The UMD Application Review Process

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of Maryland - College Park
1

I posted something about this before, but I’m hoping this is a simpler explanation This all based on my observations over the past 5 years. I have NO inside information.

Once the applications are in, what actually happens to them?

As you know, UMD uses one application for everything.(Honors College, Scholars Program, and All Merit Scholarships). There are No additional applications or essays required for any of that.

Here what they do, as I understand it.

  1. Review by the University of Maryland College Park Admissions Committee

UMD will get a lot of priority application this year. (I don’t know how many Priority ones, but probably 35,000 total applications, Priority and RD). This first admissions committee reviews them and makes one of 3 decisions
a. Denied Admission
b. Admitted for Fall 2018
c, Admitted for Spring 2019

They do NOT make any decisions about Honors College admission, Scholars Program admission, or admission to Limited Enrollment Program (LEP) majors.
These decisions seem to be mostly STAT (SAT/GPA) based.
They will end up accepting maybe half or less of students who applied (I have not been able to find good numbers on this). This is Priority applicants only, not RD applicants

2A. Review by the Honors College Admissions Committee

This committee will do a Holistic Evaluation of the applications admitted for Fall 2018 and reach one of 2 decisions.
a. Admitted into the Honors College.
b. Not Admitted into the Honors College.

High STATs alone are NOT sufficient for admission (although Honors College students do tend to have high STATS). Essays, LORs. Short Answers, ECs, and course rigor are all a part of this decision. Desired Major is NOT a factor in the decision.

I don’t know if All “Admitted for Fall 2018” applications are reviewed, or if there is some screening process to reduce the number.
Students will only be informed of accepted decisions, when the decisions are released.

3 (I’ll get to 2B further on) Review by the Scholars Program Admissions Committee

This committee will do a Holistic Evaluation of the applications reviewed by the Honors College AdComms, but NOT admitted into the Honors College and reach one of 2 decisions.
a. Admitted into the Scholars Program.
b. Not Admitted into the Scholars Program.

High STATs alone are NOT sufficient for admission (sometime a given student will actually have higher STATS than someone else admitted into Honors). Essays, LORs. Short Answers, ECs, and course rigor are all a part of this decision. Desired Major is NOT a factor in the decision.

2B. Review by the appropriate Limited Enrollment Program Admissions Committee

There is actually a separate admission committee for each LEP. There are currently 8 LEP majors: Business, Biological Sciences, Biochemistry, Chemistry and Environmental Sciences and Policy-Biodiversity and Conservation (counts as 1), Communication, Criminology and Criminal Justice (1), Engineering, Government and Politics (1), Journalism, and Psychology. I think these reviews are done in parallel with Honors/Scholars reviews. I could be wrong.

They are LEPs because UMD literally does NOT have the resources (classroom, labs, professors) to teach all of the students that want that particular major. For example, consider the following FAQ from the Clark School of Engineering:

"Why would I be listed as a “Letters and Sciences” student if I applied to be an Engineering major?

The Clark School of Engineering receives approximately 3,000 applications each year from talented students who have been admitted to the University of Maryland. Engineering is a Limited Enrollment Program (LEP), and due to class size restrictions and other resource limitations, is not able to admit every student who applies to be an Engineering major as a freshman. As such, the Clark School will typically only admit between 1,700 and 1,800 students each year as direct freshmen admits."

That is 3,000 who selected Engineering as a major out of those admitted to UMD.

It’s the same with all the other LEPs. The numbers will be different, but the same concept applies. X number apply for the LEP. Y spaces are available. X is ALWAYS greater than Y. There are always some who are not admitted.

What do the LEP AdComs look for? Each one is probably different. I suspect that Engineering looks for engineering potential, motivation, ECs, but I don’t really know. I do know that every year about 1,200 applicants who get into UMD do NOT get into Engineering as their desired major. The other LEP decisions have similar outcomes.

I also know that the LEP AdComs do NOT consider the decisions made by the Honors College and Scholars Program AdComs.

The LEP AdComms reach one of 2 decisions
a. Admitted into the LEP.
b. Not Admitted into the LEP (in this case, the applicant is put in Letters and Sciences)

So the possible combination of all results are:

  • Denied Admission
  • Admitted to UMD Spring 2019
  • Admitted to UMD Fall 2018
  • Admitted to UMD Fall 2018 + admitted to Scholars
  • Admitted to UMD Fall 2018 + admitted to Honors
  • Admitted to UMD Fall 2018 + admitted to LEP
  • Admitted to UMD Fall 2018 + admitted to Scholars + admitted to LEP
  • Admitted to UMD Fall 2018 + admitted to Honors + admitted to LEP.

The Scholarship Committee is also reviewing the applications of those who were admitted to UMD during this time frame, but scholarship decisions are not released until about mid-February.

I hope this helps. Good Luck, all!

2

Yes, thank you, this is a very helpful guide.

3

Hi! I’m an Honors Ambassador at UMD, and I can offer some insight into who gets accepted to the Honors College. The admissions committee for Honors holistically reviews each application of those the initial admissions committee has already accepted. Then, they “rank” them based on the 26 criteria on their admissions website and offer Honors to the top few. In my class (class of 2021), I believe they said they offered Honors to 3,000 applicants total. Students that are not offered Honors are then reviewed for the Scholars program.

4

As a mom of a Maryland engineer (graduated already), I can expand a little on the engineering admission. As SoofDad pointed out, there are so many students that have crazy awesome stats who are admitted to honors college, get merit awards, etc, that don’t get admitted to engineering as incoming freshman (they get assigned to Letters and Sciences initially).

While I can’t give you specifics, what I can tell you is that engineering is not an easy major, so there needs to be evidence of an underlying interest/passion for engineering that goes beyond being “good at math and science.” Many schools use a trial by fire process for engineering, whereby they have a more generous admissions process but then have killer, weed-out classes designed to see who can survive. Maryland takes a different approach and has more competitive admissions for direct admission as an incoming freshman. They limit the enrollment in order to provide more support services from the start to reduce the engineering dropout rate. However, any student that demonstrates that passion for engineering (by taking “gateway” classes and completing them satisfactorily as described here https://eng.umd.edu/undergraduate-transfer-admission) and submitting an “internal transfer” application will be admitted to engineering.

Best of luck to everyone applying!

5

Based on this post, acceptance is based mostly on gpa and test scores rather than essay and ECs. I guess that makes sense since UMD receives so many applications. Unfortunately I was hoping my son’s ECs would help boost his low stats. Oh well.

6

@pct3 - I deliberately said that the initial decisions “seem” to be primarily based on Stats, but no one can say for certain. . I believe that maybe 98%, or more, of the applicants are NOT on this forum, so the sample size of accepted students is small. Being in-state is also a factor, since UMD is required to accept a certain percentage of in-state students. Good Luck.

7

@SoofDad Thank you!

8

I absolutely believe EC’s, essays, short answers and letters of recommendation are indeed considered seriously as part of admissions. It is my understanding that this is motivation for creating the Spring Admission decision. As SoofDad points out, the people that post on this forum only represent a small portion of the overall applicants, and what they post is not the whole picture.

9

Maryland Admissions tweeted today that we’ll receive an email notification by 2/1/18 letting us know when our decision is ready. Still no clear info on WHERE we’ll find our decisions, whether on the Coalition App portal or elsewhere, but I assume all that information will be provided at a later time.

10

In the past, UMD used their own application portal to post the decisions. I would guess that they’ll use the Coalition portal this year, but that is only a guess. It’s also possible that decisions will be released a few days before Feb 1.

11

Happy Thanksgiving!!

12

Happy Thanksgiving to you too! Thanks for all the great insights for us parents that are new to the process. It’s all much more stressful than I envisioned.

13

@potomacparent - You’re Very Welcome. My D is a senior now, but I still remember the stress of waiting for all the decisions to come in. I consider UMD to be a terrific University (I did not go there myself) and it’s a great value for in-state students. Good Luck!

14

Does anyone have any info on the stats needed to get into the Business school at UMD?

15

Stats for individual schools or majors at UMD are hard to come by.

16

Bumping up because Decisions will probably be out in 3 weeks or so.

17

Does anyone know if they go by the courses listed on our coalition app, or those on our transcripts because I forgot to report Pre-Calc on my coalition app, and I just found out recently

18

@Cw82200 - I’m pretty sure that they look at transcript, since that is your official HS record.

19

Actually, I’d like to expand on a few other “outcomes” for program invites. Most people are aware only of the Honors College and College Park Scholars. However, there are other LLP (living learning programs) at Maryland. These include Civicus, Global Communities, BioFIRE (FIRE = first year innovation and research experience), Carillon Communities.

For direct admit Engineering students, there is also the Flexus/Virtus programs, but note the Engineering programs are not invites included with admission decisions. For Smith students, there is also a program for the first year students called Smith Start, which I believe is also not part of admissions decisions but for all direct admits.

In addition, you should know there are lots of special programs that are available to apply to for after your first semester. These include the language House, the writer’s house, Beyond the Classroom, Hinman CEO’s, QUEST (for business, engineering and CMNS students), RISE leadership academy, and LOTs of “fellows” options for Smith students…and I’m sure there are more programs in other departments that I am missing…

20

Thank you @SoofDad and @Maryversity for providing this information. UMD is my child’s first choice. Would you know what other information on 1/25 will be provided if a student is accepted? Will UMD inform them of Honors/scholars/LLP programs. Would merit scholarships be announced at that point as well? How will that play out?