U.Va. OOS?

Chance Me / Match Me!
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I accidentally posted this thread in the wrong forum so I decided to move it here.

State- NC
Year- Junior
UW GPA: 3.7 (hard to estimate how it will be affected at the end of the semester)
Weighted: 4.45 (will probably go to above a 4.5 by the end of the semester)
ACT- just took it, awaiting results; aiming for 33+ (studying very hard)
SAT- 1880 (I know, it’s not good, but I have never studied for it); aiming for 2100+ (studying very hard)
EC’s- Started own charity club in my school which raises money for organizations such as St. Jude Hospital and UNC’s Cancer Center, ambassador for my school, NHS (running for officer), MVP of swim/dive team freshman year (won state championship), won swim/dive state championship sophomore year, captain of dive team this year (runner up in state championships this year), BETA club, organ donation awareness club, JV cross country all 3 years (so far), will dive next year as well
-Applying to the engineering school for computer science
-I am a very good essay writer and will make sure my essay is amazing
-Will get teacher rec from my programming teacher (which is good considering I’m applying to the E School), who I am very close with and could write me an amazing recommendation letter
-I go to the best high school in NC where students are extremely competitive
-The only B’s I’ve gotten this year were in hard AP classes
-Took 1 AP sophomore year (Human Geo, got 4 on exam), 4 junior year (APES, psych, stat, APUSH), and will take 3 or 4 next year (probably Calc AB&BC, GovPo)
-No idea about class rank, my school makes it unnecessarily difficult to obtain this information

I toured U.Va. and absolutely loved it! Charlottesville is so cool and I am really interested in going to U.Va. I am also applying to UNC (in-state), UT-Austin, UGA and a couple of others. I know my UW GPA isn’t amazing but I feel like if I kill it on my standardized tests and keep up my EC’s, I might have a shot at U.Va. Please let me know what you think my chances are and please be honest. Thanks!!

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Bump

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Getting your standardized test scores up is definitely helpful, the hard thing about OOS candidates is that only 1/3 of applicants are from in state, but 2/3 of their offers have to go to Virginia residents, making it exponentially harder for OOS kids to get in. The best advice I can give is keep up your ECs, they look really good, but transcript is the most important thing. I took all the AP/IB classes I could throughout highschool and got a few B’s and I was deferred (in state). I would try to finish up this year with as many A’s as possible, load up your senior year with APs, work your ass off first semester, and apply RD so UVA can see that “upward trend in grades” that they value so much. Good luck! UVA is the most incredible place in the world.

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^ not quite…

First, it’s not 1/3 and 2/3 of applicants. Last year, of 31,021 completed applications, only 9,058 (29.2%) were in state, 21,963 (70.8%) were out of state.

Second, it’s not 2/3 and 1/3 of offers, it’s that the incoming class must 2/3 Virginians, 1/3 out of state. But the much higher yield among in state applicants (UVA is often the best deal they can get on a top education) means they actually extend fewer admission offers to Virginians than to OOS applicants. 100 in state admission offers will yield 63 warm bodies in seats, but 100 OOS offers will yield only 24 warm bodies.

Still, the IS offer rate is around 43.8%, the OOS offer rate is around 22.9%. (And by all accounts, the OOS applications tend to have higher average grades and test scores than IS applicants.) There is an awful lot of well qualified competition for those OOS admission offers.

http://avillage.web.virginia.edu/iaas/instreports/studat/hist/admission/first_by_residency.htm