Washington Post article

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of Virginia
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<p>I’m late jumping into this but thought I’d give my reaction. Every time they run an article like this – and Dean J is right that it happens every year – they pluck some kid out of the sky who has a strong but not spectacular record, and high but not off-the-chart SAT scores, and use him to suggest that only truly spectacular kids can get into U-Va. Especially from Northern Virginia. </p>

<p>This just isn’t the case. I’ve had two (upper middle class non-URM) kids get into U-Va from our highly regarded Northern Virginia high school. One barely cracked a 1300 and graduated with a weighted high school GPA of 3.7. The other “only” scored in the mid-1200s and graduated with slightly over a 4.0 weighted GPA – without any AP math or science classes. </p>

<p>What the numbers don’t show, however, is that the 3.7 was a 4.4 for the junior and senior year (in ridiculously hard classes) because the student had a very slow start in the freshman and sophomore years, and that the other student with “only” the mid-1200s presented an application that clearly showed a real passion, commitment, devotion to, and ability in the chosen field of study. Granted, neither applicant skated into U-Va, but both were eventually admitted.</p>

<p>In short, U-Va says it’s not just about numbers, and in our experience it really isn’t. You don’t NEED a 1400 on the SATs to get into U-Va, even from NOVA; at the same time you don’t need ONLY a 1400 on the SATs. That’s the problem with articles such as this one; they provide an incomplete picture of the featured applicant and proceed to compare him or her against only the “numbers” of other applicants. The admissions process is much more complicated than that – not only at U-Va but at virtually every highly regarded university.</p>

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<p>That was a good read nova. Congratz on your two sons.</p>

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<p>The biggest increases in applicants this year to top east coast colleges has been from California. It is because the California public university system has experienced such severe cutbacks. At some Ca. universities, students are very limited in what majors they can choose. </p>

<p>Anyone who things that kids from all east coast suburbs are the same has not met many students from many geographic areas.</p>

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<p>From my perspective, much of this discussion misses the root cause of what is going on. </p>

<p>Not so very long ago, the Commonwealth of Virginia contributed a significant percentage of the yearly operating revenue of the University of Virginia (and, presumably, many of the other state schools in Virginia). When times got tough and politicians started looking for places where they could cut expenses, that funding was reduced. The schools made adjustments. They reduced their own expenses. They increased tuition. And they appealed to their alumni for financial support.</p>

<p>Fortunately, U.Va. was able to make up the loss in state funds through other means.</p>

<p>And the politicians discovered that reducing state funding of state universities was a comparatively safe way to reduce overall state expenses. So they did it again and again and again. And U.Va. became very good at adjusting to the continually declining state funding.</p>

<p>Somebody more knowledgeable than me can comment on this, but I believe that they did all this without decreasing the percentage of in-state students that they accept.</p>

<p>But, with economic hard times, more and more Virginia families are finding the comparatively inexpensive world-class education available at U.Va. to be more attractive than it was just a few years ago. So demand – both in-state and out-of-state – has soared. And it has become harder for everybody to get accepted at U.Va.</p>

<p>Meanwhile, of course, U.Va. has become much less of a state school than it was 20-30 years ago. State funding for the school represents much less than 10 percent of total revenue. But politicians want to have it both ways. They want to exert influence as though state funding was at the same levels it was 30 years ago, but they don’t want to actually provide that funding. </p>

<p>All of which begs the obvious question, how low does state funding have to go before U.Va. (or any other Virginia state school) ceases to be a state school? If a school gets just 5 percent of its annual funding from the state, is it a state school? How 'bout three percent? Or one percent? </p>

<p>It’s completely understandable that disgruntled parents would complain that their children did not get into the state university of their choice. What seems to me to be inexcusable are the politicians who pander to those parents as they continue to slash the budgets that support those state schools.</p>

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<p>UVaAlum - I think you summed up the situation quite nicely.</p>

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<p>UVaAlum You hit the nail on the head. I think the last state funding percentage I saw was 6%…could be a bit off but it is under 10%.</p>

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<p>Excellent post, UVaAlum.</p>

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<p>It’s right around 11% for the Academic Division which excludes the UVa Hospitals which are run as a separate business. it does includes the dorms, bookstore and athletics which also run as separate businesses more or less and don’t get state $$. Take those out and it’s closer to 14% of the net. I counted Stimulus money as state $$$ because they don’t have to give it to UVa. </p>

<p><a href=“http://www.virginia.edu/budget/Docs/Budget%20Summaries/2010-2011%20Budget%20Summary.pdf[/url]”>http://www.virginia.edu/budget/Docs/Budget%20Summaries/2010-2011%20Budget%20Summary.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>I have an question that maybe some of the IS parents can answer. It seems to me I keep reading on College Confidential that IS students supposedly do not apply to UVA because they “know” they are not going to be accepted. Or that counselors tell them not to because they will not be accepted. The University receives more OOS apps than IS apps. I have a hard time believing that IS students that have a desire to the go to UVA wouldn’t at least try. I mean the prospects of not being admitted do not seem to deter the thousands of students from applying to the ivys or other top schools even though they “know” that their chances of being admitted are slim. Not to be confusing I guess what I am trying to say is that I find it hard to believe that the students in Virginia are so disciplined that only the qualified apply to UVA. With that said I would think if they ever wanted to increase the percentage of Virginia students at the University they would have to increase the number of applications received. That would be the only way they could be assured of maintaining the quality of the student body. Why don’t more IS students apply???</p>

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<p>Mamalumper, UVa has no shortage of instate students that apply. The yield for instate is much higher than for out of state students.They have no need to worry about increasing instate applicants. There are many more instate kids already applying than there are available spaces . Kids and guidance counselors seem to have a pretty good idea as to who is competitive and who is not. As an example, younger son had 1360 SAT(M/CR) with no prep, excellent EC’s but only 3.55 GPA with a rigorous courseload(was over 3.7 by the time he graduated but still way too low to be competitive). He did not even apply because even though SAT and EC’s were competitive, the GPA was not. On the other hand, older son with 1480/4+ GPA was very competitive so did apply and was accepted. The issue with him was the decision as to whether to apply ED or to also apply to other schools. Applying to a school that you have little or no chance to be accepted to can add extra cost,extra stress. We have many great schools in Virginia. UVa is not the best option for all. Many kids actually prefer Virginia Tech, JMU, etc.</p>

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<p>Most IS students have a good idea whether they are competitive for UVa because of Naviance and other tools common in at least the NOVA schools. I don’t think that is unique in VA, either. The IS applications for UNC show the same skew, even with the 18% cap on OOS. I suspect the same is true in other states with selective state colleges as well. It was certainly true re University of Illinois as far back as the 1970’s. If you were IS and interested in the College of Business, you needn’t bother applying if you weren’t in the top 5% of your HS class. This is still true today for a number of colleges within UIUC.</p>

<p>This is not to say some IS students with their hearts set on UVa don’t apply, even if their stats aren’t competitive on paper. They probably do. The difference with Ivies may be that admission for anyone is a crap shoot, so why not take the chance that you might just be one of the lucky ones. Plus, with their nationwide, and even international reputations, you probably find a lot of students top in their HS’s who think they are competitive, based on class standing alone. They probably don’t tend to be CCer’s, though ;). </p>

<p>I second sevmom’s comment that UVa turns down plenty of qualified IS applicants each year. IF the percentage of IS students were (had?) to increase, the admissions office would not have to go beating the bushes to find additional well-qualified applicants. My observation has been that most of the very top students in VA do apply to UVa unless they have applied and were accepted at an ED/EA school before the UVa admission deadline. One stated reason for re-instituting an early admission program at UVa is to have a crack at some of those students who have not been applying to UVa because they want to have the process over before April 1.</p>

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<p>Dean J is right (again) this comes up every year around this time with same mantra of “my kid was wronged because some OOS kid bumped him/her” from their seat. Must sell a load of papers and every household with HS seniors is filled with the cry “See there you go, our kid was good enough but those darn OOS bumped him/her!” It’s as predictable as the sunrise. I must admit as a Virginian and having known many VA Tech graduates I’m shocked that a current VA Tech student would even admit that he applied to UVA let alone say he “had to settle on substandard VA Tech”. This kid is probably in the witness protection program now!</p>

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<p>^^Haha, isn’t it obvious that a large of Virginia Tech students apply to UVA every year? Also, those parents are delusional. There are only 3000+ seats yearly for their children. If they didn’t get one of those, they didn’t deserver one, no one took anything away from them. Those are also the same people who blame minority students (the handful of them) for taking their spot–entitlement at its best.</p>

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<p>Gary614 writes "I’m shocked that a current VA Tech student would even admit that he applied to UVA let alone say he “had to settle on substandard VA Tech”.</p>

<p>I agree that this student’s situation is an odd choice for the article. I’m not sure why he thinks that Tech is substandard given that he’s in the Engineering program. Perhaps he was so set on attending UVA that nothing else would do…even a program that’s generally considered superior to UVA’s engineering program. </p>

<p>Wahoomb writes “Haha, isn’t it obvious that a large of Virginia Tech students apply to UVA every year? Also, those parents are delusional. There are only 3000+ seats yearly for their children. If they didn’t get one of those, they didn’t deserver one, no one took anything away from them.”</p>

<p>Of course, a large number of Va Tech students applied to UVA just as I assume a large number of UVA students applied to Tech. I know it’s hard to believe, but some students admitted to UVA do choose to attend Tech (mostly engineers). </p>

<p>I don’t understand your comment about not deserving a spot or not being qualified to attend UVA. The decision regarding the number of IS versus OOS is strongly influenced by monetary concerns not whether the applicant can handle the workload or contribute to university life. The average scores for accepted students from our IS HS are SAT 1424 (1600 scale) and GPA 4.14. There are plenty of kids with SAT scores above 1400 but with grades just under 4.0 that are denied. I don’t believe that any of these denied kids are incapable of handling the UVA workload. On the other hand, there are a few kids with GPAs less than 4.0 and SAT scores in the 1300s that do get in. I’m happy for them. But, there’s no way that you can prove that those students would do better than the ones that were rejected. Admissions is, after all, a subjective process.</p>

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<p>^^You’re right. My little sister had an amazing GPA (over a 4.0), great SAT scores, I went to UVA (a connection) and she got wait-listed at UVA (and oddly admitted to Cornell). As soon as she started complaining about the athletes and the less-than-deserving students, I asked her if she could email me her essays. They were dry-toast-vanilla type of essays. If a so-so applicant writes very well and a superb applicant writes weak essays that might sway the adcoms. If we only went by the numbers, Dean J wouldn’t be needed and the whole office would be reduced to a computer. I’m glad that UVA is above that (even as a state school). Sadly, those kids with amazing stats who didn’t get in don’t understand. Their parents feed them the “you deserved to get in and someone else took your sport” slash “you deserve a trophy because so and so did too” lines instead of teaching them to accept their reality with dignity and responsibility.</p>

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<p>Very good post, wahoomb. Thanks for providing the example of your sister to help illustrate your point. Hope she’s happy where she ended up!</p>

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<p>She’s at Virginia Tech actually and very happy to be there!</p>

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<p>I completely agree with Chris. Tons of brilliant kids are routinely denied or waitlisted each year. Saying that “If they didn’t get one of those, they didn’t deserver one” is outrageous and a slap in the faces of all those kids (including Wahoo’s sister) who worked hard for magnificent stats. UVA knows it, the General Assembly knows it and that’s why they will admit more kids starting this year. I completely approve of it as opposed to some would like to keep UVA a private club.</p>

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<p>Wahoomb, son at Virginia Tech is very happy too! guillaume, if your child did not get into UVa, I am sorry but to paint UVa as some kind of “private club” is equally “outrageous.”</p>

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<p>For all of the parents that come to this forum please take note of what wahoomb has posted. You have no idea how much your reaction to situations impacts your child. Life is full of wonderful opportunities and disappointments. However, sometimes disappointments lead to wonderful opportunities. </p>

<p>Thank you again, wahoomb, great post!</p>