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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]If you are interested in Virginia Tech, the supplemental essays are truly the only real way to stand out. [b]Everyone applying has the same high stats[/b]. It's foolish to think you're a shoo-in because you have a 4.5 and 1500 SAT and a bunch of good ECs.

Supplemental essays and [b]service-based ECs[/b] are the only real way to differentiate yourself. [/quote]

I agree that the supplemental essays at VT are important (they say they are Very Important  in their common data set). But I disagree that everyone admitted/applying has high stats--saying that discourages kids with lower SAT scores from applying and they really do have a strong chance of getting in.  In fact, for the 2022-2023 Common Data Set the 25-75th percentile range was:

SATs
Critical Reading: 610-700
Math: 610-720

So even many of those who fall in the top 25% of accepted students at VT have far below the 1500 SAT in your example.  And 25% of the students fall below 1200.  The reason this is the case is because at VT they only rank SAT scores as "considered" not "Important" or "Very Important" (see common data set).  So VT is a great school for students who have a high GPA but slightly or even a lot  lower test scores.  
And the average GPA is 4.03% so strong, but also below the 4.5. (They consider GPA as "very important" like nearly all schools do).

VT also does not rate Extracurriculars or Volunteer Work as important in their applications (as per their own common data set) so while I'm a big fan of service work, VT says they don't rate that as very important or important in their application decisions.

My big takeaways: High SAT scores REALLY don't matter for VT -- they regularly accept a 1250  SAT kid over a 1500 SAT kid even if their grades and class rigor are similar, and they are applying for the same major, so it's hard to know why.  It's hard to imagine how they assess supplemental essays at the scale they are doing in a way where they can meaningful assess one is so much better than the other, but they do say those essays are "Very important" and SATs are not.  So don't be afraid to apply to VT just because top students aren't getting in--many others who have average SAT scores are!

[b]There's also some evidence that VT engages in enrollment management yield protection [/b]for strong students they think are using VT as a back-up option, so if you have a high GPA and high SAT scores and want to go to VT as your first choice, apply ED so they know you are really interested.

And, the most general advice for all schools: Read the Common Data Set section on Freshman First Time Admission for the most recent year.  This tells you parts of the application they consider important/unimportant  (how many people know that VT doesn't care much about SAT scores but cares about Supplemental Essays?? Totally unexpected for a technical school, right?), acceptance rates by gender and state domicile, average GPA and distribution of class rank.  25-75th range of SAT scores for admitted students (and these days pay close attention to the percent who submitted them--some schools that are test optional basically require them and over 75% of accepted students still submit them, some schools are test optional and only the highest scoring students submit them so the distribution of scores can look high, but only 20% of accepted students submitted scores).

[/quote]

Speculation, you mean. There is speculation. There is no actual evidence of this. [/quote]

There is evidence --not just yet conclusive evidence. But enough evidence that they should be more transparent about their use of enrollment management software. They have reported using the enrollment management software to SCHEV (State Council of Higher Education in Virginia) that colleges use to predict who will enroll after being accepted and that has been criticized for being used to reject more highly qualified candidates that are less likely to enroll.  There are cases on file with SCHEV right now about this and it's being examined.[/quote]
Thank you for posting. I have suspected exactly this. I would love to understand the approach where the high scoring student gets penalized via yield algorithm.[/quote]

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