Anonymous wrote:DS was accepted at Freshman Connection with a 1540 SAT. GPA was not calculated by his private school but was somewhere around the 3.3/3.4 range unweighted with the lowest grades, by far, in 9th grade.

Could you cite your child's declared major by any chance? On College Confidential, I have noticed that many of the high SAT students relegated to Freshman Connection and getting overlooked for Honors programs are Computer Science majors. Could this be true in your child's case? Or declared major in another Limited Enrollment Program?

Anonymous wrote:My DD was 3.6UW and a 33 ACT and was rejected. Her school has no weighted grades, even the AP's and it is very hard to get an A there. So there is no such thing as easy A's like MCPS grading. She is easily in the the top 20% of her grade. We were pretty shocked, but not many kids apply to UMD, so maybe that was it? She was accepted to other schools though and will be going to Wash U, which was her number 1 anyway. But yikes, UMD is strange.

Wash U tuition around $54k? A friend's kid went there (with his easy A's from MCPS). Liked it ok.

I know a few who also did not get into their big state school, yet got into Lehigh and Bucknell--excellent privates. Private school can be expensive at full pay, so sometimes big publics are more more competitive in certain fields.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Somebody, please explain Freshman Connection.

Basically you get to move into the dorms in the Fall just like everybody else. You have limits to what classes you can register for... something like classes after 3 and those that are Friday... or those with room after everybody else registers.

If you are in good standing after 1 semester, you are admitted.

This is not correct. Read below

https://oes.umd.edu/incoming-current-visiting-students/freshmen-connection

Anonymous wrote:Somebody, please explain Freshman Connection.

Basically you get to move into the dorms in the Fall just like everybody else. You have limits to what classes you can register for... something like classes after 3 and those that are Friday... or those with room after everybody else registers.

If you are in good standing after 1 semester, you are admitted.

Anonymous wrote:Somebody, please explain Freshman Connection.

Spring semester admission even though you can take courses in the fall semester (but with restrictions).

Somebody, please explain Freshman Connection.

UMD has never liked private school kids, especially if you are from MOCO. They can get so much higher GPA's accepting MCPS students with 4.8 GPA. If you notice on all the UMD material and their tours/open houses, they put average WEIGHTED GPA's on their info. So weighted GPA is very important to them.

The kids they will take from private schools are in other counties like Carroll, Cecil, St. Mary's etc... as their public schools do not have the grade inflation that MCPS has.

Private school kids are also not going to matriculate to state schools for the most part. So it also affects their yield.

It sucks, but that is the way it is. How many kids from your private schools even go to UMD if they get in? My guess is maybe 1 a year if that.

Everybody gets into UMD until it's your kid's turn.

That is crazy. Can the PPs state whether you are in state or OOS?

DS was accepted at Freshman Connection with a 1540 SAT. GPA was not calculated by his private school but was somewhere around the 3.3/3.4 range unweighted with the lowest grades, by far, in 9th grade.

Anonymous wrote:My DD was 3.6UW and a 33 ACT and was rejected. Her school has no weighted grades, even the AP's and it is very hard to get an A there. So there is no such thing as easy A's like MCPS grading. She is easily in the the top 20% of her grade. We were pretty shocked, but not many kids apply to UMD, so maybe that was it? She was accepted to other schools though and will be going to Wash U, which was her number 1 anyway. But yikes, UMD is strange.

OP here- According to Naviance, they weight GPA much more heavily than SAT at least at her school.

My DD was 3.6UW and a 33 ACT and was rejected. Her school has no weighted grades, even the AP's and it is very hard to get an A there. So there is no such thing as easy A's like MCPS grading. She is easily in the the top 20% of her grade. We were pretty shocked, but not many kids apply to UMD, so maybe that was it? She was accepted to other schools though and will be going to Wash U, which was her number 1 anyway. But yikes, UMD is strange.

Anonymous wrote:It was my impression the averages are about 200 points lower. FYI your DD has opportunities to improve her scores in summer and fall. She will likely do better in fall just by having completed more math and being more mature. Practice books over the summer help too.

Thank you PP. FWIW- DD has an excellent UGPA 3.9 and lots of AP's so it's just SAT we are working on.

It was my impression the averages are about 200 points lower. FYI your DD has opportunities to improve her scores in summer and fall. She will likely do better in fall just by having completed more math and being more mature. Practice books over the summer help too.

If your kid was accepted to Freshman Connection at UMD, what was their SAT/UGPA?

Just curious how much different FC stats are from regular. My junior DD is at the bottom of their SAT stats ~1300.

TIA