I will add this note- our son was accepted EA at Clemson last fall (2024) for engineering, 4.7 GPA, 34 ACT and 11 APs…submitted all scores. He was not offered any merit. Not one bit. He earned the Presidential Scholarship at Auburn and is a freshman there now and loving life…but we were surprised that he did not receive any financial help.
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Are you OOS?
My student said last night it feels like admissions has put applicants into three buckets - the “yes” bucket, the “no” bucket and then, in the “maybe” bucket, they are spinning the wheel and if it lands on you, you’re in. He’s been accepted at schools to which his friends have been denied or deferred, and deferred at schools where some friends have been admitted or denied. It’s a year of patience, with very little rhyme or reason to much of it. Schools that were targets or even “likely” just two years ago are deferring everyone we know with few acceptances. I don’t think deferrals are a soft denial like some suggest, I think that many schools were just overwhelmed by EA numbers that they had to defer a large portion giving them more time to shape the admitted class. Also, we are expecting waitlists as students commit. With more students applying to 10 or more schools, there will ultimately be a shuffle when deposits come due. It’s rough on all of us.
Good luck to your DD with Clemson!
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wow, that is surprising. My nephew is a freshman at Auburn also, and enjoying it. As I mentioned before my S23 didn’t receive merit at Clemson but he was a little below the cut-offs so it didn’t surprise me. My current S25 has a 3.86 / 4.45 / SAT 1440 and the acceptance letter did say he would receive some merit (? amount). So, like so many things with university admissions (acceptances/rejections/scholarship), the process has an element of randomness
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I will say Clemson deferrals from EA to RD are more likely due to the volume of application increases year-over-year; they’ve been advertising for application reviewers for months, so it’s not necessarily keeping people hanging around as it is there aren’t enough people to read them.
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My daughter was accepted EA, but still not knowing her merit award amount or the tuition amount is starting to negatively impact our excitement. The main thing driving our excitement at this point is that she is a legacy.
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What is her proposed major? Is she from an overly represented state? Could be lots of things going on.
Yes to this. We are, in fact, actively trying to not get excited until we know what the merit award will be. Of the three other EA schools that he’s been admitted to, all three have provided merit amounts. Two are outstanding, that are making those schools seem more desirable (when in reality, I think Clemson, or the EA school we haven’t heard back from yet) are probably the best fits.
But I guess I can’t complain… at least we heard something. S25 also applied to Virginia Tech EA and they haven’t even told people if they are admitted or not yet.
Most students get deferred in Early Admissions at Clemson -since they started the Early Admissions process (2-3 years ago). So don’t read into it too much. I know, super annoying. I have two sons that were OOS applicants and both attend Clemson. Freshman and Junior. They both were deferred and both got in regular decision.
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Applications have been hitting new records each year. Seems like more of a bottleneck effect with admissions staffing to keep up, and why the necessary push from EA to RA timeline. Annoying for the student, but understandable.
It is so wonderful when fit and price align, but I’m not sure how often that happens. We spent this past weekend at another school my daughter has been admitted to, and we all fell in love with it. My daughter only applied there to humor me, but she ended up loving it, much to her surprise. It also happens to be the least expensive so far, but that is a total coincidence.
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I can’t say if this is accurate because I heard from someone that heard from someone else and these numbers haven’t been published. But I was told that Clemson had 40,000 EA applications and they admitted 2000 of them. And with RD, I think their total applications came to about 61,000. Considering Clemson generally sends acceptance letters to over 20,000 kids, there should be a lot of deferred kids that are still offered a spot.
I was also told by an admissions person last May that they had 1200 kids accept spots in the Bridge program for 2024-2025. I don’t know if Bridge invitations are included in Clemson’s acceptance stats.
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Just for another statistic to add, my OOS son was admitted EA this year. He was not offered merit with a 4.53 GPA and 1550 SAT.
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Does anyone know how many kids get offered Summer Start? Is it mostly an OOS thing whereas Bridge is In-state?
That is crazy! Has he also been accepted to some higher ranked colleges?
Anyone notice any portal changes?
On a tour in January, Clemson said they received 61k total applications last season in total (EA & RD combined)
That seems strange. My OOS child admitted EA Engineering with a little lower ACT than your SAT, similar GPA (unsure of his Clemson recalculated gpa) is receiving merit.
No changes for us, still says awaiting decision with both first and alternate major visible. Are they still on track to release on Friday I hope?
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