UMD Rejections

[Anonymous]

Son is interested in UMD from OOS. Applying EA is a must. Undecided major. I see the school will place kids in Letters and Sciences for those that aren't directly admitted to a competitive major as well as "freshman connection" for spring admits. Are you aware of high or reasonably strong stat kids getting rejected? Appears they go out of their way to get kids into the school. Thanks.

[Anonymous]

The strong stat kids who are rejected are usually rejected from the most competitive course, CS. If your son is applying for general entry and not one of the honors colleges etc, he probably is more likely to get a spot.

Have you /he made contact with admissions and scheduled a tour or virtual tour etc? Good to show interest as it's one of the schools that cares about that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Son is interested in UMD from OOS. Applying EA is a must. Undecided major. I see the school will place kids in Letters and Sciences for those that aren't directly admitted to a competitive major as well as "freshman connection" for spring admits. Are you aware of high or reasonably strong stat kids getting rejected? Appears they go out of their way to get kids into the school. Thanks.

OP, those kids are dime a dozen. Particularly for IS kids. MCPS (county that borders CP) are full of high stat kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Son is interested in UMD from OOS. Applying EA is a must. Undecided major. I see the school will place kids in Letters and Sciences for those that aren't directly admitted to a competitive major as well as "freshman connection" for spring admits. Are you aware of high or reasonably strong stat kids getting rejected? Appears they go out of their way to get kids into the school. Thanks.

OP, those kids are dime a dozen. Particularly for IS kids. MCPS (county that borders CP) are full of high stat kids.

OK. So does that mean a number of high stat kids from Montgomery are getting rejected?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Son is interested in UMD from OOS. Applying EA is a must. Undecided major. I see the school will place kids in Letters and Sciences for those that aren't directly admitted to a competitive major as well as "freshman connection" for spring admits. Are you aware of high or reasonably strong stat kids getting rejected? Appears they go out of their way to get kids into the school. Thanks.

OP, those kids are dime a dozen. Particularly for IS kids. MCPS (county that borders CP) are full of high stat kids.

OK. So does that mean a number of high stat kids from Montgomery are getting rejected?

Based on Naviance, a significant amount of high stats kids get rejected at my kid's MCPS HS. I would say approximately 30-35% of applicants based on the scatter plot. My kid's HS overall acceptance rate is always around 50%.

[Anonymous]

What majors is your son choosing from? Any idea? If he is at all interested in a major that falls under ARHU (College of Arts and Humanities) and he can back up that major with some demonstrated interest (i.e. member of French club, historical reenactor, active in theatre troupe), he will have a better shot of being admitted. On the other hand, if he is at all interested in the business school, have him apply directly to the business school. It is the hardest major to transfer into if one does not start out in that major.

To take the pressure off, have a good backup that offers guaranteed merit for his "high stats": Miami of Ohio, Univ of South Carolina,...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Son is interested in UMD from OOS. Applying EA is a must. Undecided major. I see the school will place kids in Letters and Sciences for those that aren't directly admitted to a competitive major as well as "freshman connection" for spring admits. Are you aware of high or reasonably strong stat kids getting rejected? Appears they go out of their way to get kids into the school. Thanks.

I just noticed that your son is OOS. Which state are you coming from? Your son might actually have a better chance of getting in compared to those applying from Montgomery County, Maryland. UMD loves out of state money!

[Anonymous]

^^ he definitely has a better chance OOS

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Son is interested in UMD from OOS. Applying EA is a must. Undecided major. I see the school will place kids in Letters and Sciences for those that aren't directly admitted to a competitive major as well as "freshman connection" for spring admits. Are you aware of high or reasonably strong stat kids getting rejected? Appears they go out of their way to get kids into the school. Thanks.

OP, those kids are dime a dozen. Particularly for IS kids. MCPS (county that borders CP) are full of high stat kids.

But this kid is OOS---and all state schools want top notch OOS kids who are (for some reason) willing to pay high prices for the big school experience OOS

[Anonymous]

UMD claims they don’t consider major in determining acceptance. Once accepted, stats are compared against other applicants to determine if a student is accepted into a limited enrollment major or L&S. However, I’ve always suspected that’s not completely true as most of the high stats applicants we know who weren’t accepted were applying CS, engineering or business. And we know quite a few! Also, I have a tough time believing they won’t jump at an applicant who picks a major that’s underenrolled. Still, officially choosing L&S or an unpopular major isn’t supposed to help.

I have 2 Terps. One was very strong and accepted directly to business. One was borderline and accepted to L&S for freshman connection. We know of a recent freshman connection admit who applied as a reach and didn’t have the stats who got in and some ridiculously strong kids from our HS who were straight out rejected. Like all schools, there are no guarantees. But being OOS should help. My youngest who is a long shot dreams that he will get lucky and the randomness of admissions gives him hope. Good luck to your child!

[Anonymous]

OP,

From our FCPS HS, it looks like kids with a 4.0 generally were accepted at UMDCP. However, I have a friend in PGCPS and for applicants from MD, they basically need a 4.4 to get accepted.

It's basically the same thing VT does --- it's easier to get in as an OOS applicant, and really hard to get in as a VA-applicant.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:UMD claims they don’t consider major in determining acceptance. Once accepted, stats are compared against other applicants to determine if a student is accepted into a limited enrollment major or L&S. However, I’ve always suspected that’s not completely true as most of the high stats applicants we know who weren’t accepted were applying CS, engineering or business. And we know quite a few! Also, I have a tough time believing they won’t jump at an applicant who picks a major that’s underenrolled. Still, officially choosing L&S or an unpopular major isn’t supposed to help.

I have 2 Terps. One was very strong and accepted directly to business. One was borderline and accepted to L&S for freshman connection. We know of a recent freshman connection admit who applied as a reach and didn’t have the stats who got in and some ridiculously strong kids from our HS who were straight out rejected. Like all schools, there are no guarantees. But being OOS should help. My youngest who is a long shot dreams that he will get lucky and the randomness of admissions gives him hope. Good luck to your child!

I am department chair at an R1 university that doesn’t admit by major. However, I know that major is considered in the final shaping of the admitted class because departments like my own that are popular and competitive have to limit how many students we can serve in our department. We have to consider faculty teaching load, budget for adjunct faculty, size of classes, time to degree, and access to gateway/prereq classes to complete the major.

I doubt that my university is an outlier.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:UMD claims they don’t consider major in determining acceptance. Once accepted, stats are compared against other applicants to determine if a student is accepted into a limited enrollment major or L&S. However, I’ve always suspected that’s not completely true as most of the high stats applicants we know who weren’t accepted were applying CS, engineering or business. And we know quite a few! Also, I have a tough time believing they won’t jump at an applicant who picks a major that’s underenrolled. Still, officially choosing L&S or an unpopular major isn’t supposed to help.

I have 2 Terps. One was very strong and accepted directly to business. One was borderline and accepted to L&S for freshman connection. We know of a recent freshman connection admit who applied as a reach and didn’t have the stats who got in and some ridiculously strong kids from our HS who were straight out rejected. Like all schools, there are no guarantees. But being OOS should help. My youngest who is a long shot dreams that he will get lucky and the randomness of admissions gives him hope. Good luck to your child!

If UMD told students that their major matters when they are applying, they would get a lot more insincere applicants. I honestly don't know anyone who has applied as a high-stats Russian literature major, but I can only imagine that UMD would be very foolish to turn down such a candidate. It could be the case that we all know rejected business, CS, and engineering majors because there are more of them, but if there really is a 1500, 4.6WGPA classics major who has gotten rejected, you would think that someone somewhere would have heard of such a kid.

OP, does your school district have ridiculously high weighted GPA's like Montgomery County has?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:UMD claims they don’t consider major in determining acceptance. Once accepted, stats are compared against other applicants to determine if a student is accepted into a limited enrollment major or L&S. However, I’ve always suspected that’s not completely true as most of the high stats applicants we know who weren’t accepted were applying CS, engineering or business. And we know quite a few! Also, I have a tough time believing they won’t jump at an applicant who picks a major that’s underenrolled. Still, officially choosing L&S or an unpopular major isn’t supposed to help.

I have 2 Terps. One was very strong and accepted directly to business. One was borderline and accepted to L&S for freshman connection. We know of a recent freshman connection admit who applied as a reach and didn’t have the stats who got in and some ridiculously strong kids from our HS who were straight out rejected. Like all schools, there are no guarantees. But being OOS should help. My youngest who is a long shot dreams that he will get lucky and the randomness of admissions gives him hope. Good luck to your child!

If UMD told students that their major matters when they are applying, they would get a lot more insincere applicants. I honestly don't know anyone who has applied as a high-stats Russian literature major, but I can only imagine that UMD would be very foolish to turn down such a candidate. It could be the case that we all know rejected business, CS, and engineering majors because there are more of them, but if there really is a 1500, 4.6WGPA classics major who has gotten rejected, you would think that someone somewhere would have heard of such a kid.

OP, does your school district have ridiculously high weighted GPA's like Montgomery County has?

Again, you would want the demonstrated interest to back this up. Russian lit major should have done some study abroad in Russian or at least an intensive language camp, maybe serving as a counselor. Classics major can take national Latin exams and serve as a reenactor in some Roman regiment.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:UMD claims they don’t consider major in determining acceptance. Once accepted, stats are compared against other applicants to determine if a student is accepted into a limited enrollment major or L&S. However, I’ve always suspected that’s not completely true as most of the high stats applicants we know who weren’t accepted were applying CS, engineering or business. And we know quite a few! Also, I have a tough time believing they won’t jump at an applicant who picks a major that’s underenrolled. Still, officially choosing L&S or an unpopular major isn’t supposed to help.

I have 2 Terps. One was very strong and accepted directly to business. One was borderline and accepted to L&S for freshman connection. We know of a recent freshman connection admit who applied as a reach and didn’t have the stats who got in and some ridiculously strong kids from our HS who were straight out rejected. Like all schools, there are no guarantees. But being OOS should help. My youngest who is a long shot dreams that he will get lucky and the randomness of admissions gives him hope. Good luck to your child!

If UMD told students that their major matters when they are applying, they would get a lot more insincere applicants. I honestly don't know anyone who has applied as a high-stats Russian literature major, but I can only imagine that UMD would be very foolish to turn down such a candidate. It could be the case that we all know rejected business, CS, and engineering majors because there are more of them, but if there really is a 1500, 4.6WGPA classics major who has gotten rejected, you would think that someone somewhere would have heard of such a kid.

OP, does your school district have ridiculously high weighted GPA's like Montgomery County has?

It's a game people do play. But the result could end up being you cannot get into the major you want, so what is the point. I've never understood the applying directly to the major---I want my kids at a school where they can change to almost any major they want (I get that nursing will be Direct admit). If my kid decides they don't want chem after freshman year, I'd like them to be able to easily become an engineer or business major or CS or any other major without worries of getting into the "program"