Reply to Too early to start thinking W&M/UVA?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]My thought is this...UVA looks at class rank as main factor, let's say top 10%, and they know how to find this out...school profile, honor society inductees, etc., and W&M is a bit more holistic...GPA +SAT/ACT + gender (always favoring males a bit to balance the ratio) and the application's softer attributes like essay, extracurricular activities, etc. Two completely different schools for two completely different type students...aren't we Virginians lucky to have such choices.[/quote]

I think Dean J is actually saying in the blog that Rank/GPA is not the be all and end all.  They are looking at the transcript and derive their own rating from there.

Both UVA and W&M claim to be holistic.  To me this is really saying they are giving more or a reading to more of the application (class and grading difficulty, essays, ECs).  The implication is that other schools are just going from stats.  With modern application levels (UCLA got a staggering 113K applications for fall 2018), I think what really happens is they use stats to separate out clear rejects, and then do more review with the remaining ones.

The cynic in me says all stats are open at least a bit to manipulation.  It may be less evident in Virginia schools than others, but I'm sure it goes on.  A case in point is Northeastern, which has skyrocketed in USNews rankings and now has a significantly lower admit than either UVA or W&M.  They systematically target all of the USNews stats.  Specific examples are that Northeastern only has to count standardized test scores for US applicants that are entering in Fall for USNews criteria.  So Northeastern puts low stat kids on Spring academic admission (they start in the co-op program) and they have a high number of foreign students.  They lower acceptance rates by actively pushing applications through marketing campaigns.  
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