Anonymous wrote:Geez. VT is a good school, but some posters on this board treat it like it's very competitive. It's not. Decent students w/ decent scores will get in unless, perhaps, they are engineering majors or have red flags on their record (suspension, e.g.). It's admission percentage was over 70 last year. I get that people think it's going down for this year, but c'mon... pretending it's a selective school remotely on par w/ UVA and W&M wrt difficulty of admission is nuts.

A lot of kids thought that this year, based on Naviance for past years, and were shocked not to get in. They probably would have gotten in last year. As others have posted, applications went way up this year (32,000) and admission percentage consequently went down to around 56%.

Anonymous wrote:Geez. VT is a good school, but some posters on this board treat it like it's very competitive. It's not. Decent students w/ decent scores will get in unless, perhaps, they are engineering majors or have red flags on their record (suspension, e.g.). It's admission percentage was over 70 last year. I get that people think it's going down for this year, but c'mon... pretending it's a selective school remotely on par w/ UVA and W&M wrt difficulty of admission is nuts.

Its not a sure bet anymore. Just ask your counselor.

Geez. VT is a good school, but some posters on this board treat it like it's very competitive. It's not. Decent students w/ decent scores will get in unless, perhaps, they are engineering majors or have red flags on their record (suspension, e.g.). It's admission percentage was over 70 last year. I get that people think it's going down for this year, but c'mon... pretending it's a selective school remotely on par w/ UVA and W&M wrt difficulty of admission is nuts.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
2. Are there other schools she should look at in the DC area? She wants to stay close to home (no more than 2-3 hour drive)? Since she doesn't have anything in particular she is looking for, we figured we'd just look in state (mainly for financial reasons), but should she consider any privates? Or anything in DC, MD, PA, etc?

Here's a list of private Virginia colleges to consider:

http://www.cicv.org/Our-Colleges/Virginia-Private-College-Week.aspx

Dickinson
Gettysburg

McDaniel in MD. Small, nurturing CTCL school.

Anonymous wrote:
2. Are there other schools she should look at in the DC area? She wants to stay close to home (no more than 2-3 hour drive)? Since she doesn't have anything in particular she is looking for, we figured we'd just look in state (mainly for financial reasons), but should she consider any privates? Or anything in DC, MD, PA, etc?

Here's a list of private Virginia colleges to consider:

http://www.cicv.org/Our-Colleges/Virginia-Private-College-Week.aspx

OP again - Thanks everyone! One comment and two follow ups:

comment - I realized my daughter could take the SAT again and probably improve her scores. But she doesn't seem motivated to prep, and if she did well enough to solidly get into a school that she's interested in, I'm not sure it's worth it. I'll feel bad if she doesn't get in one of these schools and it was due to the SAT though. I'd love someone to say - with those SAT's & GPA - she's got a 90%+ chance of getting into GMU, VCU, UMW, JMU, CNU, or VT (am I missing any that you guys think she should look at?)

Questions:

1. Can you actually apply without a major? Does it either help or hurt your odds of getting into schools? What other considerations/advice can you give me about this?

2. Are there other schools she should look at in the DC area? She wants to stay close to home (no more than 2-3 hour drive)? Since she doesn't have anything in particular she is looking for, we figured we'd just look in state (mainly for financial reasons), but should she consider any privates? Or anything in DC, MD, PA, etc?