My daughter was just admitted through petition. She completed her review request mid November.
OOS (public school outside Boston), 3.8 uw gpa, TO, 5 APs (AP Stats, Hon Calc), 2 finance internships including one national, selective paid internship with Fidelity in Boston. Lots of leadership including VP DECA and Pres of club she started for women in finance. Used an outside counselor. Attended Kelley’s Women’s Institute Virtual Program last year. Visited campus in person last year.
Also admitted direct business to: Alabama, Clemson, UMass (honors), Wisconsin, Fordham (honors), PSU SMEAL UP, Northeastern
Thank you!! We called and included all of that info in the additional info section of the review request. They told us to put any and everything my daughter would want them to know about in this section. She also wrote about much of this in the review request essays. I have no way of knowing how much that mattered.
Humble request? Please lighten up. It was an attempt at levity in a thread that’s gotten derailed by people talking about what their kid “deserves” (not you, but somebody actually used that word) and decrying the perfectly logical distinction between an auto-admit stage that’s based purely on numbers and the next stage, which is holistic, and timed to conclude after the school has some sense of what the yield on the auto-admits is going to be.
And, in addition to having earned a lot more respect throughout this and other IU admissions threads with insightful, fact-laden guidance to a lot of parents than you just showed him, Jefrobertson’s right. An undergraduate business degree is not a ticket to Wall Street investment banking (or large corporate C-Suite in waiting track positions) for more than a very select handful of students. Just as many of the intern and analyst spots at those places go to Econ majors at universities that don’t even have undergrad b-schools as go to the top 5% kids at Ross or Wharton, and a helluva lot more of those sorts of gigs go to English majors at Vandy than b-school students at Penn St. or Auburn or wherever. It’s not imperative to have a business degree to work in business. That’s why so many kids apply to IU and Kelley but end up selecting a liberal arts program at UVA or Villanova if they get in there, too. The landscape’s different than it was a decade ago, but it’s still the case that IU’s yield on the auto-admit kids is not going to be very high - it’s still a backup/safety for the majority of those students (trust me, I know, our D23 was one), and for the most part students still end up filtering the same way they always have.
IU’s not interested in “weeding out” non-direct admits, but it’s also aware of the discrepancy between its own reputation/average student caliber and that of the university at large, so it needs some sort of hurdle. Getting a B in introductory accounting and business math and whatever else is not a huge hurdle, and if a kid’s not reaching that level they’re not going to get any boost in the job market from their degree saying Kelley School of Business on it instead of O’Neill School of Public and Env’l Affairs.
Our S25, who has about a 3.75 at a demanding college prep high school and was just below the auto direct admit ACT numbers, too, is fully confident he can handle that, and knows a number of similarly situated Kelley students from his high school who’ve done so ahead of him. But he has also expressed that should he not be up to that, he’s identified other majors that he’d be interested in. They’re 17 and 18 years old - they don’t know what they want yet. He’ll likely get declined in the direct admit petition process, but he’s decided on IU, anyway, over a number of other places where he was accepted straight into the business schools.
I’m not offended in the least by @Idontgetthis or anyone else debate away. I enjoy the spirit and I just ignore the probably well meaning volume to share what I know, for better or worse. It’s an enveloping and emotional time. I get it.
Kelley is in fact auto direct admit for stats of GPA (W or UW) and Test Scores. It is in fact, an increasingly used “safety.” And Kelley likes it that way.
Petitions are hard because Kelley is trying to be holistic with a lot of kids who are basically the same objectively. They don’t really care about DECA vs Period Club vs Beekeeping - they want dedicated interest in activity. Your 3.7 at one school might be rated the same for them as a 4.4 in another or they may have zero data on your school and that makes it hard for them. Raw APs are the same way. You cannot look at stats as comparison if you don’t have the context.
It is in fact difficult when you work hard, do well, put yourself out there in organizations and run up against capacity constraints. It stinks, its humbling and it’s just my experience but a really talented math major is as hireable as a finance Kelley and most are going to not care very much the math major did not take Financial Theory for 4 credits. You get where you want to go by your own effort. One of the stats I urge you all to consider is the Poets and Quants satisfaction with career services. This basically I got into B-school and someone didn’t help me. Nothing is entitled or given.
Standard admission - I don’t actually think any college has “weed out” classes like intentionally make them hard. IU does not. A lot of colleges set a median curve grade for a class at a 2.9 or 3.0. Not a lot of extra credit, test retakes etc… A 2.9/3.0 is not a “bad grade.” It’s the median grade of a bunch of smart people in that class. Below that is not a weed out - it’s you did not do well in that class. The colleges want you to be successful.
Finally, IU is a public state school. They will send out emails like here is what pre-business means and it is not a signal for anything. It’s a literal email. Sometimes things just are what they are. There is very little strategizing happening at Kelley as to the class of 25. They have their auto-admits, they have an algorithm of expected acceptance that is most prominently based on attendance at DA days (their version of continued interest) and they’ll react with petitions accordingly. They will accept some petitions before and it may be on different days because an AO may have been out on a family wedding - it’s very rarely a coordinated decision.
I’ve never tried to offend you, or anyone, btw!
I don’t know where and how this impression is coming from.
I just like to express my honest feelings about the admissions process the way I see it, without making personal jibes on anyone. I’ve never claimed to know everything or be bossy!
PS: literally my last post on Kelley. Done with this thread as well as Kelley. Good luck to everyone.
Apparently folks are not allowed to express frustration with Kelley here. Positive vibes only! (kidding kidding kidding) Fwiw: I share your feelings about Kelley and wish they wouldn’t claim “holistic” petition reviews when clearly it’s still done by an algorithm. Good luck to you, too! My son is willing to wait out Kelley and even consider standard admit but I’m itching for him move along to other options. Oh well!
I hear you! Darn algorithm,
My son is sitting here with a 4.0 GPA and a very generous scholarship from IU, but no info from Kelly yet… while lower GPAs and less merit scholarships are getting admitted.
It’s a business, we get that!! And we are certain great things will happen, whether at Kelly or somewhere else.
International applications are more complicated than standard US ones and it’s at least two if not three different parts of IUB - it’s not at all comparable with what you are primarily reading on this forum with domestic timelines.
The merit scholarship has literally nothing to do with admission to Kelley. You might have a better chance of admission with zero merit honestly.
Finally GPA is also in context and a 4.0 is not necessarily “better” because numerically it’s higher than a 3.7. In fact there’s a decent possibility the 4.0 is seen worse in many cases.
Your stats are your stats, it’s not apples to apples in any way shape or form.
It is holistic and it is an algorithm. Both things can be true at the same time. Frustration is up to you. Kelley is honest when they say holistic - it just might not be what you think holistic means as a word. This isn’t trying to challenge you, words have meaning in context. For Kelley holistic is in their context.
My daughter has a 3.78 UW GPA, 10 APs (mostly 5s so far), and a 34 ACT. She submitted her review petition on December 5th and is still patiently waiting for a response.
Meanwhile, one of her classmates (D25) who applied test-optional with a 3.8 UW GPA and no APs already heard back two weeks ago, despite applying after mid-January.
I understand that Kelley is overwhelmed with review requests, but this wait is making us so nervous. I know we shouldn’t compare, but it’s hard not to—especially when Kelley is our top choice, even though my daughter has been accepted to almost every other school she applied to, with good merit aid and honors acceptance.
What’s surprising is that this classmate, despite getting into Kelley, has struggled with other acceptances due to low course rigor and test score.
Please don’t judge me for this unfair comparison. I’m just a mom hoping my daughter gets into her top-choice school, especially when her stats align with Kelley’s standards—or may be they don’t and we are delusional.
You aren’t delusional, and I understand the stress of waiting. Is she considering going to IU and doing Kelley standard admission if direct admit doesn’t work out?
If not, I would encourage you to help your D focus on the schools where she is admitted, visit those if she hasn’t, compare curricula, student life and others things important to her, and make her plan B choice. Good luck.
The only number that Kelley sees is whatever the highest GPA is that the school prints (aka. Weighted GPA). If for whatever reason the school only prints an UW GPA, they would think its a weighted GPA unless you tell them.
They also do modelling on yield rate - if a kid’s stats are too high, a LOCI or similar letter affirming that Kelley is your #1 choice would help, because they don’t want to approve any petitions only for kids to commit to UMich, Notre Dame, Cornell, UVA etc.
Thank you for your suggestions. We haven’t thought about Standard Admit option yet. Our hope was that her stats and rigor will easily push her through the review request process, but may be not.
It would have been easier to exercise patience if we didn’t see lower stats (from same school as well) getting admitted ahead of us… interestingly it’s only happening in case of Kelley among top schools.
Several of my kid’s high stats classmates who were Auto DAed earlier don’t seem as excited about Kelley anymore as they are seeing mediocre kids getting acceptance… you might find it silly, but that’s how a lot of kids look at their college choices in competitive high schools.
And here we are, still wondering if we’d get admitted or not. Thankfully have quite a few good options, but not giving up just yet.
