<p>So I visited UVa today and toured for a couple of hours. Absolutely loved it. It really is beautiful and is one of my top choices. At the overview meeting, however, we were given information sheets that stated that 93.1% of admitted freshman are in the top 10% of their class. This is demoralizing me. I go to a school with many IB/Governors School kids (I am in IB myself) and consequently our class is very competitive. I have a 3.77 uw/4.44w gpa with an upward trend but just miss the top 10% (I am in the top 13%). My ec's are pretty good (leadership in clubs, 160+ community service, mission trip to China), SATs are decent (2080), and I am instate; however, a 6.9% acceptance rate of non-top 10% students is hard to be optimistic about. I would assume that a good amount of that slim percentage is minorities/first generation college students while I am by all definitions a privileged white kid. How do you all feel about the importance placed on being in the top 10%? I feel as though I have no chance.</p>
<p>“I would assume that a good amount of that slim percentage is minorities/first generation college students”</p>
<p>Wow…</p>
<p>We were just at Vanderbilt and they quoted a similiar percentage BUT…they said that the percentage only includes the kids that report their ranking and 2/3 of high schools don’t rank anymore - so you may want to look into that - my guess is that it is not an end all be all number.</p>
<p>Yeah my high school stopped reporting rank for that very reason</p>
<p>^^^I apologize if that was offensive Echols, but you really can’t deny the role affirmative action plays nowadays. </p>
<p>I’m curious as to if a student could request their guidance councilor to not report their rank/percentage or if it is required because the school does it. I may ask.</p>
<p>Jarincole – no big deal. Everyone knows that minority status is a hook that helps at the admissions office. Just like being an athlete, legacy or in-stater also helps as an admissions hook.</p>
<p>But fyi, the 10% band is actually used by many schools as a pro-affirmative action device. The most prominent example of this is UT/Austin, which automatically admits any kid in the top 10% of his/her HS class. UT has used that metric to admit a lot of minority students who were top 10% at bad schools, but who might not have the APs and SATs of kids who were outside the top 10% at suburban high schools. There’s a case on this currently pending in front of the SCOTUS.</p>
<p>So the 7% who aren’t in the top 10% probably are NOT minority students. More likely they are athletes or kids of wealthy donors. </p>
<p>And it is true that most schools don’t rank. So the real stat is more like 93% of the 40%.</p>
<p>The admissions office gets a profile each year from each secondary school. Also, they know all of the schools that regularly send students to UVa. They can take into account the most competitive high schools vs. the less competitive. Yes, in an average public high school, in most cases, you should be in the top 10% to have a good chance, but the process is not that simplistic.</p>
<p>Thank you for your responses. </p>
<p>My school sends around 15-20 kids to UVa each year so that may help me out a bit.</p>
<p>jarincole – does your school use Naviance? If so, that information should help you better evaluate your situation. If you have an experienced guidance counselor/college advisor at your school, talk to him or her. At instate schools, someone in the guidance/college advising area should be able to tell you how students from your school have faired in the admissions process at UVa in the recent past.</p>
<p>I’m going to echo what AVA has suggested. As an instate student your GC is going to be your very best source of information. They will be able to tell your what successful applicants have looked like over the last two application cycles. Naviance is an excellent tool for GPA and SAT/ACT, however it does merge data points going back several years. We all know, especially in the competitive areas of Virginia, that the bar raises every year, so looking at the last two years is really a better benchmark. Course rigor will be taken into account, as will ECs, etc. UVa does use a holistic admissions policy. However time and again Dean J has stated that the very first thing they look at is going to be the transcript. </p>
<p>You don’t mention SAT2’s. Have you taken these or are you planning on taking them? Although they are not mandatory, they are ‘Strongly Recommended’. Also, depending on how many times you’ve taken the SAT and how well you felt you prepared, would you consider taking it again to raise your score? It is not bad at all, but anything that can make you stand out given you are outside the top 10% will work in your favor.</p>
<p>I would really encourage you to include in your list other schools in your match and safety zone, that you know you will be happy attending and will be financially doable for your family. If UVa works out it will be wonderful for you, however if not you will still end up attending a university that you know you will love and embrace their traditions. Picking your match and safety schools can be MORE important then your more reach type schools (I say this feeling that UVa is not truly a reach for you, just never, ever a sure thing even for instate students). Best of luck!</p>
<p>Thank you so much! My school does not use Naviance. And now this whole process is made much more difficult by the fact that my guidance counselor has just left for a new job. What awful timing. </p>
<p>For those curious, I just asked about the statistic on the UVa admissions discussion online. Dean Ryan responded along the lines of: There is no floor number for rank. Do your best your first semester of senior year. We strongly consider these grades. </p>
<p>My safety schools are VT and USC. Though I would not be thrilled to attend either of these, whatever happens happens. I am retaking my SATs in November. My SAT II subject test scores are 650 and 720 respectively, and I am retaking the 650 one this Saturday, plus an additional one. It’s clutch time!</p>
<p>I may be wrong (it’s been known to happen 
) but I believe there is some confusion around “93.1% of admitted freshman {sic} are in the top 10% of their class” and “2/3 of high schools don’t rank anymore.”</p>
<p>U-Va does not have a hard statistical rule that an applicant, 93% of the time, must be in the top ten percent of their class. They are just reporting that, to illustrate the very high selectiveness of the school, it turns out that 93% of their admitted class happen to be in the top ten percent.</p>
<p>See the difference?</p>
<p>As far as “high schools don’t rank,” the Admin office of U-VA knows about every high school in Virginia. They know who is in the “top ten percent” and who is not.</p>
<p>I recommend that everyone take both the ACT and the SAT. Many students do much better on one than the other. The ACT is particularly good for students who are better at science than they are at math.</p>
<p>Agree Charlieschm. Also no big vocab component to ACT.</p>
<p>Nort wrote;UT has used that metric to admit a lot of minority students who were top 10% at bad schools, </p>
<p>I see this reference to bad and good high schools a lot. How do college adcoms figure out if an out of state high school is good, bad?
How about private high schools? Are they ranked anywhere?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>High schools maintain a school “profile” (very often available online).
If a college is unfamiliar with a high school they will request a copy of the profile.
It provides a variety of statistics about the HS:</p>
<p>Here is a copy of TJ’s profile:</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.tjhsst.edu/curriculum/dss/docs/tjhsstprofile11_12.pdf[/url]”>http://www.tjhsst.edu/curriculum/dss/docs/tjhsstprofile11_12.pdf</a></p>
<p>It is standard procedure for the GC to send the profile along with the transcript and their LOR for each applicant.</p>
<p>When we sat in on a recent Admissions presentation this same question came up. Although top 10% is statistically a good indicator it is not the only thing they look at when making decisions. In fact some schools like Thomas Jefferson in NOVA have a ton of students at UVA and over half of them are not in the top 10%. If you go to a competitive school UVA will be able to figure it out and not drop your application simply based on one fact. There is only one way to see if you can get in to UVA and that is apply for admission. Best of luck.</p>
<p>TJHS is an extreme example that you don’t have to be top 10% to get into UVA. 225 out of 445 kids got in from there. And they don’t do class rank.</p>
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<p>Yeah, just to be clear, I wasn’t using TJ to prove any kind of point about the “10%” question. I was just looking up for a HS Profile and Thomas Jefferson happen to be the first school I thought of. That’s all.</p>
<p>I’m not reporting my rank because I’m not in the top 10%, will they still find this out/hold it against me that I’m not reporting it? Mind you, my class is 36 people and I’m in the top 20% but that still isn’t good enough to report in my opinion.</p>