should try to make the process as personal as possible. So instead of pages upon pages of historical stuff and what stores are in Charolettesville in the student prospectus, there could be a short blurb on those, with the main focus around specific students at UVA, and specific academic and extracurricular opportunities for prospective students. I am a prospective student now, and both me and my dad (who's an alum of UVA) both thought the historical and Charolettesville stuff was unneccessary. Anyway, Good job on the site!</p>

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<p>I have a feeling that they'd rather try to stay away from that, MtL07. Most colleges do, but they shouldn't.</p>

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<p>Stay away from what? If what you're refering to the prospectus contents.. I think pretty much any person who has a chance to get into UVA would already know that TJ founded the university and enough about Charolettesville, I feel like it would be better to appeal to the student like (e.g. WashUSTL - they're well known for their recruiting via mail - im not talking quite that extreme, but something a little more personal like them - it's obviously working too, look at their ranking, and the students theyre attracting). I just feel that UVA has enough prestige to it, and it doesn't need to bother with all this historical stuff, I don't know, they're proabably more qualified on it than I am, haha.</p>

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<p>I love that Thomas Jefferson was the founder of UVA and all of the other "historical stuff" about UVA. I am not sure that everyone outside of Virginia knows about all of that. I am just speaking from my point of view and I think that it is important! And I think that they would be remiss not to have it on the site...</p>

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<p>No, MtL07, I meant the transparency of the admissions process and thoroughness of the data they provide.</p>

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For data reguarding GPA and SAT I think a simple bar graph that depicts the percentage of admitted students in each range (e.g. 800-750, 740-700, etc) would be a good idea.

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Seeing how obsessed students are with this exam already, I fear that a distribution chart would cause a panic. We honestly don't spend as much time thinking about your SAT scores as you think we do.</p>

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Also, I think that the emphasis on TJ and the UVA history is a little over the top. I think the admissions office should try to make the process as personal as possible.

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The fact is that Jefferson is our founder and we will always pay tribute to the fantastic history of the school. That in no way prevents us from having personal interaction with students.</p>

<p>I'm quite surprised by the "make the process as personal as possible" comment. We're better than most schools when it comes to working one-on-one with students and making them feel comfortable with the application process. We give out our email addresses, phone numbers and IM screen names, we host online chats, and what's more, we spend time on a message board plagued by assumptions and bad advice, trying to inject a little official information. How many other schools have admission officers engaging in a dialogue with students on this message board?</p>

<p>By the way, mail merging email so your name and info about intended major is included is not personal. I would hope that students realize a computer is sending those general messages, not an admission officer.</p>

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I am a prospective student now, and both me and my dad (who's an alum of UVA) both thought the historical and Charolettesville stuff was unneccessary.

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You do realize that the majority of applicants are from outside of the state, without alumni ties, don't you? Maybe you can't imagine this because of your family history, but when we travel outside of the region, UVA, while well ranked, is just another state school. Knowledge of UVA's history and Charlottesville is far from universal. Now that the majority of students start the college search online, the information you find superfluous needs to be on our website.</p>

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<p>Sorry, I didn't mean to offend you, I understand what you're trying to do in all of these cases. I'm just trying to give you some insight as a student how how you may improve, you don't need to bash me. I really think you guys do an exellent job compared with your peers and considering your size.</p>

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<p>lol, there's no way in hell UVA should even consider trying to imitate WUSL</p>