Please help me understand this about VT
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Anonymous
| People are constantly talking about how difficult it is to get into Virginia Tech, yet it has a 65% acceptance rate. This doesn’t add up to me. Can someone please explain this? |
Anonymous
| The rate is much lower for engineering and computer science. |
Anonymous
| Great question. Maybe way lower acceptance for NOVA vs rest of the state? |
Anonymous
+1 This is the issue. |
Anonymous
It's annoying to find, but you can see applications, acceptances, and enrolled my major here: https://udc.vt.edu/irdata/data/students/admission/index#college College of Engineering Acceptance Rate (removing he AA degrees: 56% (it was 76% in 2019, 63% in 2020) When you select the CS department, it shows 6 applicants and 6 accepted. Not sure what's going on there. |
Anonymous
Are those transfers, maybe? I thought VT admitted people to the College of Engineering, and then after a year they applied to a program within engineering. Also, am I missing where the data are broken down by regular and early admission (or early action, whatever VT does) |
Anonymous
You can select in-state vs. out and see the difference. |
Anonymous
| I selected White male instate non URM Bachelors engineering and got 26 % acceptance rate. |
Anonymous
It is because VT all incoming freshman to the engineering school (CS included) go into General Engineering for the 1st year. It gets interesting when you filter the "Tuition" for in-state.... then you'll see that the acceptance rate for In-State Engineering is down to 33% in 2021... I'm curious to see the 2022 numbers, but I'll bet it is similar. OOS applicants are at 66%... so it would appear that it is much easier to apply to engineering from OOS. Crazy, huh? |
Anonymous
I think it works both ways. In the last few cycles, we've seen instate kids get into Penn State, Ohio State, Purdue, and even UVA and Michigan, but get denied at VT. My guess is that VT is going through what GT experienced when it added the Common App. I also think that in 5 years, you'll start to see that admission rate evidence on sites like US News when it continues to happen cycle after cycle. |
Anonymous
i got the same except for hispanics had a higher acceptance rate than whites, blacks and asians |
Anonymous
|
65% acceptance rate means 35% of applicants who thought they'd get in were rejected, like your friends.
Also, the overall rate may be 65%, but all colleges look school by shcool. Some schools individually may have half the class applying, but far fewer them 65% of them getting in. Even from a school with prescreened high achievers, private or magnet, it is rare for any college to accept 100% of a given high school's applicants. So qualified kids are competing against each other. |
Anonymous
| Wow, I don't have a dog in the VT fight but was curious about acceptance rates so plugged in White Male and the acceptance rate even for Arts and Sciences is hovering around 36%. Very surprised as I though engineering and CS were outliers, but apparently not. |
Anonymous
This, plus it's likely lower for NoVA students vs. the rest of VA. Admissions rates vary widely and I think the other thing that makes it "hard to get in" is that it is really unpredictable. Some very high stats kids get in and others don't. It's not a by-the-numbers school. They say the essays are really important. I know a lot of people don't believe that such a big school can actually focus on the essays but they do say they are very important. The wide variation in admissions rates means it can help to be strategic about which major you apply to. Definitely don't apply to a non-engineering major if you really want engineering since transferring in is rare. But, if you are not set specifically on engineering, just like tech or something like that there are easier-to-get-in options. For example, if that white in-state male student is interested in cyber security (hot field right now) … You could minor in cyber security with a CS/Comp Engineering major and then you are in that 26% group or Major in BIT-Cyber in the college of business = 34% or Major in Computational Modeling & Data Analytics w/ cyber security track in the college of science, admit rate = 90% VT has a LOT of majors so it's worth exploring those to see what might fit your interests that not in the standard engineering, business, etc. |
Anonymous
| ^^^Correction the CMDA admit rate is 82% for white males, the 90% is any not-URM males |