Lol fuego is Aggie students fave. The queso is legendary. Porters, not a fan. If you want fancy good let me know next time and I’ll fill ya in on the good stuff for the money!
I mentioned this before but feel totally helpless waiting for them to assign class rank. Apparently, the school didn’t send her GPA with the transcript so they sent it on Friday. Based on our school profile she misses top 25% by .04 on her GPA. I am going to be totally sick if she is assigned 50% over .04. Does anyone have experience with this related to schools that do not rank and if they rounded favorably?
@AggieDreamin Hey it’s me from earlier in the thread. If it’s all correct, Texas A&M assigned me as 1st Quarter. It shows on AIS as CLASS RANK (1st Quarter) and then a green check mark. I’m not quite sure if that is set as the rank they gave me but it’d be kind of dumb for them to bait me with a auto admit rank like that and change it. According to my school profile, I missed the top 25% by .04 exactly. I’m not quite sure about what they use to determine class rank for non-ranking schools. I hope that they’ll rank your daughter favorably.
@AggieDreamin , TAMU prefers LORs to be uploaded through AIS. However, if the author wants to send their LOR directly, there is a document sheet that has to be used. This form is located at the Admissions page > Freshman > Required Documents > Letters of recommendation > Mail. Download a copy of the Document ID Sheet. The author needs to mail this sheet along with the LOR to the appropriate address as noted on the sheet.
@wolffgang54 Thank you! That helps me keep the faith!!!. I suspect they will assign her a rank in the next week. I have just been starting to really stress about the possibility of seeing a 50% ranking. In the end, it will be whatever they determine but good to know that they don’t necessarily draw a very distinct line.
For a student that comes from a non-ranking high school, A&M use their GPA in relation to their school’s grading scale to assign a quartile ranking. The transcript analysts will review the transcript to establish exact rank. After that, high school GPA isn’t even considered in the admissions process.
There is absolutely no difference in the way the decisions are made for Blinn Team, Gateway or full admits for review applicants. A&M uses a holistic process for all of them. They look at class rank, test scores, extracurricular activities, essays, etc. Blinn Team and Gateway are just different forms of freshman admission.
The rank and test scores are viewed together, and they make up around 50% of the decision. The essays, personal achievement, etc. make up the other 50%.
When they look at the rank and test scores, they determine a projected GPA the applicant will earn at TAMU. They use algorithms to combine a student’s rank and test scores and it produces 2.9, 3.0, 3.1, so on and so forth. Once they see what a student’s projected A&M GPA is, they begin weighing all the other components.
A&M does not look at competitiveness of the high school when making admission decisions. They want to see how that student has competed against those within their own environment and how they have utilized those tools and resources to the best of their ability.
Standardized tests scores give the benefit in a college’s ability to make a comparison of how a student competes on a national level.
@CamandCam You’re Hired! 
I am the top quartile of my class, so if I receive a 30 or higher on the ACT I took last Saturday I would be an academic admit right? Meaning I would be automatically accepted? And would my application automatically change from review to academic admit?
I got a 29 last time… hoping the amount I studied for math boosted my score!
@dyl3131 That is exactly right. May take a while to process, but yes you would be an academic admit and if your first choice major isn’t full, then you’ll get it!!!
@fatherof2boys You are correct, that the “large number is reflective of both the size of A&M’s entering class and likely also a result of the varying alternative pathways to admissions”.
Those numbers reflect full admissions to College Station, Blinn Team, Gateway, Engineering at Galveston, Blinn Engineering Academy, Engineering Academy at Mc Allen. The breakdown for class 2022 fall of 2018 will include admission decisions to the Health and Science Center at Mc Allen which opened this year and we saw last admission decisions last spring offered there for applicants who applied to College Station.
There is also a Counselor Connection page that releases a little more breakdown in information. They list the total applications received more than the official DARS report.
http://web-as.tamu.edu/ecardimages/2017/CounselorConnection/updateSPRING.html
For fall 2017,
Top 10% admits: 11,205 applied and offered admissions
Academic admits: 4300 applied and offered admission
Review Applications: 27,000
Holistic review admits: 3800 offered admission
Blinn Team: 2400 offered admissions
Blinn Engineering: 855 offered admission
McAllen Engineering: 1200 offered admission
Galveston Engineering: 1200 offered admission
Gateway: 530 offered admission
PSA: 10,500
@GermanMama Your son has great accomplishments, to be sure and I would be shocked if he is not offered full admissions to A&M. Though he has an official rank of top quarter because his school does not rank, they know he is #3 in his class. While they don’t consider the school, per se, that an applicant attends, they do look at how they performed at said school among their peers as well as the classes they have taken and for engineering, their math and physics readiness.
One tough thing for OOS applicants is the tuition waiver of needing $4000 in competitive scholarships from the university/departments, as that some of the scholarships are not released before the deadline of May 1 to accept/decline the offer of admissions. Many applicants may have a partial total but have to make a decision to accept and hope the rest comes through or be prepared if they don’t. The tuition waivers are not plentiful and many a very high ranking student is offered nothing. A&M is not generous with in state kids to help offset the cost of attendance.
@Thelma2 Thank you for the additional info! My question was really about the assignment of the rank. The cutoff for 25% in the class profile provided by the school is 4.846 and my daughter’s GPA is 4.806. I was trying to figure out the chances of her getting into 25% or if they will be strict about it and throw her into 50%. I will be heart broken if she ends up in 50% over .04 in GPA. Class size is close to 500 so she would still be in 25.XX%. Hoping they will round and put her in 25%.
My son is hoping to receive full admit to TAMU for the fall of 2019. Oh, the wait is a true test of patience!
He applied July 2
ACT composite 30 but math was 25 not the 27 they want for academic admit 
3.8 GPA at highly competitive prep a school / they don’t rank at his school but TAMU placed him in 2nd quartile
Strong rec letters from math and science teachers
Varsity sport 4 years
Tons of diverse volunteer hours
Summer mission trip abroad
Lots of club activity and founded one
Has worked part time since the beginning of Junior year
Can anyone help me assess the likelihood of full acceptance to TAMU? He’s applied to Mays as first choice and Econ as second choice. He’s demonstrated a lot of interest in TAMU. Any chance we might hear back before Christmas? Best of luck to all!
Thanks @Thelma2 for confirmation of my intuition and the link to the Counselor Connection website. I’m an absolute nerd when it comes to probing for the underlying data on these things and so I now have an additional resource to absorb. You and @AggieMomhelp are an incredible resource to everyone who visits this forum. I imagine you two have saved the A&M admissions counselors countless hours responding to queries about the application process, you both might as well be on A&M’s payroll.
Crossing my fingers for your ACT score! However, scoring a 30 on the ACT will not necessarily make you an academic admit. You MUST have qualifying sub scores in English and Math of 27 in addition to your top 25%.
If you do score a 30 with the qualifying subscores, then YES, as soon as A&M receives and attaches the scores to your application, your status will automatically convert from review applicant to academic admit.
Please let us know the outcome!! :)>-
@Thelma2 Thanks for the additional information on how A&M assigns ranks to non-ranking schools.
I just checked Howdy and I have 6 tabs. It seems like that’s a good sign.
@papimama501 Second quarter to Mays will not be a possibility. The competitiveness of the school is not taken into consideration. While they do not make up a large part of the acceptance pool, in the past two admission cycles, there are a number of 2nd quarter applicants with high ACT and SAT scores who were offered full admissions as well as Blinn Team.
Second Quarter applicants normally receive their admissions decisions in January/February/March
@wolfgang54 Congratulations! From what I can tell on this forum that is the golden number of tabs and you will be accepted!!
Thank you Thelma2. Do you think the 30 ACT score will give him the chance to be accepted into Economics? Or will the fact that he is second quartile with make it unlikely and hopefully make him a candidate for Blinn Team? I just want to set expectations in my own mind.
I guess I’m not clear on the process. I thought first quartile applicants were mostly academic admits but I didn’t realize that being in second quartile it means a later decision. More patience needed!
@wolfgang54 Whoop! How exciting. Congrats! Maybe the 2nd wave is happening now. Time will tell!
@papimama501 Econ won’t accept or deny anyone. It’s done at the admissions level. Mays doesn’t accept or deny either, it just fills up. Econ will not fill up or at least it hasn’t in the past. I would guess the majority of holistic reviews are made up of 1st quarter and average test scores (26-28 on ACT). Not all will get the nod. There are always some 2nd quarter review candidates that get full admit or blinn team. Do not fret just yet!! A 30 on ACT will be favorable for him!
Thank you! Hoping for the best and that he will have the chance to be an Aggie!