So Virginia Tech will need to take 950 instate students from the waitlist to compensate for the loss of 450 international students who have not committed to Virginia Tech. This will cause pain to the regional instate schools.
This is an important development that may take place at many US colleges & universities.
Thank you for sharing this information !
Keep in mind lots of international students have left and might not be able to fly back for the fall. If I20s can’t be delivered or embassies are open by June no visas will be processed. You need 3 instate to cover an international student at flagship universities.
It will be interesting to see if they can achieve their goal. I imagine a number of students have already committed, but obviously could accept VT’s offer and just lose their initial deposit.
VT could also bring in more transfers…although the soph class is overenrolled, they could bring in more juniors than anticipated.
No doubt it will be a long summer for just about every college!
I personally think that’s a great trend. These students are more likely to stay in-state and eventually contribute both as alumni and to local businesses. I would like to see less international students at Universities( capped at about 15% or so). College’s have not expanded the size of their student body despite growth in demographics (and more kids going to college). It is just unfair for American students to be competing against full-paying international students who will likely never pay taxes.
Take the money out of administrative excess and make it a priority to give in-state kids a chance.
FWIW, VT’s student body has increased in size by 20+% since 2014 and has been pretty clear over that time of their intentions to expand. The projected/desired number of international student enrollment relative to their desired incoming class of 2024 stands at about 8%. On average in state students represent 67-70% of the student body.
At UVA and VTech instate is 70%. The impact is that the 8% cover a lot of the administrative cost. Without international students paying the big bucks US universities will have issues in their tight budgets. So not sure why capping international will open opportunities if schools like Vtech can’t afford their expenses without full paying out of state students who get zero financial aid or scholarships for the college
Keep in mind what VTech is doing will created a headache for the regional universities and community colleges. 950 instate students off the waitlist means nothing if only 50% enroll. This is going to be a rough summer for universities and colleges
VT has pulled substantially more than 950 kids off the waitlist in prior years. Assuming waitlist pulls mirror the 70/30 ratio, then there’s really nothing all that new or controversial this year - its just getting covered as such. The potential headache for other schools as you go down through the hierarchy has always been there.
@ShenVal18 but it’s not 70/30… the warning is 950 instate. I think last year they had more students and did not take from the waitlist but paid students to come in the spring. The 950 is to cover the international students who are not showing up.
If you look at Ohio State thread they accepted 8000 more students this year then last. Flagships cannot afford tuition income decline especially if they can’t plan for housing income or rely on their endowment. Plus most likely state support and federal funding will be hit.
VT has had an on-and-off history of pulling students from the waitlist. My point is that the “headache” that the writer refers to is not a new phenomenon that’s isolated to the incoming class of 2024. In 2018 there were 1,896 kids pulled from the waitlist. In 2016 there were 1,697. A big portion of those are certainly in-state and have the same impact as this year - it happens any time that the top tier schools in VA pull from their waitlists. There’s just no article written about it in the Richmond paper each time. (BTW, we don’t know how many of the 950 mentioned in the article would have been pulled even if the full expected international enrollment had occurred). There’s a hint of bias in how the article was written, and with no disrespect intended to Radford students or alums (I know a bunch of them), I don’t think there’s nearly the crossover in applicants to both schools (and potential waitlist pulls from the Radford pool) that the author contends there are.
@ShenVal18 Im going to be blunt. When i saw the author mentioned that they would pull from Redford I thought the author had no clue what he was talking about. I know many people who go to Radford and while they are good students, there is no way most of them could get into VT.
Yeah, with the exception of some very specific majors I would pretty much agree.
If they are trying to make up for lost revenue from international students, you’d think they’d target more out of state students. But I don’t understand the cap they have for OOS. I’ve always been under the impression it was lenient than, say, NC or GA’s OOS cap.
I think what happened is along the lines of what you said @AlmostThere2018. They admitted much less than last year (17, 18k), because they already overenrolled the class of 2023 and had a ton of guaranteed transfers. With COVID-19 and other unaccounted for factors, they have less OOS and International students enrolling, so they turned quickly to the waitlist, focusing initially solely on international and OOS students. They began pulling in mid-April, almost all OOS students, and this trend continued until right up until the national deadline May 1st. The majority of those students pulled are given until May 15th to make their decision. After that, Tech still probably won’t either have enrolled enough students, or enrolled the correct percentages in order to get their expected revenue, so they will pull large amounts from the in-state pool, which is what the article is saying. These are just my thoughts. In 2016 and 2018, they pulled over 1700 off waitlists compiled of only 2000-3000 students (They offered more students spots on the waitlist, but less accepted obviously). I have no clue how many they offered spots this year, but I’d expect probably 3000 applicants accepted a spot, so maybe 2/3 will be pulled? Again, these are all just based on past data and logical inferences; I have no affiliation with the Virginia Tech office of admissions.
@drewh02 Hey waitlist buddy! Any word yet? I haven’t heard ZIP
@hopefulhokie24 Me neither 
And they know that a certain % of those still on the waitlist will not attend VT even if accepted now due to either other wait lists like UVA or other schools or just being committed financially to another school. I saw the President of UVA on Face the Nation this morning and it was an interesting interview. I think the VA schools seem like they are not as far along in their plans as other schools for sure. My son right now is going to South Carolina and they already announced what they are doing and how they plan to get there. He did say one thing that will be true. This year in colleges and universities will be very different from anything they have ever experienced.
Looks like there’s some movement on the waitlist today (via other VT waitlist thread)…fingers crossed for everyone still waiting, including my son!
People-- You need to think about the trickle down effect. Last year when VT overenrolled other Virginia schools pulled off their waitlists more than usual. So VT may not be taking students directly from a school like Radford, but when VT takes more in-state students, JMU (or whoever) pulls off its waitlist, which then trickles down and eventually does affect admissions to Radford. It’s a zero sum game with in-state students, so one university taking more than usual will absolutely affect other schools, especially the ones that are a very high percentage of in-state students.
Also, I’ll add that of course different schools serve different populations, but there is overlap. Radford is about 40% first generation students, so it serves a different purpose and has a different mission than a school like Virginia Tech.