<p>UVa accepted 3 not-straight-As students from Advanced English (lower level than honors’)and waitlisted 2 AP English students and a class officer. They all are in-state, btw. I thought rigorous workload and high GPA are important. Why did UVa accept those Advanced students instead of brillant, hard-working AP students?</p>
<p>Who knows? That’s just one class. Maybe the other students had higher SAT’s or higher GPA’s overall. Maybe they had more AP’s in other areas. </p>
<p>oh, and not to argue semantics with you - but I’d use “brilliant” a but more sparingly…</p>
<p>in my school there were some surprising waitlists and some surprising admits</p>
<p>however, all the people considered locks did get in. 20+ people from my school got in.</p>
<p>So I doubt they have too much of that going on…</p>
<p>i doubt it… everyone expected to make it made it from my school.</p>
<p>i don’t think so; uva’s matriculation is great and no one underestimates uva’s admission process, especially out of state. people compare uva’s admission process to schools like dartmouth, cornell, johns hopkins, northwestern, and wash u, which are all very selective schools with very low acceptance rates and a very high caliber of admissions. tufts is kind of a safety; kids know they can get into tufts fairly easily given the stats and competition they’re up against. the same can’t be said of uva; kids don’t apply to uva because they know they can get in. </p>
<p>interestingly enough, a friend of mine in new york was accepted to wharton and rejected from uva. just goes to show you that uva admissions is entirely a most selective process.</p>
<p>“people compare uva’s admission process to schools like dartmouth, cornell, johns hopkins, northwestern, and wash u, which are all very selective schools with very low acceptance rates and a very high caliber of admissions. tufts is kind of a safety; kids know they can get into tufts fairly easily given the stats and competition they’re up against. the same can’t be said of uva; kids don’t apply to uva because they know they can get in.”</p>
<p>Northwestern: 30% acceptance rate 1320-1500 middle 50% SAT range</p>
<p>JHU: 35% acceptance rate 1290-1500 middle 50% SAT range</p>
<p>Tufts: 28% acceptance rate 1330-1480 middle 50% SAT range</p>
<p>And Tufts is of “less high caliber of admissions” than these schools how? You’re ignant.</p>
<p>Does anyone from TJ not get accepted?</p>
<p>kj998855, Tufts made a name for itself a number of years back for rejecting top applicants whom they knew would not enroll. They were open about it. It’s known as yield protection. It drives up yield, drives down selectivity, and moves the school up in the rankings. I don’t know if they still do it.</p>
<p>hazhulkhen, the Cav Daily recently reported that 211/266 applicants from TJ were accepted at UVA.</p>
<p>“kj998855, Tufts made a name for itself a number of years back for rejecting top applicants whom they knew would not enroll. They were open about it. It’s known as yield protection. It drives up yield, drives down selectivity, and moves the school up in the rankings. I don’t know if they still do it.”</p>
<p>They do not, and these stats reflect last year’s class. Look at the admissions decision thread for Tufts, no evidence whatsoever this still goes on. Ironically however, the poster names WUSTL as a paragon of admissions excellence. Insert your own joke here.</p>
<p>yeah, well, if i knew what ignant was, i’m sure i’d be it. i think i’m too ignorant to know what ignant is. my bad.</p>
<p>there’s more to schools than just acceptance rates and sat scores; look at northwestern and jhu’s top 75% scores; they’re still higher than tufts’. again, in another thread, uchicago was brought up. is uchicago a less selective school and a worse school in general because of it’s acceptance rate? most certainly not; i think uchicago is academically a better school than hopkins, northwestern, and uva personally and the caliber of students who go to uchicago and are accepted are way better than the kids at tufts. also, jhu and northwestern accept kids with great ECs, more so than tufts. tufts is known to take more “match” kids with less meat on their applications because they know the kids will matriculate; that again brings down the overall caliber of accepted students. another great example is applying to uva from out of state; it’s acceptance rate is fairly high (i think this year it’s 29% or so and last year it was around 33% or so). yet, the kids who were accepted from uva out of state were most excellent candidates who would definitely fair well in tuft’s admissions process. people flood tufts’ applicant pool, so because of their small class size and high applicant number, they are forced to have a low acceptance rate like that. i know a number of kids who go to tufts/were accepted to tufts; they were students that most definitely wouldn’t (and many cases couldn’t) get into northwestern, hopkins, or uva. at tufts, less is expected as a total “stand out” applicant than most of its academic peers. </p>
<p>another thing about tufts is its connections with many elite new england prep schools. those schools can pull strings and get a relatively large number of students from their graduating class accepted into tufts (when you consider how small the classes are, the number really jumps out). these kids again flood the applicant pool and boost the numbers. other kids with such high stats then apply and are turned down because they are percieved with a low chance of matriculating.</p>
<p>i have a friend who goes to tufts; he’s a white male and was honestly a pretty terrible student. he goes to tufts simply because he couldn’t get into any other school except our state school. yeah, i know there are exceptions in the admissions process, but still, i think it says a lot about the types of exceptions tufts makes in their admissions process.</p>
<p>since tufts tends to waitlist/reject those seemingly “overqualified” candidates and looks more towards its “middle ground” candidates because they are more likely to matriculate, wouldn’t that make their admissions process somewhat less selective?</p>
<p>there’s no need to be a d!ck, kj.</p>
<p>also, you can’t use CC as the last word on college admissions processes; the students here are usually at the top of the admissions class and care more than the average student when it comes to college and the admissions process. you forget about the other kids who are accepted to tufts. maybe you were accepted to tufts and uva? or maybe you’re just fighting for tufts because you love it so much? no idea. i think you just need to stop being so self righteous and calm down.</p>
<p>“i think you just need to stop being so self righteous and calm down.”</p>
<p>Perhaps you should.</p>
<p>“since tufts tends to waitlist/reject those seemingly “overqualified” candidates and looks more towards its “middle ground” candidates because they are more likely to matriculate, wouldn’t that make their admissions process somewhat less selective?”</p>
<p>You have no evidence whatsoever that this is the case. You previously state that kids who apply to schools like JHU and Northwestern can apply to Tufts and treat it as some kind of safety school, when in fact it is just as competitive as these schools. This attitude is percisely what leads to the propagation of the myth of Tufts syndrome, as people have the misconceived notion that Tufts is somehow less competitive than these schools and if they get into JHU and not Tufts (which is perfectly likely, just as the reverse would be) they believe GASP they were overqualified. Right…</p>
<p>What kind of evidence do you have about EC’s?? who did a definitive study on that? </p>
<p>“people flood tufts’ applicant pool, so because of their small class size and high applicant number, they are forced to have a low acceptance rate like that.”</p>
<p>Ummm… is this not true of any school in the country? Acceptance rate is a function of projected yield, class size, and applicant pool here as it is anywhere else. Is it a problem Tufts is becoming increasingly popular. (As a sidebar, it does have a higher yield than JHU). I know quite a few kids at Tufts who could (and did!) get into Northwestern and JHU, what makes your annecdotes more valid than mine? Your one annecdote about your friend who goes to Tufts does not prove a whole lot. </p>
<p>Finally,</p>
<p>“tufts is known to take more “match” kids with less meat on their applications because they know the kids will matriculate; that again brings down the overall caliber of accepted students.”</p>
<p>Here are some stats for kids ACCEPTED, not enrolled, at Penn vs. Tufts last year.</p>
<p>Tufts: Mid 50% range: Math 680-760 Verbal 670-760
Penn: Mid 50% range: Math 680-780; Verbal 660-760</p>
<p>So, by your arguement, if Tufts didn’t play such games and reject “overqualified people”, its accepted student numbers, which are comprable to Penn’s as it is, would far exceed Penn’s. I don’t believe that Tufts has a more competitive applicant pool than Penn, but that’s what your agruement would imply. </p>
<p>I’m not being a “d!ck,” I’m rectifying unobjective claims. If you want to trash a school you obviously know little about, then be prepared to be proven wrong.</p>
<p>haha touche. i wasn’t trashing tufts, i was just trying to compare it’s admissions process with other schools.</p>
<p>No one trashed Tufts, kj - they just made statements based on past admissions trends. I believe Tufts was even explicit about their practice of rejecting top applicants. They may not do it anymore, though, as evidenced by their yield rate…</p>
<p>most definitely, cav; i wasn’t completely right in my analysis of tufts. i haven’t kept up with tufts in general for the past 2-3 years after i eliminated it from my college search. no one here is trashing tufts; we’re simply comparing its process to those of other schools (especially uva’s).</p>
<p>Tufts alum here… with my 800 math, 750 verbal (same sitting, first time, by the way), top of my class, and 10 varsity letters, I was a perfect candidate for “Tufts Syndrome.” But I got in. A fair amount of my friends at Tufts turned down Ivies to go there. Like it or not, it’s freaking hard to get in the door. They have 16,000 applicants and 1,200 seats - that’s a 14:1 ratio of applicants to seats. They have their pick. </p>
<p>I challenge any one of you who believes that there is “Tufts Syndrome” to find a person with higher stats than mine who was rejected. Until that day comes, pipe down.</p>
<p>Now, on to UVA. If you’re coming from out-of-state, there is an advantage to being able to pay the sticker price. There’s a fairly big legacy advantage - they seem to want kids who are enthused about the school (go figure). 
It’s not all about the stats (esp. grades) as it is the intangibles - extracurriculars and leadership being a few of them. UVa does have a reputation for a student body that really loves the school and a very fun atmosphere - it doesn’t want grinds who are only there for the name. W&M takes the kids who do nothing but work - that’s the school where you’re behind your fellow students when you aren’t three weeks ahead in the reading. UVa is a different animal… which is why you’ll see “odd” admissions results.</p>
<p>IMO, in that way, it’s very similar to Tufts. They get accused of manipulating yield - but the real, overall goal is to get students who like being there. I’ve heard only good things from UVa alums; they are uniformly thrilled with their experience. There’s a similar theme for Tufts grads. The admisisons committees at both schools are smart to realize that they have a great product - a student body that is loyal to the school and comes out with fabulous memories of it. You can take high-stat kids and improve your rankings, but that might end up ruining the school - the work hard/play hard mentality, the bonding between students, and the enjoyment of those four years. I think they both want students who contribute to the community (both the surrounding community and the school)… and those factors will often swamp straight-up stats. So you can say “Tufts Syndrome” or “UVa Syndrome” or “not fair,” but, at the end of the day, the schools are taking students who will be happy there. There’s never any point to taking kids whose mentality would be IHTFP.</p>
<p>thanks for the clarification, aries. doesn’t get clearer than a tuft’s alum.</p>
<p>i like how tufts people keep chiming in - yet its been stated pretty much from the get go that we realize that tufts doesn’t reject top applicants anymore. although - i agree with aries :-).</p>
<p>btw - uva is need blind - so it doesn’t help if you can pay the sticker price from oos. Also, the whole legacy admit thing is completely over analyzed. (this coming from a non-legacy admit) it has been shown time and time again, that legacy students on a whole have better grades and test scores than non legacy students - and it makes sense.</p>
<p>Of course they do - their parents are UVA grads, which puts them in a better position than the vast majority of college-aged kids, most of whom have parents who don’t even have college degrees.</p>
<p>jags is right. people overestimate the power of a uva alum in the admissions process. i’ve seen a number of kids in my area who were alums, the ones who didn’t deserve it didn’t get in, and the ones who got in were just as good as the nonalum admits.</p>