We are in Texas. D24 get accepted within 2 says of her SAT acores being sent, but she is automatic merit. She has submitted her Honors application and supplemental scholarship application.
I kept suggesting that Blount may be something she would be interested in, and she could not have cared less until Blount sent her a humorous email asking her to apply. She just sent in her application. 
She totally loved writing the haiku.
We are also in Texas and my daughter was accepted within a few days, but did not submit scores. Maybe our Regional Admissions people are on top of their game. I feel bad for the ones waiting!
For those still waiting (like my son)…I just saw Bama is doing no application fee next week, Oct. 16th-20th. Now they’ll really have a lot of app’s to go through, when they haven’t even gotten back to kids that applied weeks and weeks ago (and paid an application fee).
I saw that too and was thinking the same thing ! My hope is we’ll get a response back before the 16th but at this point who knows!
My son is a junior at UA. He also applied to Blount b/c of the essays - he has enjoyed the program and this momma is happy that he was with a smaller cohort in a larger school. The program is super intense writing the first 2 semesters, but awesome.
It is extremely aggravating. My DD has high stats, captain of sports teams, many, many extra curriculars, all AP classes and we have been waiting 9 weeks!! We paid for our application to be reviewed and now they are offering a free week. I have no idea what we have been put in some WAIT bucket. She is more than qualified for Alabama. Our other DD is a sophomore and was accepted in roughly 7 days, OOO, no scores and received an enormous scholarship. Mind boggling really!!
You had an expectation set - and that’s fair - but if your stats are remotely good and you say they are high, you’re not getting rejected. And if you submitted a test for this student, you know exactly how much merit you are getting.
Many schools offer a free week. And many other schools offer waivers to some but not others.
They haven’t given a promise on response time - so you’ve created an expectation but you can’t hold them accountable to it.
I assume your other daughter started fall of '21 or '22 and the landscape was very different for TO. Almost all schools did not require or even suggest test scores because of the pandemic and its impact on students/families. This application season is more of the norm, and as I said in a previous post, Alabama is a popular school these days. Be patient. Many schools in my home state do not send out decisions until almost March… talk about frustrating.
Yes, fair enough!
Kinda kicking myself a little, I completely forgot Alabama would do a free app week and just paid the app fee a week ago!
No this is not right. Rolling admisisons by definition is evaluating applications as they are received versus waiting to evaluate all apps after a hard deadline. Alabama is noted as a rolling admissions school in common app so that is the expectation. No one is making up an expectation. It’s either accept or deny.
What Alabama is doing is either screwing up on admissions review,OR waiting to see if they can get better applications and deferring our kids. That’s not right if you claim to be rolling. I’m emailing admissions today and telling them to refund my money if they are not giving me a decision by the 16th. Then we will reapply for free seeming they don’t want to accept my kid after over 10 weeks. Or possibly just completely withdraw and request a refund.
When I saw that my daughter’s application was under review, I thought maybe she was deferred. I asked the counselor at her school and was told that if she was deferred, the messaging would be clear. She told me that they probably have a lot of applications and just didn’t get to it. But obviously that’s not the case since people are getting accepted within a few days and it’s been five weeks since my daughter applied. I also was under the impression that rolling admission means that they make a decision once they look at the application. It’s beyond frustrating! Please keep us posted after you speak with admissions. Thanks so much and good luck to you.
I guess I have a very different understanding of what rolling admissions means. It means that they don’t release every decision for every applicant on a certain date. Not necessarily that applications are reviewed and decided in the order in which they are received.
Other rolling schools are somewhat sporadic in the decision releases. For example Baylor is officially that it will release decisions by X date, but then it has historically rolled some out every week. It’s random how applications are batched and decided by the committee. High stats kids can wait until the end, and kids will frequently receive invitations to invitation only scholarship events well before they are admitted to the university, so clearly there is a review that happens of candidate quality before a decision is made.
I also don’t understand the concept of deferral here. People can be deferred from early action or early decision to regular decision, but there are not multiple admission plans, so I do not see what someone would be deferred to.
I think a frustration with Alabama’s approach is that historically, they seemed to operate differently. At least that’s what I can discern looking at prior years’ threads. This year they started off with a portal message saying that applicants would hear after Labor Day, then changed that to “most applicants will receive a decision by late March.” So, in other words, well AFTER every single school offering EA and along the timeline of RD schools. I just think they could communicate so much better about the approach. It’s bizarre that some applicants hear in 2 days and others have been pending for 2+ months with the “late March” message. It really causes tremendous anxiety with kids who love this school and applied early. Say yes or no; let these kids readjust and apply to other schools if that’s what needs to happen. Or communicate that decisions will be released on a specific timeline or date.
I understand what you mean about deferrals. I was just going by what the counselor said.
It’s just very frustrating to see a message that decisions will be made by late March considering that’s later than early action decisions.
I understand applicants may not all get a decision within a few days but to have to wait 7 months for a decision when a school has rolling admission seems like a very long time to me.
Keeping my fingers crossed that a decision will be made way before then.
This is exactly it ! Perfectly said.
It looks like they are communicating and letting students know that it might be late March before they hear anything. Nothing is preventing kids from applying to other schools… Alabama does not restrict anyone.
Alabama posting a message on the portal that “most applicants” will hear their decision by late March, a full eight months after some have applied, is not good communication nor is it reflective of what anyone understands to the term “rolling decision” to mean. Obviously kids can (and do) apply elsewhere. But for kids who applied early to Alabama because it’s a top pick and for whom the rolling decision model was appealing, and who then are basically told “most applicants will have a decision by late March”… that is not helpful. It feels a bit like bait-and-switch to me.
“by late March” does not mean “in late March.” There’s a lot of time between now and then.
Absolutely. For this reason my daughter is committing elsewhere. Their loss !!!