schools that left a bad taste

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The UCs prize GPA above all else. They’re more likely to admit a kid who gets an A in a CP class than a student who gets a B in tough AP class. I find it incomprehensible. The student with a B is leaps and bounds more academically prepared than kids in CP classes.

They don’t seem at all interested in changing the system either.

Absolutely not true. UCs count how many UC approved honors/AP/community college classes a student has taken.

Additionally the top UCs also calculate uncapped GPA alongside capped GPA.

They also look at strength in schedule and how rigorous your schedule was in comparison to the opportunities at your high school.

[Anonymous]

+1 for UMD. DH and I are alumni and love the school, but our 4.4gpa/29 ACT/solid ECs kid didn’t even bother applying from her W school because almost no one with less than a 4.8w/1550 SAT gets in from their school and writing all those essays for a near-certain rejection didn’t seem worth her time. About a 30% acceptance rate from the school and only about 20% of the 30% actually go. I wish they would yield protect!

PS: I’m with the PP in wishing there were other strong in-state options. I’m so jealous of my friends in VA, though it sounds like it’s gotten hard for kids from the equivalent of W schools in NOVA to get into JMU and Va. Tech, too.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The university of Maryland system. Kid got rejected. 3.9uw, 3.6w from a Catholic with a tough grading scale. Taking 5 ap classes senior year. Captain of 2 varsity sports teams. Volunteered for 4 years. Great recommendation letters. Mature kid. We know lots of kids like this that didn’t get in. It wasn’t even their first choice but it ticked me off as a taxpayer.

For kids like this there is nowhere else to go. Umbc is a commuter school. Towson seems like huge step down. So it’s oos for her.

I’m not sure how Maryland selection works but it doesn’t seem right. And if it’s going to be like this they need a second university with some name recognition.

Agree. 10 years ago at a public or private with, say, B or up and good recs and average scores you'd get in to UMD and UVA. Not anymore.

UVA was not taking B students in 2016. 1986 maybe.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The UCs prize GPA above all else. They’re more likely to admit a kid who gets an A in a CP class than a student who gets a B in tough AP class. I find it incomprehensible. The student with a B is leaps and bounds more academically prepared than kids in CP classes.

They don’t seem at all interested in changing the system either.

Absolutely not true. UCs count how many UC approved honors/AP/community college classes a student has taken.

Additionally the top UCs also calculate uncapped GPA alongside capped GPA.

They also look at strength in schedule and how rigorous your schedule was in comparison to the opportunities at your high school.

Yes, we all know what they say on paper. What they do in practice is very different. I see it year in and year out for in-state students.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The university of Maryland system. Kid got rejected. 3.9uw, 3.6w from a Catholic with a tough grading scale. Taking 5 ap classes senior year. Captain of 2 varsity sports teams. Volunteered for 4 years. Great recommendation letters. Mature kid. We know lots of kids like this that didn’t get in. It wasn’t even their first choice but it ticked me off as a taxpayer.

For kids like this there is nowhere else to go. Umbc is a commuter school. Towson seems like huge step down. So it’s oos for her.

I’m not sure how Maryland selection works but it doesn’t seem right. And if it’s going to be like this they need a second university with some name recognition.

Agree. 10 years ago at a public or private with, say, B or up and good recs and average scores you'd get in to UMD and UVA. Not anymore.

UVA was not taking B students in 2016. 1986 maybe.

If we mean students with a 3.0 average, UVA was not taking B students other than recruited athletes in 1986 or, for that matter, 1976.

[Anonymous]

We had a negative experience with VCU.

[Anonymous]

Another +1 for Michigan. Would have respected them so much more if they just rejected my DC. Instead EA ->sent to RD -> waitlist. Seeing how this is lots of kids this year, I'm skeptical they even reviewed all the EA apps.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The UCs are a mess. No test scores. No recommendations. Seasonal readers at $2 per app. Multiple ‘impacted’ majors. Zip code used as a proxy for race. (Which would be fine if it wasn’t for the other things). At my DS’s school there were kids (including mine) who got into multiple Ivies (and several into HYPSM) and other T20s but not UCs.

The state of California doesn’t do almost anything well these days. No surprise that things as complicated as universities are f’d up.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:+1 for UMD. DH and I are alumni and love the school, but our 4.4gpa/29 ACT/solid ECs kid didn’t even bother applying from her W school because almost no one with less than a 4.8w/1550 SAT gets in from their school and writing all those essays for a near-certain rejection didn’t seem worth her time. About a 30% acceptance rate from the school and only about 20% of the 30% actually go. I wish they would yield protect!

PS: I’m with the PP in wishing there were other strong in-state options. I’m so jealous of my friends in VA, though it sounds like it’s gotten hard for kids from the equivalent of W schools in NOVA to get into JMU and Va. Tech, too.

I never understand this comment because there is nothing wrong with Towson or UMBC. Maryland has options too.

Yield protection is the dumbest thing ever. You know UMD takes into account their historical yield when they calculate how many students to accept.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:+1 for UMD. DH and I are alumni and love the school, but our 4.4gpa/29 ACT/solid ECs kid didn’t even bother applying from her W school because almost no one with less than a 4.8w/1550 SAT gets in from their school and writing all those essays for a near-certain rejection didn’t seem worth her time. About a 30% acceptance rate from the school and only about 20% of the 30% actually go. I wish they would yield protect!

PS: I’m with the PP in wishing there were other strong in-state options. I’m so jealous of my friends in VA, though it sounds like it’s gotten hard for kids from the equivalent of W schools in NOVA to get into JMU and Va. Tech, too.

I never understand this comment because there is nothing wrong with Towson or UMBC. Maryland has options too.

Yield protection is the dumbest thing ever. You know UMD takes into account their historical yield when they calculate how many students to accept.

There's nothing wrong with Towson or UMBC in terms of the quality of the education they provide, but there's nothing right around the UMBC camps other than a community college and a residential area and not a vibrant campus life, and Towson lacks the school spirit that you'd get at, say, JMU, which I think is comparable academically. Also, unlike VA, which has both VA Tech and UVA in the ACC, Maryland only has UMD in a major sports conference. That matters in terms of national recognition (UMBC and Towson are both regional schools) and campus culture. For a student who isn't looking for that, I agree UMBC and Towson are good options.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Another +1 for Michigan. Would have respected them so much more if they just rejected my DC. Instead EA ->sent to RD -> waitlist. Seeing how this is lots of kids this year, I'm skeptical they even reviewed all the EA apps.

EA-RD-Waitlist happens ALL OVER the place. This happened to about 5 kids who applied to UVA last year and at least as many the year before. It's standard practice for colleges.

[Anonymous]

Towson and umbc do not have national recognition. Virginia tech, William and Mary, and to a lesser extent vcu, gmu and jmu do. For a kid that strives through high school, Towson and umbc don’t feel like adequate placement for their effort. As a Maryland parent, I really had no case that either is a good option for a great student.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The university of Maryland system. Kid got rejected. 3.9uw, 3.6w from a Catholic with a tough grading scale. Taking 5 ap classes senior year. Captain of 2 varsity sports teams. Volunteered for 4 years. Great recommendation letters. Mature kid. We know lots of kids like this that didn’t get in. It wasn’t even their first choice but it ticked me off as a taxpayer.

For kids like this there is nowhere else to go. Umbc is a commuter school. Towson seems like huge step down. So it’s oos for her.

I’m not sure how Maryland selection works but it doesn’t seem right. And if it’s going to be like this they need a second university with some name recognition.

Same for my DD. Great stats, but rejected by UMD. I did something that I never in my life thought I'd do: I went to college park and asked to meet with someone at admissions to try to understand this. She told me that because the number of applications has grown so exponentially, they find themselves having to reject kids who got a C or similar freshman year in high school. She said literally their entire incoming class will be made up of kids who have never gotten anything below a B, and even then, the Bs would have come freshman year. It's ridiculous. So we get to pay OOS tuition for him to go to a virginia school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Towson and umbc do not have national recognition. Virginia tech, William and Mary, and to a lesser extent vcu, gmu and jmu do. For a kid that strives through high school, Towson and umbc don’t feel like adequate placement for their effort. As a Maryland parent, I really had no case that either is a good option for a great student.

Virginia is a larger state to it makes sense to have more options. Maybe if everyone stopped downplaying all the maryland options they would have a better reputation. George Mason and UMBC in my mind are completely comparable.

Also for UMD admissions I think parents are missing that the kids are being compared to the kids in their local HS. It's going to be harder to get into from a "top" private or affluent MCPS school. Same as with any school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The university of Maryland system. Kid got rejected. 3.9uw, 3.6w from a Catholic with a tough grading scale. Taking 5 ap classes senior year. Captain of 2 varsity sports teams. Volunteered for 4 years. Great recommendation letters. Mature kid. We know lots of kids like this that didn’t get in. It wasn’t even their first choice but it ticked me off as a taxpayer.

For kids like this there is nowhere else to go. Umbc is a commuter school. Towson seems like huge step down. So it’s oos for her.

I’m not sure how Maryland selection works but it doesn’t seem right. And if it’s going to be like this they need a second university with some name recognition.

Same for my DD. Great stats, but rejected by UMD. I did something that I never in my life thought I'd do: I went to college park and asked to meet with someone at admissions to try to understand this. She told me that because the number of applications has grown so exponentially, they find themselves having to reject kids who got a C or similar freshman year in high school. She said literally their entire incoming class will be made up of kids who have never gotten anything below a B, and even then, the Bs would have come freshman year. It's ridiculous. So we get to pay OOS tuition for him to go to a virginia school.

So all 30K students admitted last year had all As and if they had a B it was from freshman year? I know UMD is very competitive, and I believe this may be the criteria for kids coming from Whitman, Churchill, B-CC, etc., but I find it hard to believe that a school with a 45% acceptance rate is only accepting kids with straight As except for maybe a B or two in 9th grade.

https://irpa.umd.edu/CampusCounts/Admissions/apps_ug.pdf