<p>From what I heard, UVA takes a lot of students from Northern VA as opposed to Southern VA... does anyone know how true this is? I've also heard Northern VA schools seem to be tougher with more 6 point grade scales. I'm from Williamsburg in Southern VA and we're on a 10 pt. scale. </p>
<p>Does anyone have a rough estimate of how many students UVA will most likely take from my high school? I know it's tough to guess but any rough estimate would be appreciated...:-)</p>
<p>the only reason uva takes more students from nova rather than southern va is because most of the people in virginia live in nova - hence more applicants. from what i understand, its a tad bit easier to get into uva from virginia when ur not from nova.</p>
<p>no offense to southern va, but the education system in nova is much stronger i hear. fairfax county alone probably produces more uva students than most southern va counties combined.</p>
<p>here in richmond, uva is very competitive as well.. henrico county is known for its excellence in academics and i wouldn't be surprised if most if not all students in the top 15% of the class applies to UVA, not to mention those applying to UVA as a reach school.. so you get lots of applicants from here too, hence more competition i believe</p>
<p>I thought Southern Va had more people unless you are going by going by MSA then NoVa beats Southern Va. The largest cities are in the southern part of the state, Va Beach, Chesapeake, Norfolk. Still, I do think that NoVA has a stronger education system.</p>
<p>A lot of people in my school(in Va Beach) are aiming for UVA, so it is competitive as well.</p>
<p>They will admit more bulk people from NoVa, but the acceptance rate is lower than the rest of Virginia (<50%). However, NoVa acceptances will typically have lower GPAs than others from around the state, since they're taking so many people from there in an effort to fill the necessary 2/3rds instate quota. I don't know for sure how the grading scale works, such as which school districts have 6 point grading scales and what not, but NoVa kids also score lower average SAT scores (and many people adjust their perceptions of working depending on the grading scale, and since everyone is in the same system class ranks would remain more or less the same).</p>
<p>I'll use my nearby high school as a comparison/connection. I went to York High School, where about a dozen or so people were accepted to UVA. However, two or three well qualified people with top 10% and >1350 SATs, along with other stuff like varsity sports and more activities, were rejected. It appears that this was the 'quota' for my school, because tons of people are accepted from NoVa and elsewhere with lower class ranks and SAT scores. I think UVA looks at how many they're admitting from the school, and then the county in general.</p>
<p>My senior class consisted of somewhere between 180-200 people (not sure about the actual number, since we lost like forty people to drugs, jail, and other crap) they didn't want more than a dozen going to uva.</p>
<p>Our high school has a book in guidance that shows the number of kids accepted/attended, waitlisted, and rejected to schools each year. The numbers over the past three years for UVA showed that the number of accepted and/or attended was virtually constant in every year (17 or 18 people) regardless of number of applications, which varied from 33 to 45. Therefore, there does seem to be a per school quota and your biggest competition is within your own class. I sorted by both GPA and SAT and found a higher correlation to the GPA sort. There were always a couple of outliers in each year on both the high end and the low end.</p>
<p>I live in Southwest Virginia and we have an excellent school system on a 6 point scale, probably one of the best systems in the state. Fairfax has a good school system but it is also the most affluent county in the Commonwealth and one of the wealthiest in the country. Don't bash Southwest VA just because there is a 20% poverty rate in some counties.</p>
<p>^^That's true. NoVA is much more affluent than the other parts of Virginia...that should be taken into the equation.</p>
<p>did not mean to "bash" southern virginia and didn't mean to generalize everything not northern virginia as southern virginia. thanks for correcting me.</p>
<p>I live across the river from NoVa and I know that NoVa is A LOT better than rest of the state, like there is NO comaprison. NoVa is FAR FAR FAR FAR FAR better</p>
<p>Fairfax County alone is enough to explain the difference</p>
<p>here is an article that sums it up best:</p>
<p>NoVa is far richer than rest of the state, far better educated and kids have a lot better SATs</p>
<p>the kids from NoVA have lower GPAs coz it is harder to get As, and weights are not given as liberally</p>
<p>in FCPS:</p>
<p>A 94-100
B+ 90-93
and so on</p>
<p>also, most kids take IB or AP. All schools in Fairfax rank in best in challenge index. The competition in NoVa is cutthroat. I am sorry, there is just no comparison between NoVA and rest of the state. A lot of people even think it should become a seperate state since all the tax money they send in is used at rest of the state instead, and since they culturally so different (a lot more cosmo, liberal, diverse, etc).</p>
<p>But nonetheless, I think the Post Article is the best.</p>
<p>I found it <a href="http://www.collegeconfidential.com/cgi-bin/discus/show.cgi?8/89271%5B/url%5D">http://www.collegeconfidential.com/cgi-bin/discus/show.cgi?8/89271</a> here first</p>
<p>I hope I did no offend any Southern Virginians. I did not mean to be mean, I was just saying what I felt like...</p>
<p>just to add another thing:</p>
<p>TJ send GROSS number of kids to UVA, but then again it is one of THE best public schools in the nation.</p>
<p>Most other schools in Fairfax send 15-30 kids.</p>
<p>so yeah, a lot of people from FCPS gets in, which just reflects their highler standards of learning...</p>
<p>No offense taken at all. I have heard a lot of the same from several places... how Northern VA is basically a different state because of the economic, cultural, academic differences and such.</p>
<p>But at my school (we had 3 apply ED, one was accepted the other two deferred), i can name 11 people off the top of my head who applied and i can safely say i am ranked above atleast 5 of them.... what does that say about my chances? our senior class has around 300 total students and i'm ranked 18th. if i had to guess i would think UVA would accept no more than 8, probably less.</p>
<p>dang anonymous...I know that Northern VA has a really good education system, but what a way to make it seem as if everyone else in the state is an idiot lol...</p>
<p>OMG, that was totally NOT my attention</p>
<p>i meant RELATIVELY speaking...I apologize for any confusion</p>
<p>that's like if i said people in Harvard, Priceton and Yale tend to be smarter than people at UVA. I will not be saying Cavaliers are idiots, but just that RELATIVELY they are not as smart</p>
<p>I apologize to anyone who thought I was calling them an idiot (even though I will say many, if not most, students in Northern VA do think that people in rest of the state are idiot or not as smart). It is not the their mind, just the culture/atmosphere/oppertunities that are SO different</p>
<p>I did check back on the data that the post collected, and I found out that I was mistaken in saying SAT scores were lower. They were actually about 20-30 points higher (10-15 points in each section) than other parts of the state. However, this is a social product of NoVa being more affluent. Richer people do better on standardized test scores on average, mainly because of better resources such as preparation classes. And please, no one ***** about how you know some kid whose parents make combined 40K a year but still scored a 1600 while being valedictorian of their class or whatever. This is on average (happens far too often so gotta address this ahead of time)</p>
<p>Northern Virginia schools do have a 6 point grading scale, but like I said before this still does not change the class rankings in any significant manner. In fact, according to the Post's data the average NoVa kid has a slightly lower class rank than the average applicant somewhere else in the state. Why is this? Like the article states, we know that a lot fewer people from other parts in the state apply to UVA (such as the example of Bristol). Higher number applicants from other parts of the state apply (particularly a few of the top 10ers per school) whereas the rest don't. This isn't the case in NoVa, where the perception is that they're a uva feeder district (which they are, actually) and any idiot applies and some even get in because uva has to fill in 2/3rds somewhere (and obviously that comes from one of the more populous, affluent areas). I see this in action at Uva. A great deal of the smartest people come from NoVa (mostly TJ). Most of the dimmer people where you think "how the hell did they get in?" are also from NoVa. It's just how it works, especially since UVA is a high ranking, popular state school. </p>
<p>And everyone knows TJ REALLY isn't a public school in nature.. just on paper.</p>
<p>Edit: Actually change "Most" to "Pretty much all" in the second to last sentence of the second paragraph.</p>
<p>It's okay anonymous...though I don't know why some people in Northern VA would think they are any better than people in Southern VA. They are still in VA. People from other states could look down on Virginians and just as easily say that all Virginians are rednecks and incestuous...lol.</p>
<p>NoVa sends more kids to UVA b/c NoVa is more populated. The kids that get in from NoVa are smart. It is harder to get in from NoVa b/c there are so many kids applying. NoVa is like one giant city compared to a lot of other "cities".</p>
<p>Yes, TJ sends a "gross" number of kids to UVA. About 1/4 of the class end up there and almost everyone that applies gets in. These kids are coming from all over Northern Virginia though and just all end up in the same place. The few kids that were deferred there ED would have probably 100% been in at any other FCPS school b/c their GPAs would have been higher. These kids are extremely involved but didn't meet the ~3.6ish GPA cut off for UVA ED at TJ. </p>
<p>And yes, there are many things about TJ that are not public school in nature but there are also many things that are very public school about it. Ex: Roof leaks onto donated supercomputer and destroys it. A lot of TJ people wish it wasn't a public school so it could escape county rules too : )</p>
<p>Does anyone on here go to TJ? Is it true that just about every single kid is white? And to the poster who said NOVA schools have a 6 point grade scale, I don't think every single school system in NOVA has a 6 point scale, although I may be wrong. My system has a 6 point scale and all anyone ever does is btch about it. It would be very wrong to make TJ a private school, taking it away from the taxpayers who paid for it.</p>
<p>I also have a 6 point system as well and my school does not hand out As.</p>