Is there a "NOVA penalty" for UVA?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Better to be an outstanding student at a lower performing high school with less competition. Tried to tell my relativse in NOVA this and have them move to a lower performing part of the state, since they are retired now, because their daughter could be top of her class there. Not here. Wish my parents had understood!

I'll never understand parents who try to "game" the system by moving to a lower performing school. Will your kid stand out? Yes. But its short-sighted. Your kids college destination is the not the end game. If youre trying to raise motivated, life long learners, you don't purposely place them in a less challenging environment.

Agree. I have friends who were shocked when we left our low-performing high school for a highly competitive magnet. They remarked how much easier it would be to get into the best colleges if we just stayed put. What they don't understand is that our kid would probably get straight As but would not be challenged by the environment. 3 years in and DC has been exposed to subjects and career options that we are confident he would not have come up with on his own if we stayed at his other school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:a kid on my street with 4.2 gpa 1400+ sat and on football team didn't get in. is this due to NOVA penalty?

I also know a kid with similar stats that was admitted as a freshman last year to a highly selective college. When I last spoke to his dad, he was failing his first semester at school. Being an athlete is tough for sure, but I also know that this kid had a relatively easy schedule in high school that led to a very high GPA. Now, clearly he's no dunce, he did pretty well on the SAT. But a 4.2 is not all the same across the board.

Even in a very competitive HS? I have no idea whether he's a top ten or top twenty student, but what else must UVA want? Some kind of a hook?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:a kid on my street with 4.2 gpa 1400+ sat and on football team didn't get in. is this due to NOVA penalty?

I also know a kid with similar stats that was admitted as a freshman last year to a highly selective college. When I last spoke to his dad, he was failing his first semester at school. Being an athlete is tough for sure, but I also know that this kid had a relatively easy schedule in high school that led to a very high GPA. Now, clearly he's no dunce, he did pretty well on the SAT. But a 4.2 is not all the same across the board.

Even in a very competitive HS? I have no idea whether he's a top ten or top twenty student, but what else must UVA want? Some kind of a hook?

When you have over 33,000 apps for a class of 9,000, a hook would definitely help.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Quotas by high school not county. Better to be in a lesser H S.

Better to be in a mediocre-plus high school.

It is by region, not by individual HS. It has been this way for a number of years.

Nope. You'll stand out more at a mediocre-plus school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is interesting:
http://uvaapplication.blogspot.com/2016/10/uva-admission-quotas-for-northern.html

PP, there are indeed no max-quotas for NoVa at UVA. However, what the blog doesn't mention is that UVA has agreed to minimum admission practices for the rest of the state. The effect is that NoVa applicants are subject to a negative cap. This gets debated every two or three years in the Virginia General Assembly, when the legislature threatens to cut funding to UVA if in-state admissions are not made easier. (This year was an exception - there wasn't such an effort -- instead there were three different bills).

Discounting athletic, legacy, and special-program applicants, UVA admits NoVa applicants only after the bulk of the class is filled, and then plucks off the top of the NoVa pool.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Better to be an outstanding student at a lower performing high school with less competition. Tried to tell my relativse in NOVA this and have them move to a lower performing part of the state, since they are retired now, because their daughter could be top of her class there. Not here. Wish my parents had understood!

Yes, but the same student may turn out to be a lower performing student at a lower performing school than he or she would have turned out to be at a higher performing school where the peer group is stronger and the expectations are higher. So there's that to consider as well.

[Anonymous]

UVA needs a critical mass of high achieving kids. The key place for getting that critical mass is nova. But the competition from nova is unreal. I thought 20 years ago it was tough, in terms of getting in, but wow, how easy it was back then, relatively speaking!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:UVA needs a critical mass of high achieving kids. The key place for getting that critical mass is nova. But the competition from nova is unreal. I thought 20 years ago it was tough, in terms of getting in, but wow, how easy it was back then, relatively speaking!

At my daughter's HS, UVA regularly admits 30-40 kids with a ~35% acceptance rate. Unreal compared to the past? Perhaps. Unreal compared to the 30+ schools in the country that are tougher to gain acceptance? No.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:a kid on my street with 4.2 gpa 1400+ sat and on football team didn't get in. is this due to NOVA penalty?

I also know a kid with similar stats that was admitted as a freshman last year to a highly selective college. When I last spoke to his dad, he was failing his first semester at school. Being an athlete is tough for sure, but I also know that this kid had a relatively easy schedule in high school that led to a very high GPA. Now, clearly he's no dunce, he did pretty well on the SAT. But a 4.2 is not all the same across the board.

Even in a very competitive HS? I have no idea whether he's a top ten or top twenty student, but what else must UVA want? Some kind of a hook?

When you have over 33,000 apps for a class of 9,000, a hook would definitely help.

What's that - 30% admit rate? Doesn't seem that difficult to get in for a top student.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:a kid on my street with 4.2 gpa 1400+ sat and on football team didn't get in. is this due to NOVA penalty?

I also know a kid with similar stats that was admitted as a freshman last year to a highly selective college. When I last spoke to his dad, he was failing his first semester at school. Being an athlete is tough for sure, but I also know that this kid had a relatively easy schedule in high school that led to a very high GPA. Now, clearly he's no dunce, he did pretty well on the SAT. But a 4.2 is not all the same across the board.

Even in a very competitive HS? I have no idea whether he's a top ten or top twenty student, but what else must UVA want? Some kind of a hook?

When you have over 33,000 apps for a class of 9,000, a hook would definitely help.

What's that - 30% admit rate? Doesn't seem that difficult to get in for a top student.

It's that high because the UVA applicants self-select and are determined by local public high schools. There is no way my local high school (FCPS) would have encouraged/let my daughter apply to UVA. The school, the counselor and the high school teacher letters went in for only the very top students (who were also applying to Ivies and other top publics). Your VA high school admissions won't support the B+ application to UVA. But they would support any other private or state applications so long as we, the parents, wanted to spend the application dollar. Go look at the stats on college confidential. The records (GPA, AP course, class ranking, scores, extra-curriculars) of the REJECTED VA, OOS and international kids is astonishing. I watched the internationals play "chance me" on the day the EAs were decided. I was amazed DC got in (4.2, ACT 36, good but not 800 SAT subject matter II tests, xlnt letters). It's really that difficult. Her other schools were Ivies and top publics. Her friends that got into Ivies did not get into UVA. They want well-rounded students with xlnt scores from all over the state. It is true if you are applying from one of the western most counties in VA your chances of getting in are much greater (there are some counties with only one or zero students attending) but from NOVA it is just about impossible.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:a kid on my street with 4.2 gpa 1400+ sat and on football team didn't get in. is this due to NOVA penalty?

I also know a kid with similar stats that was admitted as a freshman last year to a highly selective college. When I last spoke to his dad, he was failing his first semester at school. Being an athlete is tough for sure, but I also know that this kid had a relatively easy schedule in high school that led to a very high GPA. Now, clearly he's no dunce, he did pretty well on the SAT. But a 4.2 is not all the same across the board.

Even in a very competitive HS? I have no idea whether he's a top ten or top twenty student, but what else must UVA want? Some kind of a hook?

When you have over 33,000 apps for a class of 9,000, a hook would definitely help.

What's that - 30% admit rate? Doesn't seem that difficult to get in for a top student.

It's that high because the UVA applicants self-select and are determined by local public high schools. There is no way my local high school (FCPS) would have encouraged/let my daughter apply to UVA. The school, the counselor and the high school teacher letters went in for only the very top students (who were also applying to Ivies and other top publics). Your VA high school admissions won't support the B+ application to UVA. But they would support any other private or state applications so long as we, the parents, wanted to spend the application dollar. Go look at the stats on college confidential. The records (GPA, AP course, class ranking, scores, extra-curriculars) of the REJECTED VA, OOS and international kids is astonishing. I watched the internationals play "chance me" on the day the EAs were decided. I was amazed DC got in (4.2, ACT 36, good but not 800 SAT subject matter II tests, xlnt letters). It's really that difficult. Her other schools were Ivies and top publics. Her friends that got into Ivies did not get into UVA. They want well-rounded students with xlnt scores from all over the state. It is true if you are applying from one of the western most counties in VA your chances of getting in are much greater (there are some counties with only one or zero students attending) but from NOVA it is just about impossible.

At my daughter's school, 25% (~130) of the graduating class applies to UVA each year, with ~35% getting accepted. Is that self-selecting?

[Anonymous]

Absolutely. A 2310 from coal country would waltz right in. Not my kid though.

[Anonymous]

3/4 of the class at TJ apply to UVA and 1/2 of them are offered. But the top 10% get scholarships at other & Ivy and do not attend UVA.

[Anonymous]

Is Mthe city of Manassas considered NOVA?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Absolutely. A 2310 from coal country would waltz right in. Not my kid though.

You;re confusing West Virginia with Virginia. NO coal mining in Virginia.