<p>My son received full BK last year. His stats were good, not what others are saying is needed. 1450 SAT’s 4.38 weighted, 3.85 unweighted. He had great EC’s and two internships, coordinated program to send supplies to the troops for Christmas thru NHS and was captain of several varsity teams. The thing thst helped him, we believe, is that the interview committee looks to see who will make a difference at UMD in the future. One of his interview questions was “what do you see yourself doing in a year at UMD”? And his response was that he would be involved in social programs, community outreach programs and would be a rabid Terps sports fan. All that is true, (hopefully not to the detriment of his grades…). He is having a great time! So just be aware that is is NOT all statistics, the interview was very important</p>
<p>^I was not even invited to interview and had higher stats (SAT in 1500s + 3.9 UW). So, the issue of even being invited would come into play lol.</p>
<p>How highly was your S ranked in your HS? Is UMCP a popular choice among top achievers in the class? Maybe they try to spread out B/K recipients over different high schools. Certainly other people in my HS and district were invited to participate (all with higher class rank than me).</p>
<p>He was just out of top 5%…I think 26 of 480. Five other students, all with better stats, were invited to interview. Only 2 of the 6 were offered full BK. My son accepted, the other, a WF, deferred for a year to help people in Africa. She will be starting in Bio-E in 2011. The other 4 students were offered partial BK. One accepted, another went to Princeton, another to MIT and not sure of the other. I agree that it is difficult to quantify. Three were WM, 2 were WF and one was BM. Nor sure how that plays out either.</p>
<p>^Interesting, that was almost my exact rank as well. I wasn’t on three varsity sports but I did have my own set of interests/involvement.</p>
<p>Do you think it might have to do with major…? All of the B/K recipients I know are science or engineering. That seems unfair/like it doesn’t make much sense tho.</p>
<p>Oh well. Guess everyone will still have to apply and see 
</p>
<p>It seems like OP is still out of the running for that though. Your S’s GPA is significantly higher even if his stats are a bit lower than what you’d typically expect the top students at MD to come in with.</p>
<p>My husband thought major did factor in heavily, and yes, he is in engineering. We do realize how fortunate he was!</p>
<p>So major matters? That’s interesting!</p>
<p>Do you guys think you could roughly rank the majors from best to worst in terms of the BK?</p>
<p>^I can’t imagine how anyone could do that with any accuracy.</p>
<p>Most people only know a handful of people who got B/K, if that. To actually compile any rankings you’d need to have a much larger sample size. Plus, though major/department seems to have some kind of impact (according to anectdotal evidence), there’s no evidence that there’s actually any kind of “ranking” (like it’s better to be electrical engineering than aerospace, or better to be biology than engineering at all). And, even if there IS a ranking of some kind, it would make more sense that differences in GPA/SAT, ECs, how many people in your HS or district have similar stats to you, etc. would interfere with that.</p>
<p>It’s not like B/K doesn’t care about your grades and SATs. 3mdboys stats were not typical of a B/K recipient but they are nothing to scoff at (1400+ and 3.8+).</p>