<p>"To qualify for guaranteed admission, students must complete an associates degree at a Virginia community college within a two-year period preceding application to U.Va. while maintaining a cumulative grade point average of 3.4 or better and a grade of C or better in every VCCS course except for a B in introductory English courses. Students must have a minimum of at least 54 transferable credit hours, 45 or more of which are from a VCCS college"</p>
<p>Sounds pretty doable for anyone that really wants to go to UVa. Not sure about residency rules for that option.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.virginia.edu/insideuva/2006/07/admission_program.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.virginia.edu/insideuva/2006/07/admission_program.html</a></p>
The original post is from 2006-is the policy still the same?
I think you may need a 3.7 in VCCS for guaranteed transfer to UVa now?
And elite privates open backdoors to recruited athletes, URM, progeny of famous/powerful people, and those who donate (lots of) money.
(And speaking of backdoors, Columbia has SCS and Cornell also has near-guaranteed transfer agreements).
Other than the athletes, having to hit a certain GPA seems a bit more meritocratic to me.
This policy is still around. They have other thresholds for guaranteed transfer into other schools in Virginia: http://www.vccs.edu/students/transfers/