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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote]So is your DD graduating this year (you said class of 2018). Congrats, if so! A lot has changed just in the last four years. I doubt that my DC in second year at UVA would have made it in for the class of 2022. I read the EA results and the RD results on college confidential. A lot has changed nationwide in the last four years. Almost all colleges are citing record applications (no surprise there). The no. of international applications are up. Parents are concerned. There are plenty of UVA students with superlative records who could get into UVA. You keep citing the SAT scores and saying there are only 50K students in the USA who score that high but y ou are overlooking all the ACT students. My DC had a 34 and a 35 on retake. I thought that was amazing at the time. But if you check College Confidential you will see 34s rejected outright. UVA doesn't practice yield protection - it's simply that the students applying are that good. One of the reasons selectivity is "high" at 26.7% is because high school counselors show students the Naviance charts for their high school so many - like my other two children - didn't even try for UVA or W&M because they knew there were 60 kids in their own high school with superior stats ready to march into UVA. It made no sense to apply. I don't see population dropping, or GPAs and test scores dropping but even if they did, the GPA would drop to a 4.40 (Schev has it at 4.47 for top 25% of enrolled students at UVA last fall) and a 32-33 ACT, which are still fantastic scores. AS to why Virginians won't follow California - there's 100 different answers to that running from politics to geographical preferences to the VA General Assembly to what UVA's Board of Visitors wants. Just because California shifts in response to voter pressure does not mean UVA will follow suit. I'm not even sure that would be a good thing to increase the number of Virginia seats. I just disagree with you that things are "topping off" and that this bubble will burst. Just for this class at UVA one of the Deans posted that there are 10,000 on the waitlist. Yes, 10,000 for a class already selected of 6,000. And total applications were 37,000+. This isn't going to stop.[/quote]

2.09 million kids took the ACT in 2017, 1.64 million took the SAT.  A 34 on the ACT is the 99th percentile, so about 20K kids had an equivalent score or above.  A 1480 is the 99th percentile on the SAT, so about 16,000 scored at or above.  Some unknown number of kids will have taken both tests.  36K approximately total in the 99th percentile on both tests.  If you add the 98th percentile, you will get to 72K, but again many, I don't know how many, will have taken both tests.  It is routine today to take both, especially for high achievers.  These are the kids that all schools are competing today more fiercely for than ever before and they are the ones who drive selectivity.  My hypothesis states that UVA in the future will not be able to attract an increasing number of these kids.

Do you really believe that, as I said, in 10 years 20 AP's will be the new normal?  That you will need a 5.8 GPA to get into UVA?  Is there no upward limit on intelligence or the number of hours in the day?

You really don't know what you are talking about.  It's already possible to have a GPA well beyond a 5.8.  My DC's classmate at UVA entered with a 6.5 and 64 college-level classes finished with As.  He can graduate in 3 years if he chooses. He's considering a dual business degree that will get him a UVA undergrad degree in 3 years and a business master's in 2, so all done in five years, not six.

[b]Doesn't the fact that UVA netted only 423 more apps this year than last suggest something to you?[/b]

No, because the EA apps jumped in fall of 2017 by 5%.  And the total apps three years before by 26%.  https://news.virginia.edu/content/uva-sees-record-number-early-action-applications.  What you are seeing is simply a shift of applications from RD to EA, and that is true across the nation. https://news.virginia.edu/content/uva-sees-record-number-early-action-applications.  And two years ago, UVA was at 32,426.  This year is total applications was 37,000.  The selectivity figure is dropping every year.  The applications numbers to UVA is not indicative of market desires because many students self-select not to attend once they see their high school's Naviance charts and the SCHEV reports for entering fall students.  Counselors, who do write written recommendations, also play a role in routing Virignia in-state students to the other 14 Virginian universities.  If a sufficient number of high school students are scared off by high scores and high GPAs, they aren't going to apply to UVA but that doesn't mean they don't want to go. It means that the 50 allocated slots ahead of them in their particular high school are already taken by the top ten percent of their class and that their high school counselor has shown them that it's highly unlikely they will get in and to focus on other great universities in Virginia.  This is less true with the OSS applications, which continue to rise every year.
  
I never said UVA was anything but a good school.  I'm making a prediction about the future and noting the changed landscape of American higher ed, which I continue to believe will not be "saved" by foreign students.  [/quote]

But you failed to note that after UVA accepted the 6,000 students for the class of 2022, it has currently 10,000 perfectly acceptable students with the same scores on the waitlist.  Some of those will make it into the class of 2020, as the TJ students who used UVA for an Ivy drift off by May 1.  The rest will not, but every single one of those 10,000 students are UVA quality.  As private colleges continue to hike their rates every year (in large part to cover the marketing costs to get as many students as possible to apply just so they can be rejected to lower selectivity numbers), more and more in-state parents will say "We just can't afford $100K a year to send junior to X for college" and will turn to all the California, Virginia, Texas and Michigan state schools.  They are the smart ones because they can then save to pay $100K a year for Harvard Law School when jr. moves from undergrad. to grad.

You have not pointed to anything that might end this madness.  I'm not saying the system is healthy.  It is not.  But there's nothing in your analysis to point to an end in demand for top flagships with reasonable fees for in-state students.[/quote]

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