Virginia Tech

[Anonymous]

My DS sounds similar to the above. Applied for humanities. 3.8 uw GPA. DCPS.

[Anonymous]

Apply ED (this is THE most important)
Answer the four questions thoughtfully
Have a varsity sport
Choose the major carefully (be prepared for rejection if you apply engineering or CS)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:^^Adding to this, I took a look at that link for admissions rate... for an in-state White male students, the acceptance rate for College of Engineering was only 26.1% while the rate for Computational Modeling & Data Analytics was 82.4%.

tangent here but can you tell me if your kid took CS in high school or what piqued his interest in this major?

He loves math and maps and always liked looking at data visualizations in things like almanacs and fact books. Also took a 1-week data science summer program that furthered his interest. He did take a CS class in HS but doesn't love CS. He's fine doing programming as a means to an end of playing with the data. He also took a geospatial data analysis class in HS and liked that a lot. The CMDA major has a few paths within it (physics, economics, cybersecurity, geospatial) and he's taking intro classes to a few paths but thinks he'll probably focus on geospatial.

The major is only a few years old and has a weird name. It might get more attention if they labeled it "data science." But it's nice that it's a small program, only about 100 students per year.

Another comparison on the wide variation in acceptance rates... there's a pretty new major at VT in Sports Media & Analytics -- acceptance rate for in-state White males was 12.1% last year. But, students in CMDA (82.4% acceptance rate) also do sports analytics projects so if the interest is really on the analytics side, probably better to apply to CMDA.

Do you mind sharing which 1- week Data Science program he participated in?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:^^Adding to this, I took a look at that link for admissions rate... for an in-state White male students, the acceptance rate for College of Engineering was only 26.1% while the rate for Computational Modeling & Data Analytics was 82.4%.

tangent here but can you tell me if your kid took CS in high school or what piqued his interest in this major?

He loves math and maps and always liked looking at data visualizations in things like almanacs and fact books. Also took a 1-week data science summer program that furthered his interest. He did take a CS class in HS but doesn't love CS. He's fine doing programming as a means to an end of playing with the data. He also took a geospatial data analysis class in HS and liked that a lot. The CMDA major has a few paths within it (physics, economics, cybersecurity, geospatial) and he's taking intro classes to a few paths but thinks he'll probably focus on geospatial.

The major is only a few years old and has a weird name. It might get more attention if they labeled it "data science." But it's nice that it's a small program, only about 100 students per year.

Another comparison on the wide variation in acceptance rates... there's a pretty new major at VT in Sports Media & Analytics -- acceptance rate for in-state White males was 12.1% last year. But, students in CMDA (82.4% acceptance rate) also do sports analytics projects so if the interest is really on the analytics side, probably better to apply to CMDA.

Do you mind sharing which 1- week Data Science program he participated in?

https://summer.georgetown.edu/programs/SHS02/introduction-to-data-science-academy

Looks like the are only offering it online this year

[Anonymous]

Have a varsity sport

Nope, this isn't important.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Have a varsity sport

Nope, this isn't important.

Agree - sports are any more valuable than any other EC. The students I know there mostly are not athletes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Have a varsity sport

Nope, this isn't important.

Agree - sports are any more valuable than any other EC. The students I know there mostly are not athletes.

Varsity sport serves as a sort of shorthand for a lot of good qualities. Other ECs are harder to quickly draw conclusions about (all for better or worse).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Have a varsity sport

Nope, this isn't important.

Agree - sports are any more valuable than any other EC. The students I know there mostly are not athletes.

Varsity sport serves as a sort of shorthand for a lot of good qualities. Other ECs are harder to quickly draw conclusions about (all for better or worse).

Maybe it does but what I see in the kids I know that got in, there was no bias towards varsity athletes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:All of my DC's friends who applied to VT early action this year got in, which was not true for UVA, W&M, or JMU. I think they all got the memo about applying EA because DC doesn't know anyone who waited for RD.

These kids all do orchestra, some clubs, a couple do sports. They all have solid grades and SATs, with lots of APs. I'd guess all are top 10-15% of the class (large FCPS school), but not necessarily top 5%. I don't think any applied for CS or engineering. More like environmental science, humanities, etc. They all seem pretty excited about VT and several are choosing it over UVA.

It does seem the best shot at VT is to not be one of the top students in your HS and it's definitely easier if not applying to the engineering school (which includes CS).

My DS is a freshman there and that describes him -- prob top 10-15% but not top 5%. Major is Computational Modeling and Data Analytics, which is in the college of science.

VT also says they put a lot of emphasis on their short answer questions and I think he did a good job with those, especially the one about service, which is a very important value for VT. He had minimal ECs but one was a long-term service activity.

Excellent major. Best wishes to your DS.

Computational modeling and analytics, machine learning, big data, whatever you want to call it....it is messy and requires someone that is able to walk a fine line between art and science. Many CS and engineering types are not able to deal in lack of precision, missing and messy data, correlation vs causation, etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Have a varsity sport

Nope, this isn't important.

Agree - sports are any more valuable than any other EC. The students I know there mostly are not athletes.

Varsity sport serves as a sort of shorthand for a lot of good qualities. Other ECs are harder to quickly draw conclusions about (all for better or worse).

Maybe it does but what I see in the kids I know that got in, there was no bias towards varsity athletes.

And I see the opposite. ::shrug::

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:All of my DC's friends who applied to VT early action this year got in, which was not true for UVA, W&M, or JMU. I think they all got the memo about applying EA because DC doesn't know anyone who waited for RD.

These kids all do orchestra, some clubs, a couple do sports. They all have solid grades and SATs, with lots of APs. I'd guess all are top 10-15% of the class (large FCPS school), but not necessarily top 5%. I don't think any applied for CS or engineering. More like environmental science, humanities, etc. They all seem pretty excited about VT and several are choosing it over UVA.

We also know several who were accepted to both UVA and VT and are choosing VT. It's a special place.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Apply ED (this is THE most important)
Answer the four questions thoughtfully
Have a varsity sport
Choose the major carefully (be prepared for rejection if you apply engineering or CS)

100%.

Two kids in consecutive years - slightly higher stats kid applied EA (non-binding) last year waitlisted, withdrew application and went elsewhere. Kid this year applied ED. In.

[Anonymous]

PP here: Both varsity athletes and I have no idea how if at all that factored in either case. They played because they loved they loved their sports and it was a great for them socially.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:PP here: Both varsity athletes and I have no idea how if at all that factored in either case. They played because they loved they loved their sports and it was a great for them socially.

PP here: Correction Both varsity athletes and I have no idea how if at all that factored in either case. They played because they loved their sports and it was a great for them socially.

And a question, is there a way to edit your post here when you see a typo?

Thanks.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Really depends on major.

Here's the VT common data set. Lots of data to look at in terms of gpa and test scores vs major.

https://udc.vt.edu/irdata/data/students/admission/index

It seems like over the last couple of years, if you really want to go to VT you need to apply ED.

From this data it appears that being from out of state helps tremendously.