I don’t think UVA is a safety for anyone with an instate acceptance rate of 26 percent. By definition that isn’t a safety. Op os an excellent candidate but I think will be competing with many similar outstanding candidates at in state schools.
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Thank you!
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I’m going to start just by adding votes for checking out Rochester, William & Mary, RPI, WPI, and RIT.
Pitt is pushing the boundaries of midsize, and is a little pricey OOS, but they might offer merit, and this is an area of strength for them:
https://www.sci.pitt.edu/academics/undergraduate-majors/computational-biology
I note Pitt is a very old college which was once private but eventually affiliated with a state, sort of like William & Mary. And like with W&M, I think it retains a somewhat different vibe from a lot of other state universities as a result.
Finally, going in the complete opposite direction, Rhodes is maybe smaller than you are thinking, but they have a cool Biomathematics major (although again, maybe not exactly what you are thinking), and robust merit which can get them to a pretty competitive price sometimes:
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Since you have Brown on your first list…would Wesleyan be an option.
It’s challenging and hard to predict the situation coming from NoVa where there are a lot of great students who want those schools.
But that doesn’t mean don’t apply. You should certainly get into GMU and VCU. Tech can be weird sometimes (my class of ‘22 child has a 4.2 weighted / 4.0 unweighted, 1540 SAT, Eagle Scout and captain of varsity crew team and he was waitlisted to VA Tech engineering. We assume that was because it was engineering, and that’s just a different story) and UVA is just too damn popular and they only take so many kids from each HS. So I think it depends on your HS to some extent. I’d call them targets, but not safeties.
I think Pitt could be an interesting option for you and it really feels like Case Western would be a good fit. If you are interested in a STEM-y school, my son is at WPI and loves it, and I’d be happy to tell you more about it.
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A reminder to posters that this is a confidential forum. Trying to guess a student’s hs is not appropriate. A number of posts edited/deleted.
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I’d agree that UVA is a target, not safety - although I think there is a good chance you’ll be accepted. GM, VCU, Rutgers and VA tech are all safety/likely. Case is another target as is UCI. The rest of your list is mostly reaches/high reaches so I’d pare that down in order to do a great job on each application. You could also pare down the number of safety/likely schools if there are 2 that you really prefer - I don’t think you need so many.
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Op, you can look up the instate acceptance rate for the specific majors you are interested in Vatech on their website. Agree with pp that admission results there can be erratic, some accuse them of yield protecting, so I would put it in the target and not safety category as well, unless your potential major has a higher acceptance rate.
VCU is an excellent safety for your interests giving their strong reputation in the health sciences.
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Yeah if we knew this kid was getting into UVA or indeed VT, certainly the pressure would be off to consider a lot of the other colleges we are now suggesting. Might still be worth it if they just want some different options to consider (possibly with merit), but it would be very optional.
But I’ve heard the same things about both those schools (they are pretty popular in my feederish HS). And for what it is worth, VT demonstrably waitlists a LOT of applicants–like over 26% according to their 2023-24 CDS. At Pitt, say, it was only 14%. UVA in fact was also under 16%–their reputation in my feederish HS is they are a hard admit, but not necessarily in really unpredictable ways.
This is not conclusive proof VT is yield protecting and such, but it is the sort of thing that makes me think having some alternative Likely plans to UVA and VT, just in case, is not such a bad idea.
OP, does your school use Naviance? My kids’s school does. My son is a sophomore in college and my daughter is a senior who is applying to schools currently. Their naviance scattergrams are super helpful in chancing schools.
Per our school’s scattergrams, given your stats, 4.5 and 1550, for our student population (in VA, not NOVA and not your school), UVA should be very likely. Every student with your stats at our school gets in to UVA. There’s a very clear above/below GPA SAT acceptance range on the UVA scattergram. VATech is weird and a toss up depending in what you plan to study. Per their scattergram, some students at our school with your stats got in and just as many were waitlisted. Dig into that data for your particular school. You can also check the common data sets for schools you are interested in.
We are not in NOVA, but I grew up there and still have friends and family there. I have heard that admission can be more challenging coming from that area given the immense population density and number of highly academically successful students. I have no definitive proof of this. However, data would seem to bear this out assuming that VA state universities want kids from all over the state and don’t take kids proportionally based on each county’s population. (I have zero insider knowledge of VA admission practices this is all parent speculation and gossip/rumor.)
(this data does not include private schools of which there are many)
For example: Two side by side counties in NOVA, Loudoun and Fairfax have a combined student population k-12 of over 260,000 students. Loudoun has 17 high schools while Fairfax has 30. Per Us News, Loudoun is the wealthiest county in the US with a median income of $170,000 and Fairfax is the 5th wealthiest with a median income of $145,000.
Virginia also has some very rural areas, some impoverished, with many counties having a single high school with a low population such as Grayson County which is far south and west in Virginia. It borders Tennessee and North Carolina. It has only one high school with 450 students. Do UVA or VA Tech want diversity of location and pull more students percentage of population wise from a location like Grayson as opposed to NOVA? Unsure.
There are 129 school districts in VA and 329 public high schools. Counting up the high schools in the highlighted area on this map totals 67 schools which is 20% of the public high schools in the whole state. All those NOVA kids are competing with one another for spots in state universities.
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By the way, I once looked into where the in-state kids were coming from at the various Virginia state schools. This was because William & Mary ended up on my S24’s list and we were looking at things like that. I forget the exact details, but one thing that stood out is UVA had a significantly lower percentage of students from NoVa as compared to W&M. In fact, I roughly recall W&M being around George Mason’s level, which struck me as significant. Much less so UVA.
I don’t know application numbers or admit rates, but it did strike me that what I was seeing in terms of enrollment was perhaps supporting the idea that UVA is particularly tough from NoVa, but maybe (maybe) less so W&M.
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I am from an underprivileged part of the state, and I can attest that it’s easier score wise to get into the state schools. I know students from my kid’s grades who got into uva with 1300s. I want to say even 1200s but they may have been URMs.
On the flip side we don’t have anyone taking SAT study classes, no tutors, no prep. Most kids take it 1-2 times and that’s it.
And our kids’ transcripts show a high number of AP/DE classes. My youngest had 9 AP/DE senior year. The quality of the classes I am sure aren’t on par with richer areas, but it looks good on the transcripts. And I don’t know any kid who’s gotten accepted to UVA who dropped out. Ours kids do well in college in general, and they usually don’t come back.
They tend to also be very independent and self driven. We don’t have guidance counsellors leading the way. The kids (not counsellors nor parents) figure out what classes to take. You just hope the counsellors put you in enough classes. Several of the kids in the advanced classes start with only 1-2 classes/semester and the rest study hall because they’ve fulfilled all the requirements of a standard diploma.
I just remember how different my kids’ HS experience was compared to my NOVA one. And while most parents here would be horrified at a lot of it, I was impressed with the group of kids who did go on to college. They all had their act together. They appreciated what college could do for them.
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I apologize if my post came off as maligning the more rural less financially well off (as almost all areas are) compared to Loudoun and Fairfax. That was not my intention. Just trying to give context for people on this forum who are not familiar with particulars in this state. Hard working, smart, driven successful students can be found in every corner of this Commonwealth.
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No worries! I know every area has it challenges. I’m sure I’d be grumbling if I raised my kids in NOVA but most people don’t realize what these kids go through and see every day. It’s just very different. And even if their SAT scores seem low, they are just as capable of getting excellent grades at UVA.
But yes, it is definitely harder to stand out amongst the best in NOVA. Y’all just have too many smart people up there!
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Hi! This information is super helpful! My district uses SchooLinks (similar to Naviance) and the scattergram shows that I am at the district’s average GPA for UVA, UNC, Northwestern, and Cornell (?) and my SAT is above them all, although I’m not sure how much that really means. I also did see some interesting data for my county that showed about a 25% acceptance rate for UVA, which closely aligns with the in-state acceptance rate, but I do think so many more kids apply from here that it definitely makes it more competitive.
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Yes, admissions to UVA and VaTech is much more competitive for kids from Northern VA than the rest of the state because so many talented students. Add in that both schools are committed to maintaining geographical diversity within the state in their incoming classes. In Maryland, students from. Montgomery and Howard counties face a similar issue with respect to UMD College Park.
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Sorry, I missed this earlier, but I think you’ve gotten a lot of good feedback.
I definitely concur that UVA is not a safety, but you are firmly within their target group, even for Northern Virginia. I’d say you have a better than even chance of getting in.
Virginia Tech is a likely for you, especially if you focus on biology. Check out their CMDA major (Computational Modeling and Data Analytics). You can focus specifically on Biology with that major. It would then be really feasible to add a biology minor as well as a Computer Science minor. They have a pretty decent research center on bioinformatics.
I suggest the CMDA major over CS simply because the college of engineering is weird with their acceptance rates, and based on your interest in biology, I think the College of Science might be a better fit for you.
My son is a sophomore at Virginia Tech and loves it.
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NMSF scores are really high here in DMVA
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