My cousin did Gateway and is at ND now for sophomore year. He said it worked fine and had no problems. Seemed like a good decision if you want to go to ND imo. In the end, employers will only know what your degree says: Notre Dame!
Sorry for all my questions - I was wondering about financial aid information through Gateway…do we get that information before we have to commit to the program? I added it to the FAFSA a few weeks ago, but haven’t heard anything from HC.
It upsets me that some are assuming that GW students are not as academically gifted as straight admits into ND. Our DD scored very high on her ACT and had the same accolades as direct admits. Our daughter is a 7.0 and has NEVER looked at the GW program as anything other than “this is her path” and this is the path that was meant to be. “Let go of ranking, especially of seeing yourself as above others”
I have a question for a current ND student that was in GW (or a parent of a student). How was transitioning sophomore year? Were you randomly assigned a residence hall and a roommate?
Notre Dame Magazine, Winter 2019 - 2020 Edition: The Gateway - An innovative partnership with Holy Cross College provides about 75 transfer students to Notre Dame each fall.
https://magazine.nd.edu/stories/the-gateway/
"Gateway freshmen take four classes each semester at Holy Cross, and one class — as well as the one-credit Moreau First Year Experience life-skills course — at Notre Dame.
The program guarantees sophomore-year admission into Notre Dame to participants who earn a cumulative GPA of 3.5 or higher and have no conduct-code violations.
Gateway started six years ago as a pilot program with 17 Holy Cross freshmen. Every student in that first cohort met the goals and transferred into Notre Dame the following fall.
The program soon expanded to include about 75 freshmen, which officials from the two schools say is its maximum and ideal size. More than 95 percent of the 287 students who enrolled in the first six Gateway cohorts have transferred to Notre Dame to complete their degrees.
Gateway admission is by invitation only. Participants generally are Notre Dame applicants who are deemed to be just short of admission standards.
Donald Bishop ’77, ’85M.A., Notre Dame’s associate vice president for undergraduate enrollment, can reel off the numbers from memory: In 2019, 22,199 students applied to Notre Dame. Of those, 3,515 were accepted, meaning the University turns down more than 18,000 applicants each year. Some 120 of them are invited to join the Gateway Program, and approximately 76 do 79 enroll.
Those students stand out in some way, according to Erin Camilleri ’97, ’01M.Div., Notre Dame’s director of transfer enrollment. “We’re looking for students who we feel are going to make Notre Dame a better place,” she says.
By giving Notre Dame a role in preparing these students for the rest of their college education, the Gateway Program “has increased the [academic] quality of transfer students. That’s what Notre Dame wanted,” Bishop says."
Great article. I do not agree with the second sentence in the fifth paragraph. Especially, after hearing all of the “stats” from some of the current GW students. I think that sentence could have been better written. I think that sums up why some believe these kids “don’t fit in”
@HM0527 I see what you mean and agree with you that this sentence could have been more clearly written. Yet at the same time Bishop pointed out that the Gateway Program “has increased the [academic] quality of transfer students. That’s what Notre Dame wanted”.
At the end of the day this aspect will have no impact on successful Gateway students, who will be graduating after 4 years with a Notre Dame diploma. The yield (percentage of Gateway offered students who decide to enroll) at 63.3% is very high, well above Notre Dame (58.4%), which itself stands out in national yield comparison. That’s why I personally believe this point is mainly academic, and possibly slightly ego driven, as positive outcome numbers do speak for themselves.
I wholeheartedly agree that the sentence that reads “deemed to be just short of admissions standards” is both wrong and misleading. First of all, there are no objective admissions standards. There are plenty of valedictorians and 35/36 ACT scorers who are outright rejected from Notre Dame - and many thousands of the rejected 18,000 students are likely “qualified” and have statistics on par with the admitted class. Better put, Gateway students are applicants who fully met admission standards and the university really wanted to admit them - but the class was not large enough to accomodate them. The Gateway Program gives them essentially a guaranteed sophomore transfer admit and provides ND with transfer students who are both of the highest quality AND fully prepared to integrate seamlessly. I would guess that they are looking for a type of (fully qualified) student who can best appreciate and navigate this path - thus “students who we feel are going to make Notre Dame a better place”.
@hpcsa thank you for you insight @CCSavant I wholeheartedly agree with you. You put it more eloquently than I did. I take things being said personal due to the fact our daughter is a 7.0 cohort and I know what her stats were academically and the amount of dedication she gave back to the community for many many years. Thank you for your response.
@hpcsa I’m assuming that a lot of students have some small stumbles early in their college careers. Given the near 100% of GW students that transfer across the street, how are kids who fall just shy of the 3.5 GPA handled. (I’m also assuming there are plenty of ND freshmen who don’t get 3.5’s or might get a C… that’s the nature of first year students…).
@Fin2019 Yes, guaranteed ND transfer admission requires that all grades be a B or better with a final cumulative GPA of 3.5 or higher. No exceptions.
At Holy Cross Students will choose four courses each semester from a select list in the following disciplines: Art, English, History, Math, Natural Sciences, Philosophy, Social Sciences, Spanish, and Theology.
Students will also choose one course each semester at Notre Dame. In addition, students will take two semesters of the one-credit Moreau First Year Experience course to fulfill Notre Dame’s first-year requirement.
Engineering intends will take both Physics and Chemistry requirements, both with Labs, during their first Gateway Semester - a very challenging schedule for any First-Year student.
Hi whiterose,
We had a similar situation and waited till near the end to accept as we had to work through financial aid. In our case, it was about 8 weeks. I believe you should get an answer before the acceptance deadline. Good luck!
Awesome, glad to hear that they send it out, @lastof10. Thank you! (:
Can you shed any light on Financial Aid? What is the average cost for first year of Gateway Program? I know the numbers on the site, but what do you typically have to pay? It says Gateway students are not eligible for HCC scholarships, so is there any help available???
When you say work through Financial aid, do you mean applying for or working with HCC/ND for possibly more help?
@ATCTDC These are all excellent questions and I am sure Gateway parents will be stepping in with first-hand experience.
At the same time, please keep in mind that the Gateway year comes with a significant discount of well above $21,000 gross billing built in from the start right there:
Average Cost of Attendance (COA) Notre Dame 2019-2020: $74,193
Estimated COA Gateway Program 2020-2021: $52,900.
Tuition alone will be $32,000 for the Gateway year, as compared to more than $56,000 at Notre Dame for the coming academic year.
As full-time students at Holy Cross College, Gateway financial aid is being administered by the Financial Aid Office of Holy Cross College. Of course your student will be eligible for need-based financial aid.
Thanks for replying hpsca. Yes, I agree the tuition is less than ND, but what seems to be the problem is that Gateway students seem to be left out of money available through endowments from ND and they are not eligible for scholarships through Holy Cross. This discrepancy makes ND more affordable than Gateway. My son would love to attend, but the financial side just doesn’t add up. We have a call in to HCC Financial Aid Office, but haven’t heard back yet. Can anyone, who has navigated through this, offer some insight??
@ATCTDC You are very welcome.
Just around 3 percent of admitted Notre Dame students receive some type of merit aid. Both Gateway and ND First-Year students are eligible for need-based financial aid, through HCC and ND respectively.
It therefore is generally not right to assume that this would make ND more affordable as compared to the Gateway year. Quite the opposite, it probably would be advantageous to watch out for possible step-up net cost increases from the Gateway to Sophomore year and request a ceteris paribus financial pre-read from ND’s Office of Financial Aid for the transfer year.
Hello all! Could someone can shed some light on two unrelated questions I have about GW. Are GW students usually invited to ND Alumni club events such as local freshman summer send-offs etc.? Also, for students planning to major in engineering, do they take the 2 semesters of Intro to Engineering class as a freshman with other ND class of 2024 engineering students or is this class taken outside of the usual sequence? TIA
@heyneighbor I can only answer one. Our daughter is a 7.0 and she was invited to the summer send off cookout! If you do not receive an invite, I suggest your child emailing and introducing themselves and letting them know they are Gateway! Our ND alumni in the area was very welcoming!!