I have been advising my Pre-college and even college Mentees to consider this approach towards Veterinary School applications for the past 20+ years.
It seems counterproductive / counter intuitive, but at the end of the day while course rigor has impact, it’s hard to argue that having the highest GPA straight up (as long as you’ve completed all of the required pre-reqs) isn’t a mjor factor in the ‘first cut’ on applicants.
UNC KFBS is completing another new building “Bell Hall” which is set to open in the fall for faculty and staff to start moving in, and have classes in spring. What we are hearing is KFBS anticipates this will allow around a 50% increase in class size/enrollment - which would be very timely news for both my Son and my younger daughter (fingers crossed).
As a parent of a child affected it has ruined them. The stats are showing a 2% admit rate for SA now and we are now spending the summer planning transfer apps. That a school would do this to kids and families is unfathomable. This is not elite school behavior - this is abuse of trust and lack of ethics. Have to wonder what they are teaching at this school if this is how they run their “business”. I live in NY and have worked in PE for 15 years- you can be sure I’m spreading the word to avoid Kelley in all forms. My professional contacts are disgusted by what has happened to my child.
I’m sorry to hear your child has been affected. I assume they are a rising first year? If they do achieve the SA admit criteria, including the B+ in all IU classes, they will be automatically admitted to Kelley so the risk of comprehensive review won’t apply, so don’t give up just yet. Your child might also contact other schools that accepted them senior year and see if there is potential for them to enroll for this Fall. Good luck to your child this Fall.
This sort of grade grubbing advice is common, even when competitive college GPA dependent goals are not in play, although the latter probably increases incentives to do so.
I’m so sorry that you are in this situation. Do you have a link to the 2% analysis?
If your child goes to Kelley, I recommend taking only the required 1st yr courses. My DS just finished his freshman year in Kelley. His hardest course was a soph year Kelley requirement.
The courses known to be hardest in the 1st year curriculum all have free tutoring provided by Kelley. And there was an outside company that used to guarantee a B or better. Perhaps they will update it?
You might also consider doing some study over the summer to get ahead before freshman year starts. My son took accounting in high school and he said that prepared him well for the accounting class, so maybe do some study on accounting over the summer so you are familiar with the concepts? Also the Access database portion of the computer class seemed challenging for many kids. That would be pretty easy to study over the summer. (Anecdotally the Excel portion of that class seemed easier so most kids really raised their grades over the course of the semester.)
Thank you for that advice. He was already enrolled in an excel/access, accounting and Econ classes this summer to try to ensure the B. He has 13 AP classes they are giving him credit for as well so we thought he had a good shot at the B requirement by taking the min required courses. B+ is far more significant of a change than it sounds based on probability. I think we will start calling around and see what his options are elsewhere. Kelley made it clear that they can change these standards at will so parents on Facebook are also concerned the standard will change to A by next spring. Absolutely terrible experience.
It’s on the IU class of 2029 page on Facebook so I dont think you can get in without joining. But the parent said they downloaded the grade distributions for the freshman schedule and ran a Monte Carlo analysis and concluded the rate went from 24% with Bs to 2.3% with B+. Yes, my child was supposed to enter this Fall as a Freshman.
For this year 2024-25 if a student had all Bs in IU classes (and met the other standard admission requirements) they are guaranteed admission to Kelley, so I’m not understanding the low acceptance rate in the example…is the parent saying only 24% of the pre-business students meet the guaranteed admission criteria? If the student does not meet all the criteria that they would have to go thru the Comprehensive Review process, where not all applicants are accepted. Business Degrees | Kelley School of Business | Indiana University
For 2025-26, the new requirements will make it more difficult to earn guaranteed admission, but no one knows yet what proportion of those students seeking standard admission might meet those requirements.
I do agree its unethical for IU to make this switch after students accepted their pre-business spot and paid their deposit.
I’ve always been wary of Kelley for their callous admissions criteria, and over-marketing of their program.
The recent change only reinforces that they have one of the most thoughtless admissions offices out there.
I genuinely feel sorry for the students and parents who committed based on the previously communicated Standardized Admission (SA) criteria.
I’m truly glad we chose to steer clear of this school—even with a direct admit—just like 90% of the students at my daughter’s high school.
At 2.3%, they are not much different than a direct admit only school. In the past years a lot of the business schools are seeing lot of interest and some like UMass-Isenberg no long allow internal transfer to business school.
UCB undergraduate business also switched from mostly (previously all) competitive secondary admissions to mostly frosh direct admissions, for those who start as frosh at UCB. A likely side effect was that economics became no longer a capacity-constrained major, since it was a popular major for business major rejects.
For IU to go to a mostly or all frosh direct admission model, it may have to reconsider how it evaluates frosh direct admission, since its current method is highly dependent on how an applicant’s high school weights GPA that IU takes at face value.
No they said that the grade analysis shows a 24% probability of getting all B’s or better. That aligned closely with what Kelley said that 30% generally get in. The new analysis shows a 2% probability. So, only 2% of the kids are likely to get B+ or better in all courses based on last years grade data. And even then, who knows if they will honor what they said June 2nd when they did not honor what they said May 1st.
Do the grade distributions of specified pre-business courses show large numbers of B grades but only small numbers of B+ or higher grades?
Also, are they assuming that, for any given student, grades in various classes are independent events, as opposed to being somewhat correlated to each other?
I don’t know what model they used but it came pretty close to what current standard admit (was) so seems like it had some basis. It’s a five point swing from 83 in every class to 88. Very close to requiring straight As.
Do you have a source for this? (not challenging, sincerely asking) @jefrobertson Can you corroborate this info?
And that’s another variable they could adjust in order to control the number of standard admits. If they feel like there are still too many, they could adjust grading guidelines to push the distributions down a bit.
Yes. This is routinely done in college of letters of science for popular majors like Econ. I presume IU can do this, but gets little tricky when both direct admits and standard admits are taking the same course which is not the case at UCs. Here is a post talking about this. The Gaucho Ledger - The Survival Guide to Econ 10A at UCSB.
I’m quite sure I don’t understand the math involved. Does this imply that only 2% of Kelley students are getting B+ or better in all their classes? Or this past year only 2% of pre-business students got a B+ or better?
I assumed there was a solid number of kids getting all As or As & A-s. But that is based solely on anecdotal evidence (DS’ high school friends).
From what I’ve seen of the IU grade distributions, I don’t think there is a required curve. To me, it looks like some teachers are easier graders than others. DS looked at grading distributions as additional info when choosing the classes he got to pick. (For the 2 Fall business classes you are assigned a spot.) Econ grading varied from teacher to teacher, for example.