Here’s the letter we got with his University Studies acceptance…COE acceptance was only 15%!:
You applied to General Engineering but were offered admission into your second choice of University Studies:
What does this mean?
The applicant pool for admission into the College of Engineering at Virginia Tech was highly
competitive. This year we received over 12,375 applications for 1,850 available spaces. Many
remarkable students, like you, were not offered into the College of Engineering. The fact that you received an offer of admission to Virginia Tech means we were still very impressed with your application and would love for you to be a part of the Virginia Tech Class of 2022! We certainly understand your disappointment that your offer of admission is not into the College of Engineering, but we hope that you are still interested in pursuing your academic future here at Virginia Tech in University Studies. While every student who enters Virginia Tech in University Studies eventually moves into a degree-granting major, all engineering majors are restricted, and transferring into the College of Engineering
is not guaranteed. The number of spaces for internal transfers into engineering varies annually based
on overall College of Engineering enrollment targets. Access to required engineering change of major
courses is also limited for many students outside the College of Engineering, thus most internal
transfers into the College of Engineering can expect up to one additional year of enrollment to complete the degree. To learn more about the process of an internal transfer from a non-engineering program into a degree granting engineering major view the following website at http://www.enge.vt.edu/em. The focus of your academic advising in University Studies your first year will be to fulfill the Pathways to General Education which is required of all students here, regardless of major. Additionally, academic advisors in University Studies will help you explore and prepare for an eventual transfer into a degree-granting major.
Each year, hundreds of students enter Virginia Tech in University Studies and go on to have very fulfilling experiences at the university. After learning more about other phenomenal academic options, students often find a perfect fit in majors they never knew existed or had not yet explored.
We encourage you to learn more about University Studies by visiting the website (http://www.universitystudies.vt.edu
); connecting with academic advisors in University Studies; or attending their information session during Hokie Focus on April 7 or 8, 2018.
@catmatmc I got waitlisted for business and three of my friends were waitlisted for engineering. The only one who got in was accepted for his second major, mathematics, which he has no real interest in. All the people who were waitlisted are really smart guys, so it surprises me.
@adcampo1 This does not mean there was only a 15% acceptance. They are saying that they have 1850 spaces available, but they likely offer admission to about 3x that many applicants because only approximately 1/3 of the people they offer admittance to actually enroll. My guess it that based on these numbers, they offered to about 45% of the CoE applicants.
this is extremely telling. Earlier poster said OVERALL acceptance rate for 32,000 students was 56%. COE is 15% with numbers mentioned above. Doing simple math, that means all other applicants - non COE - had an acceptance rate of 81%.
1850/12375 COE + 16070/19625 all other = 17920/32000. So non engineering pretty much has same acceptance rate.
CoE yield is typically 40%. That means to enroll 1,850 students, they would need to accept 4,625. Therefore if 12,375 applied and 4,626 were accepted, the acceptance rate for CoE is closer to 37%.
Further, VT on the whole typically has a high 30s yield. So let’s just say 35%. So if they want to fill a class of 6,200, they need to accept at least 17,700. If they actually received 32,000 applications as stated earlier, then the overall acceptance rate would be around 55.3% (17,700/32,000). The big question is, did they really get 32,000 applications? That would be a pretty large jump from 27,000 last year.
you are right! I guess then the conclusion - roughly - is that college of engineering continues to be extremely competitive while many of the other colleges have more average acceptance rates.
D was waitlisted.- in state, COA & LS, Human Nutrition Major
3.7 gpa
1160 sat
34 credits
10 Ap’s the rest honors
NHS/BETA
tons of Ec’s
Five Sports in school
community and church involvement
over 100 +community service hours
160 hour volunteer internship
public school specialty center
Congrats to those who were accepted! So competitive out there!
@“Anne Shirley” It looks like this year was much more competitive for CoE.
2017 - 8499 Applied, 6190 Offered, 2055 enrolled. = 72.8% Offered and 33.2% of those offered enrolled.
2018 (based on previous posts, take them for what they are) - 12,375 Applied, about 5,550 Offered (my estimate based on 33% yield as per historical norm) = 44.4% Offered.
That is a dramatic drop in Offer %, driven by equally large increase in Applications (46% increase).
@pkgny2022 Assuming the information in the earlier post is correct, they want to Enroll 1850 students into CoE. Last year they enrolled 2055. So, they would need to offer less if they assumed the same yield on those offers. We don’t know whether that assumption is valid this year, but the historical data is very consistent that they yield between 32 and 35% of those they offer.
Also, it was widely reported that all of VT was over-Enrolled last year and there were issues with dorm space. So, it would not be surprising that they want to enroll fewer this year.
I think what you are seeing in terms of dropped admittance is less about yield rate and more about raw numbers. Through 2015, applications ran between 19 and 21k with yield rates between 33 and 38%. But over the last four years, applications have risen dramatically: 22280 in 2015, 25000 in 2016, 27423 last year, 32k this year. Despite having 6000-8000 more applicants last year than in the years 2010-2014, they accepted a relatively stable percentage so a fairly normal 35% enrollment ratio yielded many more enrollments, creating a space crush. As applicant numbers go up faster than they can build new dorms and classrooms, admittance numbers must come down assuming enrollment yield remains between 33 and 40%.
@“Anne Shirley” you need to look at the links which have been previously posted for prior years. CoE has always been the most competitive program but I can tell you, first hand, that many students that would have been accepted to other programs in previous years did not get accepted or were waitlisted this year. You seem to be working hard to undersell all other programs. It was an exceptionally competitive year for those on the lower side of the desired GPA. Also, OOS acceptances are on the rise to fund budget shortfalls.
@STEM2017 I am confident the increase is real. It is happening at a lot of schools. FSU’s numbers have nearly doubled in 2-3 years. Despite fewer students in the class of 2022 compared with other years, more are going to college, more have higher stats, and many are applying to 10+ schools. That is what is driving up apps. It will be interesting to see which students matriculate.
So what gives - I hear anecdotally that the acceptance rate for CoE is 2%; and 1 - that’s it 1 applicant from the largest HS in VA got accepted to CoE. This is absurd. I know VT is competitive, but forcing in-staters to go out of state for engineering is ludicrous. Why pay taxes?