William & Mary - how competitive?

[Anonymous]

You really need to look at Naviance numbers for your specific high school because colleges have different grades selection criteria for different high schools. It my kids school, the magic number for both UVa and William & Mary seems to be a 4.26 Weighted GPA. Anyone at or above that number was accepted and everyone below was rejected, over the last 5 years. Obviously, test scores matter, but with prep classes now, your kid has some control over their scores.

Off topic, but I am little flustered by the apparent grade requirement. I am struggling to figure out how my kid will get to that number despite having almost straight A's and taking a very hard class schedule because there is no added grade bump in Arlington except for AP/IB classes (no .5 bump for honors classes, like in Fairfax). In fact, A's from non-AP classes from middle school and high school bring down the GPA, and it is too late to expunge these grades once the kids starts high school. Also, most kids take a relatively small number of AP classes until 11th grade (especially kids is in Band or other performance class that takes up an elective and prevent the kids from taking an AP elective class, such as Art History. Psychology, Computer Science), and senior grades either aren't included for early applications or only the 1st semester grade are sent.

If it helps, I think the weighted GPAs used on Naviance represent student GPAs at the time of graduation. (I can't verify this with my own kid's Naviance data points because she managed to have exactly the same GPA at the end of 11th and 12th). Honestly, I can't think of any other explanation for the sheer number of kids appearing with a 4.3-4.5 GPA on the FCPS scattergrams. I don't think that many students could have those grades at the end of junior year (in our HS, most kids take zero to two APs before 11th).

If you think about it, it makes sense. The schools collect the information at the end of senior year - Naviance doesn't get updated in real time or capture the student's GPA at the time of filing the application. Still, I spend time worrying that my kid will only have about a 3.996 at the end of junior year if his semester grades hold, wonder if it will be rounded up to 4.0, and otherwise feel like a crazy person.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:PP: Presumably you are a GMU grad. Rolling your eyes and refusing to look deeper into the numbers does nothing to enhance your position.

In fact, at least for me, it has the opposite effect on how you and your school are viewed.

I'm the PP, and nope - not a GMU grad. Sorry. Though I'd be very happy if either of my kids wanted to go there. It's a very good school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

You really need to look at Naviance numbers for your specific high school because colleges have different grades selection criteria for different high schools. It my kids school, the magic number for both UVa and William & Mary seems to be a 4.26 Weighted GPA. Anyone at or above that number was accepted and everyone below was rejected, over the last 5 years. Obviously, test scores matter, but with prep classes now, your kid has some control over their scores.

Off topic, but I am little flustered by the apparent grade requirement. I am struggling to figure out how my kid will get to that number despite having almost straight A's and taking a very hard class schedule because there is no added grade bump in Arlington except for AP/IB classes (no .5 bump for honors classes, like in Fairfax). In fact, A's from non-AP classes from middle school and high school bring down the GPA, and it is too late to expunge these grades once the kids starts high school. Also, most kids take a relatively small number of AP classes until 11th grade (especially kids is in Band or other performance class that takes up an elective and prevent the kids from taking an AP elective class, such as Art History. Psychology, Computer Science), and senior grades either aren't included for early applications or only the 1st semester grade are sent.

If it helps, I think the weighted GPAs used on Naviance represent student GPAs at the time of graduation. (I can't verify this with my own kid's Naviance data points because she managed to have exactly the same GPA at the end of 11th and 12th). Honestly, I can't think of any other explanation for the sheer number of kids appearing with a 4.3-4.5 GPA on the FCPS scattergrams. I don't think that many students could have those grades at the end of junior year (in our HS, most kids take zero to two APs before 11th).

If you think about it, it makes sense. The schools collect the information at the end of senior year - Naviance doesn't get updated in real time or capture the student's GPA at the time of filing the application. Still, I spend time worrying that my kid will only have about a 3.996 at the end of junior year if his semester grades hold, wonder if it will be rounded up to 4.0, and otherwise feel like a crazy person.

We are at FCPS and yes, counselor confirmed that the gpa in scattergrams are the gpa's from end of HS year. So we were told to add a little bit to our own gpa at end of Jr year when comparing to scattergram since most students' grades will go up Sr year due to AP's.

[Anonymous]

Observations from the SCHEV link.

The numbers for UVA and WM are identical for the 75 percentile for the 2017/18 freshman class. Both the schools have 1480 for SAT, 33 C for ACT and 4.44 as GPA for the 75 percentile. UVA has slightly higher numbers for mean and 25 percentile. This seems to indicate that fairly similar higher stats students are in these two schools.

Enrolled stats in UVA for 2017:
Arlington 307
Prince William 537
Loudoun 992
Fairfax 2967
The enrollment growth over 10 year period in UVA is highest in Loudoun (> 100%) while around 20% from Arlington and FCPS and around 50% from Prince William. While Loudoun and Prince William have grown rapidly in this time period, has grade inflation in Loudoun (example A+ grades) contributed to this? On the other hand, has it hurt Arlington where there seems to no such grade inflation? Can one say that it has become easier to go to UVA/WM from Loudoun and Prince William?
I could not find acceptance rates per county so discussing the growth rate and enrollment here.

[Anonymous]

The link to acceptance rates and raw numbers by county have been posted at least half a dozen times in the last week.

[Anonymous]

Acceptance rate and yield rate for 2017 (First time in college):

UVA:
Loudoun 43.9 56.5
Fairfax 42.2 59.3
Spots 40.4 54.1
Prince William 39.1 60.6
Arlington 37.8 47.5
Falls Church city 34.0 38.9

WM:
Arlington 53.6
Fairfax 47.5
Loudoun 46.1
Spots 42.2
Prince William 39.8
Falls Church city 34.1

VA Tech:
Arlington 74.1
Fairfax 69.5
Loudoun 69.4
Prince William 65.9
Spots 65.7
Falls Church city 56.5

For UVA, it seems past lower yield rates and grade deflation may have impacted Arlington's 2017 acceptance rate.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Observations from the SCHEV link.

The numbers for UVA and WM are identical for the 75 percentile for the 2017/18 freshman class. Both the schools have 1480 for SAT, 33 C for ACT and 4.44 as GPA for the 75 percentile. UVA has slightly higher numbers for mean and 25 percentile. This seems to indicate that fairly similar higher stats students are in these two schools.

Enrolled stats in UVA for 2017:
Arlington 307
Prince William 537
Loudoun 992
Fairfax 2967
The enrollment growth over 10 year period in UVA is highest in Loudoun (> 100%) while around 20% from Arlington and FCPS and around 50% from Prince William. While Loudoun and Prince William have grown rapidly in this time period, has grade inflation in Loudoun (example A+ grades) contributed to this? On the other hand, has it hurt Arlington where there seems to no such grade inflation? Can one say that it has become easier to go to UVA/WM from Loudoun and Prince William?
I could not find acceptance rates per county so discussing the growth rate and enrollment here.

I believe those figures must be enrolled for all four (or five) years from the same time at the same time, or they are the "accepted", not "enrolled" figures, because for enrollment in 2017 , only 252 enrolled from Loudon, 676 from Fairfax; etc. Here's the map by municipality (scroll down to map of virginia then move cursor over). http://digital.uvamagazine.org/articles/2020-insight/

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:William and Mary is a tough place academically. It’s f****** hard.

This is a good thing, no?

I'm going to stick my neck out a bit and say the quality of undergraduate teaching may be better than at Uva?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:William and Mary is a tough place academically. It’s f****** hard.

This is a good thing, no?

I'm going to stick my neck out a bit and say the quality of undergraduate teaching may be better than at Uva?

I asked my DD, a second year student at UVA this question. Do you mean T.A.s or just quality of teaching overall? She has had only a few T.A.s and those were in the large intro lab sciences classes. She felt she always had access to the professor. In fact, one just wrote a brilliant letter of recommendation for her for a summer internship. So if you are asking about TA quality at UVA I would say it depends on which course and quality of TA but she just hasn't had that many experiences with them at UVA. Obviously she's not at W&M so can't compare professor instruction if that is what you are asking but the professors she has are famous in their fields, whereas the professors who wrote my letter from my SLAC were not names in their fields.