Acceptance packet arrived in the mail today. The hardcopy admit letter references the highly competitive year, noting the numbers cited elsewhere in this thread, 32k applications for 6200 slots.
@PhilipM If you don’t mind sharing, where are you from? I’m in Southeast Virginia and was hoping to get an acceptance packet today but didn’t receive one – just trying to gauge how quickly the mail might be arriving.
@ls2018 We are in NOVA, Arlington specifically. I am surprised it got here today.
@PhilipM Ok, good to know. Thinking mine will probably come tomorrow then. Thanks!
I’m an Asian Female who lives in NoVA and applied ED, got deferred, then got waitlisted from tech. My GPA is 3.77, not including the most recent semester, and I have a 1300 on my SAT. I have NOT submitted my ACT score which is a 27. Will submitting my ACT score help my chances? For the ED pool I had my major as Biology, but as time went by, I wasn’t so sure so I changed it to undecided. However, I am starting to gain my passion for Biology once again! Would it be risky for me to change my major back to Biology?
@anotherkid2000 Not sure about your ACT question (I’d ask admissions, though a 27 on the ACT converts to anywhere from a 1280 to 1300 on the SAT according to my conversion chart so I don’t know that it would really make a difference), but I definitely wouldn’t switch back to Biology. Bio seemed pretty competitive this year and I know many qualified kids who were waitlisted or straight-up rejected from that major, so I would remain Undecided if I were you.
VT seems to be more focused on GPA than ACT scores.
It seems like all of the majors were very competitive this year. A lot of my friends got waitlisted/rejected from undecided as well, and most have better stats than I do. However, I only know a few people who applied to the Biology major. Those people happen to have similar stats as me, and they got in. At this point, I really don’t want to risk my chances of being rejected. It’s a very scary process :x
Something that I came across looking at past stats, OOS students make up approximately 40% of the Overall engineering students at Tech, well above the 30% that is typical for state schools. One of the reasons it’s so difficult to get into particularly this year. I’ll be interested to see what the stats are for 2018.
Son was deferred during ED, then wait-listed on Monday 3/5. Applied Engineering 1st / University Studies 2nd; 1340 SAT 4.25 W / 3.42 UW. OOS (North Carolina). Can’t wait until Mid May to find out, so going elsewhere.
S accepted COE Honors. 1500 (800M/700E); 34 ACT (36M/34E); 3.9uw/4.6w; 10 AP; dual enrollment for multi-var calc, linear alg, and diff eqs (all A’s). Plenty of ECs and sports.
@LMHLAW3 I suspect the difference in out of state percentages – overall VT is about 65% in state – is reflective of the applicant pool. The Engineering and Architecture programs are highly ranked nationally so would draw larger numbers as a percentage of the total pool from outside Virginia than would other less well known programs. I am not aware of any University policies limiting OOS so its possible the Engineering School does not differentiate between IS and OOS applicants when making admission decisions; alternatively it may try to ensure the accepted poulation reflects the make up of the larger applucant pool so a pool that is 40% OOS applicants would yield an accepted poulation that is 40% OOS. By comparison UVA limits OOS admittance to 1/3 even though more than 1/3 of its applicants are OOS.
In any event, if the overall increase in applicants over the last few years has been signifcantly driven by increases in OOS engineering students and the University responded by upping the percentage of OOS it admits to be consistent with the overall make up of tne applicant pool, that would make it less likely for an IS applicant to get in. But if growth is more evenly distributed, the larger numbers of applicants would perhaps just make it harder for everyone whether IS or OOS.
Acceptance packet arrived here in NC today!
Thank you PhilipM for your explanation it was very helpful since I thought that all in state schools were limited in their OOS acceptances.
@LMHLAW3 I know my VA tax-paying opinion won’t be popular with some, but the VA state schools should be capped at no more than 25% OOS (max). Similar to the cap NC state schools are capped at 18% OOS. But I understand it’s about state funding, or lack thereof.
I agree!
I may uproot and move to VA…the OOS Tuition is back breaking.
The challenge for the schools is that reducing OOS enrollment leads directly to increasing IS costs. We in-staters pay less only partly because we pay taxes. We also pay less because OOS and foreign students pay more. I read an article about UMASS Amherst not long ago where they had gotten criticized for giving more scholarship money to OOS students than to IS. Their defense was that even with scholarships, the OOS kids still pay more than IS, which helps keep IS tuition down across the board. So if you see percentages of IS students rising at any given school, it likely reflects University effort to limit need to raise tuition on IS students.
Info info is anecdotal & TCWHS is one of the largest HS in the state with nearly 4000 enrolled 9-12. Thanks.
At my child’s NOVA Instate high school…compare around 16 admits last year, to, say, 4 -6 this year, and 12-14 + waitlists. ‘Something is rotten in the state’ of VA (city of Blacksburg) and of course, my first thought might be admin is looking at favoring OOS for financial reasons. This may not be the case and I am very curious about the distribution of admits…OOS versus instate, variation among VA districts (NOVA compared to other regions, etc. ) Perhaps it is just that VT is cautious of another year of underestimated yield like in 2015, when existing students were offered money to give up their housing because way too many kids accepted admission.