I haven’t logged on since forever, and I forgot my pw…
Anyways, I was googling to see why my son hasn’t heard from PSU, he submitted the application on Oct 30. It took me to this site and gave me the answer, indeed my son did not submit SRAR until November 2nd. So he is still waiting. At least now we know why, and not b/c he applied to CS and might get a slow/long rejection lol (could still be the case, but now we have some hope).
Good luck everyone!
@PamH my DD sent SAT scores with 1310 and was accepted Nov 10 for engineering fall start UP. I don’t believe at all that plays a big role. She has 4.0/4.67 weighted GPA and 15 AP courses and a few DE. I saw all these threads and was worried about her submitting her score (my husband said I shouldn’t believe all I read) and he was right in the end.
Because this school is moderately selective, strong academic performance will almost guarantee you admission. Scoring at a 1265 SAT or above will already give you a great shot at getting in.
I found the above at…
Lot of confusion due to SAT/ACT optional policy. MIT already moved away from “Test Optional”, I am wondering how long Penn State and others will stay test optional.
My kiddo has a 1530 sat and all of those same things pretty much and he’s still waiting for his EA decision for College of Engineering… We haven’t heard a yes (or no) from any of our schools (did get deferred for Princeton)… Just want to get an answer in the books!!
When did he submit? Did he check to make sure there are no “To dos” on his portal?
At Penn state, if admitted to college of engineering, are they guaranteed their major? Or they have to apply for the major later on?
If a student meets the Entrance to Major requirements (GPA and coursework) for their desired major, they will be admitted to that major. Only a few majors at Penn State are direct entry.
He submitted by the EA deadline…only snag is that they didn’t notify him until about a week later that he needed to submit a SRAR. This wasn’t shown in the common app. He did email admissions and was told that he would still be evaluated with the Early group.
That’s great that he’s still being considered with other EA applications. Sounds like PSU just ran out of time reviewing EA apps! Hopefully he will hear next week! Good luck to him!
Many public universities ask for SRAR, and ask for SAT results directly sent by CollegeBoard. Until they receive them, the application is considered “incomplete”. From your earlier comments, it appears you are still waiting for responses from many other colleges. Please login to the admissions site to ensure you do not have any pending “To-Do” items. Just curious, can you share the name of other universities and your stats?
We think we might have figured out what happened…we think his SAT scores never actually went…called in to college board and dug around and tried to send a second time and it didn’t go again…third time we tried using PayPal instead and they all say Pending now. Fingers crossed. So his timeline is all kinds of messed up now we think. Saving grace is that his very 1st SAT (last yr) the scores went to the 4 schools he selected when he took the test…that was a 1510…he brought it up to 1530 since then, but his early action schools didn’t see those improved scores. SO…deferred for Princeton (his #1 choice…restrictive Early Action, so couldn’t do any other privates early), then have apps pending for PSU Main, U of Mich, U of MD, VA Tech…haven’t heard from any…currently working on Cornell, MIT, Carnegie Mellon, Pitt, Drexel…all for rolling.
Thank you for this!! My son got accepted to Smeal , but has to start summer…he was devastated! Now after all of the positive feedback from everyone he is feeling better about the acceptance.
@dad23pa I believe this may be the last TO year or next. From what I saw at a lot of other universities/colleges. DD applied to Pitt, PSU main (accepted both), VA tech, UVA, JMU, N state, Emory Riddle and Duke. None she applied to were binding, so most are Feb-April timeframe to hear back. My son is class 2025. I believe he will not have the option to be TO. It’s a shame that only those submitting high scores are now skewing the ranges. It will come back to possibly hurt those after this ends.
She was in the middle 50% for psu, so submitted. My point was I read all these people saying 1450, 1500 and up. It makes you feel the 1310 isn’t enough. I know when I applied to college 1300 were great! It’s one test.
Can someone tell me what a 4.1 gpa is in percentage form. My son has a 97 unweighted and a 98.5 weighted with all advanced and AP classes. College Calc and AP courses. He is in the top 5% of his class. We still haven’t heard from Penn State! Applied EA. Getting nervous!
Same thing with us. We were told that SRAR had to be submitted by Nov 1 as well though there was no mention of it on the Common App. We submitted Oct 31 and SRAR by Nov 7. My son is being considered EA for CS but admissions told us that the decision will come by Jan 31.
Best of luck to you! Hoping to get some sort of answer soon!!!
To those whose kids already got admitted, when did you hear back about financial aid/merit aid?
It’s hard to say with different high schools weight classes differently. But I can tell you my son’s school uses a 100 scale as well and he had a 98.7 (his counselor said it’s hard to say , but it’s over a 4.0. She also said colleges recalculate it anyway) My son was accepted to PSU (UP). We did submit ACT score and he has 6 AP’s, 2 DE and the rest honors. Honors societies, lots of EC’s etc… hope that helps!
Financial aid has not been released yet. The website says February. The only merit award at PSU is the Provost Award and that is awarded on a rolling basis usually starting in late December. We haven’t seen any reports of someone receiving the Provost Award yet, but I suspect we will start hearing of them soon.
Thank you! Sounds like we need to add that info on our spreadsheet so we can keep track of all the things!