+ plus tge best public and private schools in the Commonwealth, plus TJ, the top tech school in the US. |
Yes, private school. Why does that matter for UVA? |
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I think the hard part with UVA is that it’s a really hard admit for in state students. When kids with 4.4s and 1550s can’t get into the state flagship that kind of stinks. I don’t think that’s the case with Michigan, UNC, Texas…although correct me if I’m wrong. Of course VA does have other good schools but if you want that kind of all around state flagship experience it’s not necessarily in reach for even top top students in state.
I say that as someone with a kid who isn’t interested in UVA and I’m rather relieved because he has the stats to buy the ticket but I’d consider it somewhat unlikely. |
You’re missing the fact that some of these GPA go up to 4.8. See the 4.0 thread. Grading practices (retakes, for example) make A grades easier to come by these days. |
UVA penalizes NoVa schools especially privates (lower weighted GPAs), while UNC prefers OOS applicants from certain (mostly private) feeder high schools. |
But more than 54% of the national merit semi finalists are from NOVA. |
Is this true for other VA schools (Vtech, W&M)? |
Also, the number of available UVA first-year seats (4,200) is significantly smaller than the first year classes at UCLA, Berkeley, Michigan (8,000 each) and University of Texas, Austin (10,000). Add to that the fact UVA reserves 26 to 30% OOS/international unlike UNC, UCLA, etc. at only 10% OOS, you can see why it’s increasingly difficult to get in. |
IME, they don’t like to take too many students from VA privates. Our private only has a few exceptional strong students accepted each year. UVA is an elite public institution. Also, once Potomac, Collegiate, Steward, St Christopher’s, Miller, STAB, and Woodberry Forest get their students in, I feel like feeder spots aren’t as available to other smaller privates. |
This is not our experience. It’s tempting to draw conclusions, but you know a sliver of the applicant pool they’re looking at and can’t possibly make big statements like that. |
But CA and TX have 40 million and 30 million populations compared to VA’s 9 million. |
+1. I’ve never heard UVA “penalizes privates” |
California and Texas have much, much larger populations. |
I’m the PP and I totally get it - it just creates an unfortunate dynamic. I don’t totally agree with the other poster about the grades being easier. Obviously the over 4.0 thing is because of weighting but a lot of these kids have gpas very close to unweighted 4.0s. My experience with my jr is that the AP classes in particular are no piece of cake and the grading is tough. FCPS has the A- and pulling an actual A is hard. Yes, there are retakes and remediation on tests sometimes but you can’t use that to get higher than an 80. |
You’d be wrong about Texas. |