Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Who cares! UVA? Really?

Wonder if you would get into UVA - it seems unlikely.

But in any case, UVA is a great state school. Yes, Marie Antoinette, most TJ families are different from private school families that are used to paying $30K/year for tuition.

Anonymous wrote:Who cares! UVA? Really?

Anonymous wrote:How many applied to Penn?

Every admission officer I know bristles at the mention of the word "quota". Maybe we hate it because it implies that we don't have control over our processes and that we are slaves to demographics while we read applications. During every Q&A session, every College Night panel, and every phone call, I think we all brace ourselves for that word, which usually comes in a sentence that starts with "We heard that UVa..." and ends with the name of a county or a region. We don't have quotas that specific here. We have one ratio.

The State Legislature has set a ratio that governs the in state and out of state populations at UVa. Two thirds of our students must have Virginia residency. Therefore, one third can come from outside of the state.

Beyond that, no population rules are enforced on us. Obviously, most admission offices want to bring in an interesting class that has people from many backgrounds, but we have not been handed target numbers for different regions, counties, or populations beyond that 2/3 : 1/3 ratio. There are definitely trends within the admitted group, though. For example, around one third of our Virginia population tends to come from the northern part of the state, but that area is highly populated and makes up a pretty big part of our applicant pool. There's no target for that region or any other. State legislators propose bills to change the ratio almost every year, but the bills fail each year.

UVa admissions dean's blog:
http://uvaapplication.blogspot.com/2010/03/lets-talk-about-ratios-quotas-and-admit.html

dadofapp said... Is there any information in the Website, or can you tell me, what the SAT/ACT averages are or any other criteria that distinguish between in-state and out-of-state UVA applicants. There is always the line that it is harder to get in from out of state, but I would like to know what the differences really are.

Response: I talked about this a little bit yesterday. We don't have minimums or different bars for the different pools. While we could generate stats for the different groups, I fear that publishing them would lead people to assume that we read with minimum numbers in our minds, which we don't do. If you want to poke around and look at statistics, the Office of Institutional Assessment is the place for you. There are more statistics on their website they you'll ever want!

Anonymous wrote:The UVa admissions people state this matter-of-factly and unapologetically during info sessions with prospective families.

Anonymous wrote:

For a top FCPS student, it's entirely possible to get into MIT and CMU or wherever and not get into UVA. UVA is just that competitive for VA students from our area. There's no question that less qualified applicants are accepted from out of state and ROVA (rest of VA) simply because UVa can't become a NOVA outpost (which we've seen over and over and over).

I've read a few comments like the one above, saying that admission to UVa from Northern Virginia is very difficult. I'm sure it is difficult, but I cannot find anything that proves it. All I find is some general statistics about UVa having an overall admissions rate of about 32-39% of applicants (depending on year), other statistics showing that about 70% of UVa's undergraduates come from Virginia, and some numbers showing that a large percentage of those undergraduates (about 20% I think) come from NoVa. But I don't see anything (other than anecdotal claims on anonymous message boards) suggesting that applicants from NoVa face significantly tougher admissions standards than applicants from other parts of Virginia.

Can anyone provide some support for this? Many thanks in advance.

For a top FCPS student, it's entirely possible to get into MIT and CMU or wherever and not get into UVA. UVA is just that competitive for VA students from our area. There's no question that less qualified applicants are accepted from out of state and ROVA (rest of VA) simply because UVa can't become a NOVA outpost (which we've seen over and over and over).

Anonymous wrote:Ah gotcha. I knew UVA was very competitive out of state, and out of state, it is as selective as many Ivy-level schools. I just assumed if someone went to the best high school in VA (and the country on some lists), and did fairly well, that they should have a reasonable expectation to be admitted to their own state's 'best' school. I guess that's not the case.

I actually went to UVA (out of state), but there were so many TJ grads there that it seemed sort of like the safety school for them and the school that those who didn't get into an Ivy went. Not that an Ivy is a good fit for everyone or that it necessarily provides a better education (not to mention UVA is MUCH cheaper in-state). It was just my 18 yr old assumption that I guess I have carried with me. They were still super smart kids for the most part.

I guess I wouldn't want such a high-stress high school experience, especially knowing that I might have gone to a 'better' college if I had just stayed at my base high school. Of course, I was a history major, so the prospect of spending much of the day on STEM subjects with other kids who think it's the best thing in the world wouldn't have appealed to me! (Nevermind whether I would have gotten in, lol. )