Anonymous
Post 02/02/2026 10:28     Subject: State school admissions should not be wholistic
Do we realized how hard it is to be top 10% in w schools? This county has almost the best public school system, if we don’t consider privates. Many top 10% students there could be top 1% in average schools.

Considering UMDCP ranks #46. There should be guaranteed acceptance, not only to top10%, probably 15%.
Anonymous
Post 02/02/2026 10:27     Subject: State school admissions should not be wholistic
Anonymous wrote:I want kids admitted based on ability to spell.
Best proposal on this thread.
Anonymous
Post 02/02/2026 10:23     Subject: Re:State school admissions should not be wholistic
Everyone pays taxes

Why does that mean you have to get a seat at an institution that doesn't have unlimited openings?

There are usually many public colleges in a state. Your kid can get into one of them

There! Your taxpayer dollars at work!


Anonymous
Post 02/02/2026 10:20     Subject: State school admissions should not be wholistic
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:There might be a few odd cases, but like PP said, the top 10% are getting into UMD. Not into CS though.


You are clearly not from Maryland. I’m not sure if it’s worse in other states, but here for certain high schools it’s essentially a lottery.

That’s the whole point. Guaranteed admissions is guaranteed. Maryland is vibes.


Are you telling me if you look at the Naviance for Whitman or whatever school you are at that the top 5% of applicants are an equal mix of accepts and declines? I can tell you for B-CC that is not true. Same at 10%. Top kids are almost uniformly admitted.

I think you are going to need to name the school and your evidence at this point, beyond the fact that your child apparently was not admitted.


So just to be clear you are on board with the idea the top 10% at Whitman should be guaranteed admission? That’s the point here and if you agree, fine. The argument is not about whether top students get denied now, it’s whether the state should legally be allowed to deny them based on twenty six random made up factors.


No, I’m saying the top 10% probably is largely being admitted because academic performance is a priority of the 26 criteria they use. Similarly, I can have lots of criteria about where I want to vacation but first it has to be affordable. It is ludicrous to think that any school doesn’t have multiple criteria, not all of which are going to be weighted identically.

For example, if a top kid from Whitman just sends their transcript and test scores but doesn’t fill out the rest of the application they should rightly be denied.
Anonymous
Post 02/02/2026 10:20     Subject: State school admissions should not be wholistic
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:There might be a few odd cases, but like PP said, the top 10% are getting into UMD. Not into CS though.


You are clearly not from Maryland. I’m not sure if it’s worse in other states, but here for certain high schools it’s essentially a lottery.

That’s the whole point. Guaranteed admissions is guaranteed. Maryland is vibes.


Are you telling me if you look at the Naviance for Whitman or whatever school you are at that the top 5% of applicants are an equal mix of accepts and declines? I can tell you for B-CC that is not true. Same at 10%. Top kids are almost uniformly admitted.

I think you are going to need to name the school and your evidence at this point, beyond the fact that your child apparently was not admitted.


So just to be clear you are on board with the idea the top 10% at Whitman should be guaranteed admission? That’s the point here and if you agree, fine. The argument is not about whether top students get denied now, it’s whether the state should legally be allowed to deny them based on twenty six random made up factors.


But this is a strawman, because top 10% at Whitman generally isn’t getting denied.

One word is doing a lot of work right there.


Not really. Just because 100% of top 10% kids don’t get in doesn’t mean it isn’t 90 or 95%. But you’ve provided no substance to any of your arguments and can’t spell holistic correctly, so have a feeling any sort of nuance is lost on you.

As someone else said, name the school and the naviance data that highlights your problem, whatever it is.


It should be 100%. That’s the point. What’s the argument for excluding some
kids but not others? The kids who get excluded have no idea why they were denied. In state college tuition is a benefit for your tax dollars. What if it was the other way around? Ninety percent of people pay a normal tax rate but ten percent are picked for a randomly super high tax rate and they aren’t given any reason. No one would look at that and say “well you know that’s close enough to 100%”
Anonymous
Post 02/02/2026 10:15     Subject: State school admissions should not be wholistic
Anonymous wrote:I can get behind this. Arlington resident for 26 years. Paying a ton in taxes. Every kid in my kid's social circle is an exceptional kid - As, sports, community engagement, etc. and yet most will be denied from top VA public schools. Why should my kid pay almost the same
amount in tuition to attend CNU that they would need for W&M? How much of the Nova tax base goes to the budget of each public institution? Should NOVA kids get a bigger percentage of seats for top 10% or 5%? Why is it so much cheaper to go down south even as an OOS?! Make it make sense.


Noooo! FFS, there’s so many of you already. And paying state taxes does not equate to a seat at a top school. Everyone in the Commonwealth pays taxes, including people who don’t have kids or whose kids don’t to college at all. Get over yourself.
Anonymous
Post 02/02/2026 10:10     Subject: State school admissions should not be wholistic
I want kids admitted based on ability to spell.
Anonymous
Post 02/02/2026 10:09     Subject: State school admissions should not be wholistic
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:There might be a few odd cases, but like PP said, the top 10% are getting into UMD. Not into CS though.


You are clearly not from Maryland. I’m not sure if it’s worse in other states, but here for certain high schools it’s essentially a lottery.

That’s the whole point. Guaranteed admissions is guaranteed. Maryland is vibes.


Are you telling me if you look at the Naviance for Whitman or whatever school you are at that the top 5% of applicants are an equal mix of accepts and declines? I can tell you for B-CC that is not true. Same at 10%. Top kids are almost uniformly admitted.

I think you are going to need to name the school and your evidence at this point, beyond the fact that your child apparently was not admitted.


So just to be clear you are on board with the idea the top 10% at Whitman should be guaranteed admission? That’s the point here and if you agree, fine. The argument is not about whether top students get denied now, it’s whether the state should legally be allowed to deny them based on twenty six random made up factors.


But this is a strawman, because top 10% at Whitman generally isn’t getting denied.

One word is doing a lot of work right there.


Not really. Just because 100% of top 10% kids don’t get in doesn’t mean it isn’t 90 or 95%. But you’ve provided no substance to any of your arguments and can’t spell holistic correctly, so have a feeling any sort of nuance is lost on you.

As someone else said, name the school and the naviance data that highlights your problem, whatever it is.
Anonymous
Post 02/02/2026 10:00     Subject: State school admissions should not be wholistic
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:There might be a few odd cases, but like PP said, the top 10% are getting into UMD. Not into CS though.


You are clearly not from Maryland. I’m not sure if it’s worse in other states, but here for certain high schools it’s essentially a lottery.

That’s the whole point. Guaranteed admissions is guaranteed. Maryland is vibes.


Are you telling me if you look at the Naviance for Whitman or whatever school you are at that the top 5% of applicants are an equal mix of accepts and declines? I can tell you for B-CC that is not true. Same at 10%. Top kids are almost uniformly admitted.

I think you are going to need to name the school and your evidence at this point, beyond the fact that your child apparently was not admitted.


So just to be clear you are on board with the idea the top 10% at Whitman should be guaranteed admission? That’s the point here and if you agree, fine. The argument is not about whether top students get denied now, it’s whether the state should legally be allowed to deny them based on twenty six random made up factors.


But this is a strawman, because top 10% at Whitman generally isn’t getting denied.

One word is doing a lot of work right there.
DP
Anonymous
Post 02/02/2026 09:58     Subject: State school admissions should not be wholistic
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:It's ridiculous that you can bring your kid up in a state public school system from k to 12 and they can graduate with a perfect or near-perfect grade record and they don't get into your taxpayer-funded state college. There is an annual cycle of people in Maryland learning that going to a good public high school, taking hard classes, and getting good grades is not enough to get into UMDCP. Especially in MoCo. This is a system for distributing a government benefit, and it shouldn't be done through a mysterious black box and essentially random back room vibes.

It should be clear to every student no later than the first year of freshman year of high school what they will need to do to get into their state flagship. In a lot of states it is, but in particular in Maryland it is not and it is ridiculous. In Maryland kids are actively punished for attending good schools and working hard to do well.

It's all part of a unified public education system. If the people running the state university flagship don't think that the most academically accomplished high school graduates should attend the college, something is wrong.

In Texas, the top 5% high school kids are guaranteed admission to its top public college (UT Austin), but there’s no guarantee that they’ll get into their first choice majors. Other TX colleges (including Texas A&M) will take the top 10% for sure, again to some major not necessarily your first choice. In practice, the top 5-10% of high school kids in Maryland ARE pretty much guaranteed a spot at UMD. I don’t see how imposing such a rule would make any practical difference.


I was coming to make this exact same point.



The Texas system is not without its own problems. Parents game it by moving junior year into a high school of lower performing kids in order to hit that 10%

But that strategy works everywhere. If you move to North Dakota, you might get into Yale 😉
Anonymous
Post 02/02/2026 09:48     Subject: State school admissions should not be wholistic
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:It's ridiculous that you can bring your kid up in a state public school system from k to 12 and they can graduate with a perfect or near-perfect grade record and they don't get into your taxpayer-funded state college. There is an annual cycle of people in Maryland learning that going to a good public high school, taking hard classes, and getting good grades is not enough to get into UMDCP. Especially in MoCo. This is a system for distributing a government benefit, and it shouldn't be done through a mysterious black box and essentially random back room vibes.

It should be clear to every student no later than the first year of freshman year of high school what they will need to do to get into their state flagship. In a lot of states it is, but in particular in Maryland it is not and it is ridiculous. In Maryland kids are actively punished for attending good schools and working hard to do well.

It's all part of a unified public education system. If the people running the state university flagship don't think that the most academically accomplished high school graduates should attend the college, something is wrong.

In Texas, the top 5% high school kids are guaranteed admission to its top public college (UT Austin), but there’s no guarantee that they’ll get into their first choice majors. Other TX colleges (including Texas A&M) will take the top 10% for sure, again to some major not necessarily your first choice. In practice, the top 5-10% of high school kids in Maryland ARE pretty much guaranteed a spot at UMD. I don’t see how imposing such a rule would make any practical difference.


I was coming to make this exact same point.



The Texas system is not without its own problems. Parents game it by moving junior year into a high school of lower performing kids in order to hit that 10%
Anonymous
Post 02/02/2026 09:42     Subject: State school admissions should not be wholistic
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:There might be a few odd cases, but like PP said, the top 10% are getting into UMD. Not into CS though.


You are clearly not from Maryland. I’m not sure if it’s worse in other states, but here for certain high schools it’s essentially a lottery.

That’s the whole point. Guaranteed admissions is guaranteed. Maryland is vibes.


Probably because 90% of them are applying to extremely selective majors like CS, engineering.
Anonymous
Post 02/02/2026 09:41     Subject: State school admissions should not be wholistic
Anonymous wrote:OP, have you contacted your elected officials?

The State can make changes to how UMD admits students as it is a state funded and run institution. It's not private.

But I would wager, they would come back with exactly the same argument that others on this board have voiced - go to a different state school.


This. Each state has a different system, different priorities, different funding. Write your legislator or move to a state you do like
Anonymous
Post 02/02/2026 09:41     Subject: State school admissions should not be wholistic
Anonymous wrote:“Wholistic” is not a word.

I think you mean “holistic”.



+1. How did so many posts occur without someone pointing out that the OP can’t spell? This thread is nails on the chalkboard bad for so many reasons.
Anonymous
Post 02/02/2026 09:40     Subject: State school admissions should not be wholistic
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:There might be a few odd cases, but like PP said, the top 10% are getting into UMD. Not into CS though.


You are clearly not from Maryland. I’m not sure if it’s worse in other states, but here for certain high schools it’s essentially a lottery.

That’s the whole point. Guaranteed admissions is guaranteed. Maryland is vibes.


Are you telling me if you look at the Naviance for Whitman or whatever school you are at that the top 5% of applicants are an equal mix of accepts and declines? I can tell you for B-CC that is not true. Same at 10%. Top kids are almost uniformly admitted.

I think you are going to need to name the school and your evidence at this point, beyond the fact that your child apparently was not admitted.


So just to be clear you are on board with the idea the top 10% at Whitman should be guaranteed admission? That’s the point here and if you agree, fine. The argument is not about whether top students get denied now, it’s whether the state should legally be allowed to deny them based on twenty six random made up factors.


But this is a strawman, because top 10% at Whitman generally isn’t getting denied.

DP