I am trying to avoid posting too much detail about my kid who does not want to be a poster child for admissions fairness. But we will all be watching the Buckeyes play Oregon today, him from the Shoe! O-H!
2 Likes
I-O!
I’m happy your student landed at a great school! For engineering, he can’t go wrong!
1 Like
Our kid is delighted with his school and we love its national ranking, sports teams and his scholarship. The likelihood of him ever wanting to transfer to UMD is remote. Maryland and it’s in-state tuition was much more his UMD alumni parents’ dream than his.
The entire purpose of this thread is to highlight UMD’s unfair and contradictory policy towards dual enrollment students, and to motivate enough stakeholders to challenge it so it can be fixed to benefit future students.
Seems to me like the path forward will be the reduction then elimination of freshman admission.
Completing freshman general education while in hs is becoming the norm. I’m seeing it in NC, SC, OH, PA, IL, AZ, and CA. I’m also seeing it more in inner cities than in suburbs.
This increases the chances of college graduation in 4 years, or less, while also focusing universities on upper level classes, labs, research, internships/co-ops, and pathways to employment or graduate education.
Would a university rather have 10 sections of freshman English or 10 new specialized electives for juniors/seniors? Both of these options cost the same to the university. Corporations and grad schools would definitely want the universities to choose the addition of specialized electives and greater focus on the last 2 years of undergraduate education.
I don’t know much about PLTW - our kid didn’t do it. But I wonder if the best approach is to focus early on the core math and science classes that engineering schools typically use to weed people out instead of the more “fun” PLTW.
Most of the students doing the PLTW Engineering track take the AP and/or DE calc and science classes, too. Colleges recruit from schools with rigorous PLTW programs as they know the students know how to work through problems and collaborate and they have a higher chance of staying in a STEM major. They are not just the “fun” classes. They are college level classes.
Yes, for college. I think some of us thought you were referencing a high school GPA for Freshman admissions compared to transfers.
College engineering GPAs are lower than many HS students are prepared for. No honors weighting or other things that create higher than 4.0 GPAs in college.
I must have gotten the wrong impression about PLTW from somewhere.
I am always talking about college GPA, no weighting, 4.0 max.
1 Like
The upper level specialized courses probably cost more to the university, since the pool of instructors for any given upper level specialized course is smaller than for typical frosh-level courses. Also, while frosh-level English and introductory foreign language are typically taught in small classes, many other frosh-level courses are taught in large classes, so fewer instructors are needed for the given number of students.
Of course, an individual faculty member may prefer to teach an upper level specialized course over a frosh-level course.
Yes, a larger selection of upper level courses is generally beneficial to the student and the student’s post-graduation destinations.
He is in-state and applied EA. He was admitted to five other state flagships as far away as Colorado and Indiana and a private aerospace college in Florida, and offered several good financial awards. None of them had any difficulty evaluating his record and potential.
The only exception was UMD where both of his parents are life alumni members. Somewhere on campus there is a plaque with our names on it. When I get a free moment, I will find it and ask them to remove it.
I know families that are disappointed when their student wasn’t accepted to main campus, but when it remains their top choice and there is a pathway through a CC or a regional campus they enroll somewhere and transfer when they’ve completed the transfer pathway. Sometimes that is even as early as fall if they do a summer term and have already earned credits in hs. The lesson isn’t this wasn’t fair. It’s you’ve got a goal, here is a path. Keep working on reaching your goal.
His goal has changed. He’s happy at his school. Even so, he still has a safety in UMD, because he could transfer back to the Maryland CC for a semester and then attend UMD if that’s what he really wanted.
There isn’t anything inherently unfair in the Maryland policy to fix. It would be unfair to guarantee freshman admission to dual enrolled students. The students with the most access to dual enrollment at our school were the ones with cars, parents that went to college and registered them for placement tests early, and who understood which classes they should register for that were good fits for their student’s strengths. They tend to be students (like yours) that end up with multiple options for college in the spring.
I am so grateful to our alma mater that put us in a position not only to help our kids pay for their college education, but also to appreciate its commitment to offering educational opportunities to a diverse class.
I’m grateful to your alma mater too, your kid is a Buckeye now.
4 Likes
No matter how you look at it, it’s fundamentally wrong (and self-defeating) to reject a candidate in the top 10% of those you accepted last year.
Dual enrollment is by far the lowest cost way to accumulate college credit. In our school system, tuition is waived for families that can’t afford it. And it accelerates getting into the workforce to earn money. Fair treatment by UMD would be a huge boost to these programs.
That is why affected families should tell the Governor’s office and the USM Board of Regents that dual enrollment students need to have the same admissions consideration as transfer students. Be part of the solution to this problem! And pass the message on!
My daughter is from Minnesota, she is graduating high school in 3 years with her AA degree. If she were to stay in Minnesota every college here would accept her 60 credit hours towards her degree, her brother did the same thing at the University of Minnesota. Unfortunatly she has her eyes on a couple of out of state schools and will probably get no credit for her AA degree except knowing that it helped to get her there.
Many schools give credit for courses taken while in hs. Some may limit the total number but that’s true with AP or IB credit too. If a college is awarding a degree, that college wants to represent to the world that the student earned those credits (or most of them) from Harvard, Tufts, Miami, Tulane, etc. A state college is more likely to give more credits for AP, IB and DE, but the credits might not be beneficial to the student to start as a junior (still has to take some core classes or the beginning classes in a sequence).
At some schools, it is not beneficial to have excess credits not needed for your major. At Michigan, students pay more for upper division standing.
Wow, she is a dual enrollment superstar! I don’t think there will be a problem with transfer credits at most state universities. Probably not every credit will count to her degree. Our kid got most of his credits transferred and started as a sophomore. There were zero issues with the common math, physics, english and gen eds. His school did say his intro to engineering class didn’t count in their system and made him retake it.
The unique problem with Maryland is that they openly discriminate against dual enrollment students for admission, even though they are among the most qualified applicants.
I get your point. The student with 30 credits from community college and a 3.0 is guaranteed admission to U MD, while the vastly more qualified high school student with, in addition to a great high school record, 30 or more dual enrollment credits with a high GPA, is not. As an aside, is the community college transfer guaranteed admission to College Park, and to any major for which they have done the pre-reqs? Or might they have to go to a lesser 4 yr U Md school, or have to choose a less popular major?
It’s not right. It’s not fair. The problem is that if there is no guaranteed transfer agreement, the community college AA or AS becomes a dead-end degree. Seems appropriate that the transfer guarantee should be to a less popular 4 yr U Md campus, but there may be issues with which majors are available at which campuses, that influence transfer agreements.
This issue is not unique to your state. In my state, admission to the flagship campus has become quite competitive, but community college students can transfer to the flagship campus with the same low achievement that you describe. Meanwhile, double legacy B+/A- students who took the most challenging classes in high school are wait listed or admitted only to a commuter branch campus.
I think that this is only going to become more of an issue as more and more students who don’t qualify for financial aid at private schools choose their in-state flagship. It’s kind of ridiculous to think that a student like your son could choose to bypass this roadblock by taking community college classes in the summers before junior and senior years and the summer after senior year, and then apply as a transfer at the beginning of the summer after senior year, to start as a junior at College Park in the fall, based upon that community college transcript with his dual enrollment classes and his community college classes. That student would have guaranteed acceptance with a lower GPA, plus save two years of tuition, or take 3-4 yrs at College Park and come out with two undergrad degrees, or a BA/BS plus a masters degree.
It’s too late for your son. But presenting the absurdity of your son’s predicament to the Board of Governors of U Md does seem to be appropriate.
The guaranteed transfer policy is for College Park.
The reason I say this problem is unique to UMD is that 7 other comparable schools (including 5 state flagships) treated our son exactly as we expected given his credentials.
Our speculation is that UMD doesn’t want even exceptional dual enrollment students because they don’t fit neatly into the stats they are trying to curate for the ratings industry.
The path to fixing this is for each dual enrollment family to appeal to the USM Board of Regents (or other UMD oversight authority of their choice). Or someone to file an equal protection court challenge.
I’m just not seeing the connection between other flagships accepting your son, UMD rejecting him, and UMD’s transfer policy. His dual enrollment courses were not the reason he was rejected at UMD. He was rejected because UMD is very competitive. Plenty of students who take dual enrollment courses are accepted to UMD as freshman.
Nothing to see here.
Here is UMD’s policy.
Maryland Transfer Advantage Program FAQs | UMD Undergraduate Admissions.
I’ll try again for you. Student A has 30 credits and 3.0 GPA and is guaranteed admission to UMD despite how “competitive” they are. Student B has 31 credits of the toughest classes and a 3.85 GPA and was not admitted. If you think that’s ok, I don’t know what to say to you.
I graduated from that fine university Magna Cum Laude and 2nd in my engineering class. My son’s GPA is higher than mine was.