<p>[UVa</a> considers non-binding early admission | Charlottesville Daily Progress](<a href=“http://www2.dailyprogress.com/cdp/news/local/article/uva_considers_non-binding_early_admission/58057/]UVa”>http://www2.dailyprogress.com/cdp/news/local/article/uva_considers_non-binding_early_admission/58057/)</p>
<p>I think the only reason they didn’t do this when they eliminated early decision was that the logistics of doing both things at once were too much. I’m glad they’re going to bring some kind of early plan back.</p>
<p>I see so many people struggle in intro weed out courses. Courses like pre- and early- 300 level math classes are specifically graded to get students to drop or fail. Then all of the pre med classes like chem and orgo aren’t easy either. And the entire first year engineering curriculum is designed to weed out people and it does a great job. I don’t understand why weed out courses don’t do the job by showing students that the curriculum (interests) are not right, not by specifically giving hard assignments to discourage students who they deem “incapable.” Intro psych classes are all on a bell curve, what purpose does that have at a University where everyone is significantly above average except to discourage people from taking psych classes? There was this one question on a test, which everyone chose an answer which was in the reading but apparently not the “best” answer which was implied (not explicit). Even though 90% of the class put the other answer, they didn’t care, and kept their bell curve on top of it. I just don’t understand why professors want to grade that way, forget what the article says, it is intentional and malicious grading. I hope our new president is really able to put a stop to all of this…</p>
<p>Heavy sigh… if this is adopted, it will be one year too late for S2 in admissions. Oh well, ALL applicants will be going through the same process so fair is fair!!</p>
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Nope. 
No one was really pushing for any early program at all at that point. </p>
<p>Casteen’s quote from back when really fit what was going on at the time:
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<p>Well, regardless of the reason(s), I’m glad some kind of early program that doesn’t have the same pitfalls as ED is being put into place. I don’t understand the arguments against early action – there’s no financial requirement like with ED. I’m still not really sure why Harvard dropped EA except for the press?? Via [Harvard</a> College Admissions § Announcements](<a href=“http://www.admissions.college.harvard.edu/announcements/earlyadmission.html]Harvard”>http://www.admissions.college.harvard.edu/announcements/earlyadmission.html) it seems like their reasons were (1) eliminate stress (because making kids wait longer definitely eliminates stress) and (2) students don’t understand the difference between EA and ED…</p>
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<p>Well, no crap! Problem is, teachers, especially in the engineering classes, love to give out a few As, a few more Bs, and the rest C/Ds. So, instead of just failing them, these kids have a average 2.9 GPA upon graduation. It almost might be better to just fail them so they re-evalutate their decision. A lot of teachers are just on power trips it seems like and it sucks. She then goes on to retention issues, which isn’t really the issue; instead, they should be worried about how they can’t fire consistently crummy teachers because they can barely retain teachers, much less hire new ones.
Also, I’ve seen this first hand: all those pre-med weed-out classes, a toonnn of students get Cs, and a few Cs later, these kids are no longer competitive for the top med schools (ahem, UVA). </p>
<p>Disclaimer: I’m not saying all teachers are terrible. In fact, most are superb and most larger schools like UVa are going to have a large pool of great teachers, a smaller pool of fantastic teachers, and an even smaller, but very present, pool of crummy tenure. But you get a few bad apples and they generally stick out in peoples’ minds. I really only had 2-3 really, really bad teachers, one intro and one upper-level. I’m saying 3 just because two other teachers stick out in my mind as failing at teacher-admin stuff, not their actual teaching/grading efforts, and I might have forgotten another one. All in all, I had almost 80 teachers and loved most. I can tell you that I had 6-8 that were SO great, they stand out in my mind whenever I come across something that reminds me of their subject.</p>
<p>Haven’t read article yet but please god tell me it’s for this year</p>
<p>Well god just smited me… <em>sigh</em> I guess I’ll just app with all the otter kids ( most who could care less about the school and just have it on the list, who will take my spot*. Man this hurts that it starts next year…</p>
<p>Hey Hazel and Shoebox!
I’ve been really busy with all kinds of crazy stuff, but am in CVL right now for Mid-Summers, Wahoo!
UNC has this kind of non-binding early action stuff and it is good. I’d like to see UVA adopt such a philosophy.
I have to admit, UVA is a very challenging school. I’ve worked really hard, but have blossomed too. I have found a core of profs. that I love and give me so much academic drive!! Might sound corny, but they do :)</p>
<p>Right now, I’m still holding my breath about this new President Sullivan…personally, I’m just not sure she is the right choice for UVA. Maybe she’ll surprise me. We’ll see.</p>
<p>Charlottesville Daily Progress: "Sullivan said she wants to analyze some of UVa’s “gateway” courses, which are large classes that are prerequisites for certain courses of study. For example, a student might need to pass calculus to go on to pursue a degree in economics or engineering.
Many students, she said, fail these classes and must find another course of study to pursue.
“If a student’s goal is to be pre-med, I’d prefer that student not have to pursue their second or third choice just because they can’t get through the qualifying course,” Sullivan said.</p>
<p>You know, UVA is very challenging, but that is why I am so proud to be here. So what are her intentions??? I know that she is from the huge U of Michigan which is kind of a diploma factory IMHO. I have concerns about where this is going. Not sure she is the right fit for our southern, historical, wonderful University. Just my opinion…</p>
<p>My brother goes to UMich. The only concerns I have from what he has told me is the amount of cheating. He knew people who flunked out their first semester, I don’t know anyone at UVA who flunked out (they let you come back after a year off or something I believe). I think that classes should be rigorous, sure, but not designed to fail. Which is how they are. You can design a course that is rigorous but not out to get students. For instance, I took a bioethics class my first semester. It was not a hard class, but it was not an easy class either. I ended up getting a pretty terrible grade in it, a B-, because I just stopped being interested in the material after the midterm. Which is the proper way to turn a student off from a class I think – a lack of interest in the material! The same is true of upper level math classes (once you get past things like Calculus and Linear/Diff Eq) – I might hate the material (I didn’t get any electives in the math ed track), but I can put in enough work to pull off an A- since it is my major, and have no delusions of wanting to go to grad school for that! But no one would accuse the math department of not being rigorous, giving out too many A’s, or trying to intentionally fail students in upper level classes (just lower level ones). I don’t think the math department is the perfect model, obviously, but I think it is possible to be rigorous while not being out to get students and I haven’t taken too many upper level classes that I could compare that analogy to… I have a friend in Bio who is not premed and she basically says she never gets As because all the premed kids are so fanatical they study obsessively and break the curve for her and she’s not willing to do that and give up her social life like that when she’s not going into medicine. It would be interesting to hear other people’s opinions on higher level classes (does engineering get any better? Cause from my 4th year friends’ stories I almost think it doesn’t…).</p>
<p>Engineering, IMO, gets worse simply because you have less people to help you. Also, most of the teachers are graduate teachers and have too much else going on and if you’re not an aspiring grad student, you don’t matter a whole lot. Also, the work gets insanely hard for almost every major end of second year and especially, especially third year. I had never, and probably will never, be worked as hard as I was third year. By the time I got to fourth year I was drained, and I was not alone, at all. Then, the career center got all surprised when people said “f this!” to engineering jobs and went more business/analytical/IT type jobs.</p>
<p>Not my experience. I worked closely with nearly all my instructors all four years, although classes did get harder over time. If I needed help, no problem getting it. Being biomedical, however, my classes were relatively small. </p>
<p>Also, regarding “weed-out” classes, I didn’t perceive that as much of an issue either, having served as a TA for a couple APMA classes and a physics class. SEAS has too much of an investment in its students to be trying to force them out. The school offers lots of supplementary tutoring help for the larger basic classes. Having also served as a tutor with regular office hours, many students in the weed-out classes didn’t seek out additional help except the day before a test.</p>
<p>Yeah you BmEs…ugh. I suppose my problem was that my major is rather difficult to teach, most learning comes from hands-on/research. Prime reason why I hate my major: everything I learned is outdated. Even my most advanced grad school class was outdated info and my teacher had to constantly stop and say “well actually technology has become smaller and faster, but just know those numbers”. Everytime someone advances in the EE/computer field, something else comes along and smashes it and outdates it. It’s why electronic trash is the quiet, looming environmental disaster waiting to wake up and explode. </p>
<p>BmEs, on the other hand, is a developing field but a lot of “older” technology, as in more than 6-12months, is still very relevant. Also, everyone loves you kids. You’re the apple in the eye child, my major is that blacksheep that does well and everyone still supports us, but all the other kids outshine us and no one’s really sure what we do or why we’re around. Le sigh…</p>
<p>On the plus side, most of us have baller jobs. Everyone in the work-world loves EEs. Womp</p>
<p>I haven’t even gone to UVA ( well yet atleast ) but I think this discussion is great. I feel like by having EA UVA will receive less apps but the apps the receive EA will be from kids who know they’re interested in the school. I understand why they got rid of ED but I think they should have kept it because only kids who were definite they wanted to go to the school apply ED… <em>sigh #2</em> my admissions decision to UVA is still a little less than a year away but I’m more than excited to find out if I am accepted. Anyways, hazelorb how does your brother like Umich. Decided that Umich, Unc and duke will be my UVA fallbacks ( I know they’re all reaches but if I get Ito one of these schools and not UVA I’d be more than happy attending it. Hazelorb I’m going to send you a pm with questions about Umich</p>
<p>yeah just pm me and i will let you know</p>
<p>not to justify getting help the day before something is due, but I’ve had lots of students say they cannot come to whatever help session because they have physics/chem/whatever due the next day and they have to do that before CS. So it is really hard to justify spending 2 hours on CS when you have a huge assignment for physics due the next day and CS isn’t due for 2 days or however long, if you know what I mean. I kind of just feel bad for eschoolers, I did office hours the night before the assignment was due for a year straight and it was insane, but I felt that is when kids need the most help. I would also do office hours 2 nights before it was due and because of funding setbacks that was usually just as insane! it is funny, I did not do office hours this past semester since the dept could not pay me that much (I did 3 labs instead), but apparently the 2 nights before office hours were never attended, I wonder how that can be when just the semester before with 1/3 of the students they were always attended, if you know what I mean?? 
Students try their best, well some don’t and I just tell them I know they haven’t started until the night before and I have to go help people who are putting in more effort, and they get the point. I also ran some recitation sessions this semester and they were pretty sparesely attended until the final reviews which everyone crams in for. I have more issues with the kids who cheat than the kids who put assignments off…</p>
<p>Heh, 3rd year/1st semester, we all would sit in stacks 6pm-2am working on assignments the night before. 3Y/2S we started doing a few assignments ahead of time. 4Y/1S, we all did our homework before the night before it was due (at least in the beginning of the semester) and were dumbfounded by how much easier life got. By the time 4Y/2S rolled around I was constantly doing stuff ahead of time and boy I loved being able to do whatever most nights. We all were blown away haha. Course I was taking 14 credits instead of 17, but that’s just details Sadly, kids often cheat because they waited till the last minute…but in first year, it’s probably because they’re still not used to college quite yet.</p>
<p>Hazel, I can see you being a DeanJ type of person later in life: don’t always understand why the eschoolers are the way they are, but still love them and want kids to succeed. You’re a good person and you’re going to make a great teacher. That’s all I gotta say.</p>
<p>Guys this is somewhat off topic but does UVA offer summer admissions? I read somewhere on the Michigan forum that umich allows to start sollege the summer after senior year. I was wondering if UVA offers the same type of deal. And shoebox10 I more than agree that hazelorb really seems to be a lot like Dean J.</p>
<p>I think UVA has a program for that, but I think it is for select students only (those who may need extra time to transition to college?). I’m sure someone else knows more, I just remember have first years in the 3rd summer session classes.</p>