<p>There are alot of * CHANCE ME THREADS*, so I thought some of us old UMDCP posters we should share are insight to this process that we have learned through the yrs or actual experience regarding the process.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>OOS…the fact and the reality is that if you are from NJ/NY it is highly competitive because many OOS come from these 2 states, and UMD wants diversity.</p></li>
<li><p>The rigor of your curriculum will be looked at by the admissions dept. You can have 4 APs, but if they are the easy ones like human geneography and western art compared to APUSH, APGOVT or LIT it is not going to help you.</p></li>
<li><p>The rigor of your hs will be reviewed. If your school offers APUSH and you took US History standard it will hurt you. If your school has 25% that go to Ivies, it will help you.</p></li>
<li><p>UMD re-weights by their scale. You might have a 4.5 on a 5.0 scale, but they will re-calculate your wgpa so that you are all on the same scale. I.E. in NC AP’s are given a 5.0 scale, in VA our scale is 4.5 for AP’s. UMD has to re-weight to make the playing field equal.</p></li>
<li><p>Your SAT/ACT scores do matter, UMD is a number driven school. </p></li>
<li><p>UMD is very aware of wanting to obtain diversity, this not only includes your home state, but it even includes race. If you are an ORM from NJ/NY your stats have to be even stronger.</p></li>
<li><p>UMD is now considered MORE SELECTIVE to VERY SELECTIVE. It is ranked number 18 in the nation for Public Universities…IT IS NOT A SAFETY FOR THE AVERAGE STUDENT</p></li>
<li><p>UMD has decreased their OOS from 30% to 25%, while increasing their International pool from 150 students to 600 in the next few years. Again, it will make the competition even more difficult.</p></li>
<li><p>UMD may have increased their IS %, however, with these economic times that means more will be applying for financial reasons. In the past 2 yrs, UMD applications have increased by 5%+ per year. In 07 they had below 27K applications, in 09 they had over 29K. The acceptance number has not changed at @11K. If they hit 30K this yr, that means @ 33% will be accepted. Of that if you are OOS, it means @3K, nationally and internationally will be accepted.</p></li>
<li><p>Merit aid for OOS is not the best compared to other universities. Your statss have to be great to get anything.</p></li>
<li><p>If you state that you do not want to work on a group project, * YOU WILL NOT BE INVITED INTO GEMSTONE*.</p></li>
<li><p>RD has a lower acceptance rate than ED.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>If anybody else has anything to offer please feel free to cut and paste. If anybody has a question to the points please ask. I hope this helps to explain how some of us come up with their answers for CHANCE ME</p>
<ol>
<li> I’d change your AP comparisons to be all the ones you listed vs. AP Calc, AP Physics, AP Chem, AP Biology as some of the “most rigorous” ones, if they are offered at your high school.<br></li>
</ol>
<p>My 2nd D wasn’t the math/science geek that her sister was. Even though her AP credits from h.s. brought her 33 credits coming in to UMD, the fact that she hadn’t taken the most “difficult” AP classes that her school offered was given to me as one of the reasons behind her merit $$ award amount and decision for her not to be in honors. Also, she had a 90% and a 91.5% and 91.8% in 3 of her AP courses in h.s., which in NC = B. Her GPA showed trending “downward” because of these, which also factored in. </p>
<p>Nevertheless, she LOVES UMD, LOVES CP scholars (she’s a CP Ambassador) and will be working with/for the Orientation program next summer. Everything works out the way it should.</p>
<p>I know this is probably a silly request, but UMD is slowly turning out to be a “Hey, maybe I’ll go there” thought as a freshmen to a “UMDCP! Whoooo” as a junior. I don’t know if you’re over exaggerating or not, but as an OOC Jersey student, I’d like to know what you think would be the UW GPA and SAT scores (1600?) should be? Reading this made me very, very nervous. I hope that’s not asking too much.</p>
<p>You seem to be pretty aware of what’s going on with it, so I’d like your opinion to add to my pool of probability opinions.</p>
<p>UW GPA (esp. true for OOS) is 3.8 to a 3.9. Just a tad below for Instate. SAT hovers around the 1900 mark… but is lower for instate (around 1800 to 1850). Like OP said, UMCP will always admit more IS students and continue to increase their participation, since it is a heavily state supported school.</p>
<p>The one problem with Naviance from what I am aware of it really is a stat oriented program, it does not take into other facts like EC’s, thus, the kid that has a 3.8 gpa and a 1200 SAT may also be the lacrosse captain and a recruited athlete. It is the whole student that gets reviewed. UMD is numbers driven, however, they also will look at the EC’s.</p>
<p>I would say that to consider UMDCP from NJ/NY, your SAT really needs to be in the 1900 at least, and if you want engineering you should try to break the 2000 marker to say it is a given with the hardest course curriculum. I have stated this before DS’s friends from NJ had lower SATs/ACT (@1250+/30+) then him, but their w gpa was much higher, all in the 4.3-4.5 range with many more APs. DS had a 4.17 w with a 1390 out of 1600, and 2120 (I think, back then the Written was not included so it was a non-player). He had a 33 ACT. All of them were at least the top 15% in rank. The point is you cannot have both being the median, you need to have one at the median and the other above for MD stats. Do not confuse this with school stats. School stats/overview matter too. New Brunswick, South River, Camden, Edison, Colonia, etc., cannot hold a candle to East Brunswick, North Brunswick, Princeton, Manalpan, Monroe, etc. The top 10% students at the latter schools will have a stronger course rigor due to the school’s curriculum than the previous mentioned. A student from a BLUE RIBBON school with a lower gpa may be accepted bfeore the student with a higher one, based upon the fact that their curriculum was stronger. </p>
<p>If you are a jr and plan to apply next yr., follow astro and my advice take the hardest APs, because it will matter in merit money. AP Western Art is not viewed the same as APUSH.</p>
<p>Also, if you are applying to the Behavioral School, (govt and politics are in this school) realize that they have the most students and the least amount of funding…these were the students that made the news last spring by walking out of classes to show their anger over this situation.</p>
<p>For NJ/NY because it is so competitive most of the students coming out of there are way above the avg gpa. Remember that UMD takes 75% from IS, so those gpas can be lower compared to OOS. If you use the stats that @30K students apply, and out of those only 11K are accepted with 25% from OOS, that means @2700 are offered admittance, and that includes the International pool. Now place in the fact that they want to increase the international class size to 600, figure they offer @750+, that puts the number of OOS stateside to under 2K. UMD is incredibly popular among NJ/NY, I would be willing to bet one yrs tuition that they have at least 3-4K kids applying between the 2 states. If they gave all 2K to those 2 states, you are still looking at less than a 50-50 shot. We all know that they wouldn’t do that, but even if they give 1000 offers, statistically you are at a 25% chance of getting accepted. All of that being said, you can now see why the stats from those 2 states will be much higher than the avg gpa if any chance me poster want to consider UMD as a safety.</p>
<p>It is looking at it from a supply and demand point of view. The demand from NJ/NY is much higher than the supply, thus, UMD has the ability to be highly selective regarding those two states.</p>
<p>Hope that the linked thread will also help people to personally view themselves with others including their state, sex, race, EC’s and just not numbers. Finally, I believe that 3.92 is w not uw, because if you look at honors, gemstone and scholars, they list the avg gpa over 4.0, which would be impossible unless it was weighted. Princeton on the other hand might list theirs as uw, and that would be why UMD is higher. Which brings us full circle, if the w avg is 3.92, then you must expect NJ and NY to be over 4.0. Just look at the acceptances for people from Cal, FlA, OH, etc., on a whole their stats are lower than NJ/NY…DIVERSITY, SUPPLY AND DEMAND are the real reasons.</p>
<p>Also, FWIW, NJ has over 300 public HS, now add in private and homeschools, you could have in reality 600 hs, if each hs had on avg 5 kids applying, they alone would hit the 3K number accepted from OOS, now add in NY and you can easily see how competitive it becomes. If you just said 3K applied and UMD took 1K from NJ, you are still looking at a 33% chance of acceptance. Again, theoretically it could go this way, but realistically it won’t. If they take 1K from both states, that means for NJ you have a 1 in 6 chance…if on avg 5 apply from each hs, only 1 will get accepted. You will see from Naviance that certain schools have a 50% acceptance rate, but that goes back to the school and your curriculum…i.e. Trenton schools are not as rigorous as Wycoff. Manalapan will have more than Lakewood. St Joes private will have higher acceptance rate than Edison.</p>
<p>Not trying to be Janie Rain Cloud, just trying to illustrate that for admission purposes why NJ/NY zip codes are competitive.</p>
<p>Okay, so we are from NJ…SAT is 1340/1940…applied early (EA). Interested in Business.
GPA good, not great…3.55…will be 3.7 due to senior year grades.</p>
<p>4 AP’s, but strong ones…AP Calculus, AP Computers, AP Economics, AP Statistics.
7 Honors Classes…also all hard…Physics, Chemistry, Pre-Calc, Biology, etc.</p>
<p>Excellent EC’s//math league competitions vs. other schools, work 20 plus hours last 3 years, business leaders of tomorrow, Johns Hopkins award for CTY, I also started my own on-line business, took 18 additional couses at a religious high school.</p>
<p>Hopefully, we will hear any day now…do you think we are in or out?</p>
<p>UMD does not release untile late Jan early Feb, so it is more than any day.</p>
<p>With your EC’s, SAT scores, strong APs, you look like a match for business. Which is another key fact, stress your positives for your desired major, hard to look past a student that has started their own on line business in high school, or has competed against other schools.</p>
<p>The one thing that is unclear in the first post is that, yes it’s more competitive for people from NY/NJ, but there are so many more of them here than from other states besides Maryland.
Your post is worded so that it seems like the same number of people get in from Alabama and New York. Of the current OOS percent of 30, I’d say a good 20% are from these two states, and in a school of 30,000, that’s still over 7000 people. I’d say a similar percent of people get in from NY/NJ as do from any other state. the rest of hte states just have so much fewer applicants.
I’d be curious to see if anyone had state by state acceptance rates (not number accepted). I’m guessing they’d be not as different as you’re making them out to be.</p>
<p>The problem with coming from NJ/NY is that there are many more from those states applying than somewhere like Alabama. I would actually believe that % for NJ/NY would be at a lower rate than other states. As wrong as this might seem, you need to realize that diversity matters, and NJ schools are nationally high ranking, but UMD does not want just the highest stat student, they want diversity. This is why they will take a lower stat (not much lower) student from Alabama over the NJ student. They don’t want UMDCP to also be known as the OOS Rutgers (NJ’s flagship university). UMD’s magazine back @6 months ago announced their new program of reducing to 25% OOS, that includes increasing International student pool from 150 to 600. Those 2 facts alone mean that @1500 less OOS admittances will occur this yr, now add into the equation that in the course of the next 2 yrs, 450 more will be Internationl, thus approx. 2000 less student acceptances will come from the national pool. At the same time they acknowledged that they wanted to increase their national appeal. How do you do that? You start accepting more students from other states. However, that does not mean there will be less students from those 2 states applying, all it means is that it will become more competitive because the same amount of students will be applying for much fewer spots. Basic econ principles, supply and demand. </p>
<p>Another business principle that they are employing is Marketing, they are diversifying their product. How do you get more people to buy your product, you diversify and expand. Look at it another way, many people will say if you are X race, it can hurt your chances because you are an ORM. DIVERSITY! If you are from NJ/NY you are an ORM when it comes from your OOS status. EXPANSION and DIVERSITY!</p>
<p>In the end UMD is a business because they must compete against other schools and answer to their board of directors why they “don’t have the market share”, and what their strategic plan will be to move up the USNWR rankings. Decades ago they realize that a negative aspect of their school was the “kid is a number” feeling. What did they do? They invented the Honors/Gemstone and Scholars program. Now people love those programs because it gives the students the best of both worlds, small school in a big university.</p>
<p>Bullet went to UMD over 20 yrs ago, it always had the NJ/NY pull, they are strongly entrenched in that market, thus, the strategic decision now is to expand the market.</p>
<p>The fact that 30% going to Ivies relates back to the quality of schools. A 3.6 wgpa is lower than the avg, however, it is most likely overlooked by the high quality of the school, and CT does not fall in the NJ/NY pile. A student that has a lower gpa, but a large % that goes IVY is added into the equation. Every transcript includes an overview of the school’s course curriculum. For example, if you attend TJ in VA, and get a 3.2 wgpa, you will most likely be accepted because TJ has for yrs been ranked as the number 1 hs in the nation. It is a magnet and reknown in the NoVA area for their course curriculum, you must apply to attend this public school. </p>
<p>They look at both you the student, and your hs. You can be the valedictorian at a school deemed lower or less competitive and not get scholars/gemstone/honors while the kid who ranked top 25% got honors. It is the whole picture.</p>
<p>Also, remember weighted scores vary greatly, for some schools an AP course could be worth 4.5, for others it could be 5.0, thus the weight will change. I.E. a 90 on a a 4.5 w is 4.05, a 90 on a 5.0 is a 4.5. That is a huge weight difference. Now add in 9 APs and jump start, you are talking a world. Also, some schools have an A on a 7 point scale and some on a 10. In NC jumpstart had a weight of 4.5, the same as honors, even though you were taking college courses, whereas, the AP course of western art had a weight of 5.0. The irony was to be able to attend jumpstart, you had to have principal approval, and for AP western art anyone could take it with no pre-req, same with human geneography. The point is the “better” academic student actually was hurt by attending courses at college when it came to a wgpa. That is why schools will re-weight to put all of the students on the same playing field for their admission purposes.</p>
<p>I recall back in 06-07 on the hard copy of DS’s SAT, it showed what his gpa was according to the 5 schools he sent to, they varied wildly from 3.43 to 3.75, however, his hs stated his w was 4.13 or .17 (can’t remember). It was located at the very bottom. It also showed the % you fell into for the avg student at that school. I don’t know if that has changed because with DD we did on line only, but for those who got a paper score, maybe you can look and see if it still exists and share with us.</p>