UMass Amherst 2024 EA: High-Stats AND In-State AND Denied/Waitlisted

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of Massachusetts - Amherst
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I know this is actually crazy, I actually thought this was a joke when I saw I was waitlisted from early action. Amherst was one of my top safeties. But today this afternoon I received an acceptance letter for Computer Science after getting an email saying that my application had a status update.

I think that this might be something like UMich where they weren’t able to fully finish reading applications and waitlisted everyone.

THE WAITLIST MIGHT ACTUALLY BE A DEFER. I don’t know how but I really was accepted after being waitlisted on January 13th. I got accepted today 3/2/2020.

Top public school in state
In-State
Major CS
GPA 3.73 UW
6 APS All A’s
1550 SAT
Subject Tests: 800 Math 2, 800 Chemistry.

Varsity tennis for 3 years, two times North State champions.
Literally did a drone project at UMass Amherst
Tons of good extracurriculars and some geared towards stem.
01-13-2020 at 8:19 pm edited January 13

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My weighted GPA is around 4.4

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@NormalCSMajor congrats to you. You clearly were one of the highly-qualified in-state applicants who should have been immediately accepted during the first review of your application.

The original waitlist “offer” you recieved put you in a pool of candidates from whom only 1.7% are ultimately accepted. UMass was very clear that a student in your position should NOT expect to be accepted to CS or any
other “competitive major”.

Something changed, and this is clearly outside of their communicated process. What changed? Does the change apply to more than your case?

Perhaps shining a light on this troubling and irrational admission process has caused CICS administration to go back and “do the right thing”. Who knows, perhaps we’ll be hearing more stories like yours.

One can only hope!

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UConn is an awesome school for STEM. CS at UConn is highly competitive and graduates have very good reputations in field.

3rd highest recruiting company is Google, mean salary for recent grads is 80k. Of course, they are fully accredited.

The “prestige” thing in CS is isolated to a very few schools, MIT, CMU, Stanford, GTech. Beyond that, the brand does not seem to influence too much, i.e. WPI, UConn, RPI, NeU, UMass, RIT will all provide a truly great CS experience. Then it’s up to the student to excel outside of the academy.

One other note I would offer is the UConn is clearly supporting women in STEM fields. Lots of schools pay lip service, but this is real at UConn.

So, if your student is your daughter (?), I would definitely keep this in mind.

In any event, it’s a premiere New England flagship, with a great CS program with strong outcomes.

$20/k should make it competitive with in-state rate from UMass?

Best of luck to you and your student.

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@swampyankee
“You clearly were one of the highly-qualified in-state applicants who should have been immediately accepted during the first review of your application.”

With all due respect, you have no idea whatsoever if this is true based purely on a w-GPA. UMA does not admit based on GPA only.

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@fretfulmother
With all due respect, I go to lexington high school in Massachusetts. It is a top 3 high school in the state and over 250 out of people get accepted to UMass Amherst. Our school is known to have very deep grade deflation. And we are a feeder to the ivy league. In addition, my test scores are nearly perfect, and my extracurriculars are also stem focused. In addition, I have taken AP Computer Science and gotten an A and a 5 on every ap I have taken. SO I actually do think I am “one of the highly-qualified in-state applicants who should have been immediately accepted during the first review of your application.”

I also have programming experience and many of my friends at the school with lower stats than mine have gotten in. If you look at the statistics for UMass Amherst, the GPA you need to get in from my school is only 3.6 since it is known to be so difficult. Our regular classes are equivalent to most other schools Honors.

I also got into UIUC for Computer Science, which is ranked number 5 for the department in CS in the country. That was OOS and UMass is a far cry from that.

Also, you have to go back and look at my previous post, where I go over all my stats.

1550 SAT, all 800’s for subject tests, and very apparent upward trend. As well as varied extracurriculars such as a Harvard internship, Drone project at UMass, Varsity tennis north state champions for 2 years, tutoring, and robotics.

I think UMass did not finish reading the apps from early action, it’s not a real waitlist if they inform you in the beginning of March. And look at the stats for UMass, and CS, I’m above for both.

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@fretfulmother
I simply do not understand your reflexive ire at those who question UMA decisions and actions giving examples from their personal experiences.

UMA admissions office has clearly gone against their stated policies - in this case admitting @NormalCSMajor off the waitlist prior to RD even being announced.

@NormalCSMajor good for you for laying out the facts. do you plan to enroll at UMass?

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@gretchen101

Thank you for your response. I agree, it is pointless to dismiss these cases when they are spoken from personal experience.

We can see even o this forum the disparity in people’s stats and who they accepted/rejected.

UMass is clearly yield protecting or something to keep their enrollment in check.

In addition, I do not think I will attend UMass since I have other options with better departments.

I also didn’t apply for financial aid for any schools.

1 Like
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The sense of entitlement displayed in this thread is really something. There is a lot of worse things that can happen in life than not getting into UMass, Jeez!

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@NYCDadof2
I feel entitled to a fair and transparent process.

No one came close to saying this was the worst thing ever but it does have serious financial implications for many families.

Dont minimize others’ concerns and thoughtful questions with hyperbole.

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No one is minimizing your concerns - I actually sympathize with them, but UMass does not owe you anything. They can and will fill their class however they see fit. Starting a thread and calling people who got waitlisted “victims” comes across as incredibly entitled and whiny. As does telling people that they “clearly were one of the highly-qualified in-state applicants who should have been immediately accepted during the first review of your application.” I have no doubt that person’as qualifications were excellent, but having excellent qualifications alone does not guarantee the right to gain admission to every school for which one meets the standard.

Now, UMass has accepted several people who were waitlisted and people are complaining that there was a deviation from some perceived equivalence of waitlisting with a complete denial (doom and gloom!). If UMass wanted to deny you, they would have denied you in the first place.

I apologize if this comes across as heartless or callous to you, but try and think about how some of you are coming across yourselves. Stop trying to crunch numbers and reduce everything to data points.

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@NYCDadof2 - I totally agree.

U-MA never promised to be a stats-only auto-admit college.

I’m kind of appalled at the level of entitlement I’ve read here and on some other threads (even for other colleges in other years) - from parents whose attitude, if shared by their children, would be something very unlikely to gain admission in a holistic process. It’s just bad sportspersonship.

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@fretfulmother my very specific concern is that UMA is admitting OOS students over very well qualified in state which begs lots of questions like what are the obligations of a state school to its residents? Is current funding of UMA adequate? why do you suggest these questions as a negative?

You seem to always want to come back to “holistic”. That is not relevant to this discussion.

And as far as my views and methods rubbing off on my kid -great! Raising legitimate questions after analyzing a situation is a valuable life skill I want my child to have.

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@NYCDadof2

Many of the students and parents on this thread are residents of MA. MA is home to 100s of private colleges. I have not heard anyone of this thread, in my family, or in my community ever express any sense of entitlement to admission to any of these private colleges. Anyone interested in admissions to these schools bust thier butts in HS, apply, and hope the process rewards them. Again, zero entitilement, pure meritocracy (right?).

By contrast, public universities do create a specific version of entitlement due to their public funding source. Pay your taxes, bust your butt in HS, apply with merit, and if accepted know that it is likely to be less of a financial burden on student/family (in return for the taxes paid of the cources of 10, 20, 30 years). This, to me, is the only reason for a public university in a state with 100s of private colleges to exist.

Over the past two years, UMass has admitted around 27% OOS/INT students overall, but 47% for the CS College (CICS).

Let’s contrast that with your own state (presumed from your ID), New York. Both Stony Brook and Buffalo have admitted only 10% OOS/INT. That while SUNY system has some of the lowest in-state turition rates in Northeast.

From these data, I feel it is reasonble to conclude that NY feels more obligated to provide a high value public university education to its citizens than MA.

And, when one looks specifcally at the CICS admissions, I honestly don’t understand how/why anyone defends this. ~50% of admitted students must come from out of state/country. Are there not enough meritoious in-state students, to make it only 27% like the rest of the University, or 10% like NY schools.

Simply put, UMass is a state government instiution staffed with public servants. To the extent thier operational objectives and outcomes do not align with its citizenry, they deserve to be challenged by interested parties. Both the data contained in this and related threads, as well as publicly available information, provide enough evidence for some of us to ask challenging questions.

I believe it is now your turn (and @fretuflmother) to call me some names…

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I think everyone should just be happy wherever their kid ends up and realize that you can be successful no matter where you go…seems like standards have risen

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NormalCSMajor, did you fill out the Waitlist response form to accept the position on the waitlist?

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@just4this

I did I’m pretty sure on the day I got waitlisted.

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Massachusetts being a fairly small state comparatively gives in state students across many disciplines a unique advantage. The flagships being compared in this thread have huge populations. 70 percent of the students in those states are rejected. For impacted majors like cs it’s even more difficult. To be a top school and compete for research, high caliber professors and corporate recruiting you need to be highly ranked. They are doing this and it is becoming more challenging in some degree areas. It’s hard on some of the top students here but you all have great options.

And to keep slamming the school’s relative prestige etc and then knocking them for trying to improve on this is understandable, in light of one’s individual admissions results, but not consistent.

If you think it’s hard here. Talk to the UT UMich unc uva uf and uc applicants. Umd cs etc. And no one in these states regard the school as a safety even though it’s the state U.

It doesn’t always make sense but they have to have a long term plan and it seems to be working.

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UT, Mich, UNC, UF, UMD, UC, UVA, GTech, UWisc, UMN, Purdue, Ohio State, etc. do NOT place its in-state applicants at a disadvantage (ceteris paribus). GPAs and test scores for accepted in-state populations from all of these states have lower aggregate scores than OOS/INT population. UMassA is the opposite (see Pioneer Institute report link in this thread, circa 2018).

This is not about individual student outcomes, it is about the disadvantage of in-state applicant population in MA. The numbers do tell the story. Hopefully, additional supportive analyses will be available soon.

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NormalCSMajor
Did you get in as CS major or as undeclared in the CS Exploratory Track? My son originally got waitlisted and now got accepted as ‘undeclared in CS Explo Track’. He has similar stats as yours.