It’s not just students getting rejected from other schools and being “stuck” at UMASS. My daughter got into Northeastern, Maryland, UCONN, and Clark and will probably decide to go to UMASS because it has everything she wants and she can graduate without the debt that she would accumulate by matriculating at those other schools. It’s more than that though. That new Integrated Learning Center for Communications and Journalism is state of the art. I’m sure others feel the same about other programs.
If people can justify spending more that $35K per year to attend Northeastern or BU over UMASS, great for them.
Umass is a great school isn’t just a “safety” school anymore because as we have seen here too smart kids have been denied or waitlisted too. You have to maintain your grades to the fullest or do even better than you have. It doesnt matter where you go to school now. If you accept Umass and their offer for admission in the Spring they will check your transcript for the last semester but in the end it is up to them if they will accept or deny you based on grades, as we have seen anything can happen so try to keep them up if you want to come in (hopefully) the Fall/Spring.
I ran across these interesting statistics on entering freshman classes at UMass Amherst. This information might help people better understand how it has become more and more difficult to gain acceptance to this excellent University. It is not your parents’ UMass (or even your older siblings’). Enjoy the reading.
Not sure why everyone is still writing UMass Amherst off as a safety school…it’s really not anymore. With some of the more competitive programs, average GPAs are topping out at over 4.0 (Specifically Isenberg, Engineering, and Nursing). If you get into the Honors program, those statistics rise even higher. This isn’t the same Amherst from 20 years ago anymore. Sure, the whole ZooMass lifestyle is still present, but people are learning to get their priorities straight nowadays, so it’s nowhere near as bad as it was before. (If you want to avoid the party scene even more, just dorm anywhere but southwest). You guys who got accepted should really consider this school as a possible choice if you got into your major of choice and are paying in-state tuition (or if you got really good financial aid in general).
Well I finally found out I was denied today! For anyone reading this thread next year: April 27 was my notification date for RD, I hope that no one will be able to beat that!
I wrote this earlier, but my SATs were 2250, GPA was 4.6 on a 6 point scale coming from Andover, but I’m finishing the year at my local public school. From what we were told it seems like it was my current grades that were the problem, I’m in a bit of an unusual situation so my grades were very low last term.
In a way it’s a good thing that I got denied, now I didn’t have to choose between instate tuition and my ideal school. I put down my deposit for Skidmore this evening, it’s actually the only school out of 5 I got into!
I did get to finally visit UMass last week, and I did like it. But for me, small discussion based classes are what I value most in an education, and there’s just no way to get that most of the time at a big university, whether that be UMass, BU, or NYU. On the topic of safety schools, it appears that UMass was definitely not a safety for me!
Good luck to everyone else making their final decisions.
@CGumass Are you speaking from experience? I appreciate the hard work ethic sentiments and all, and I’m not trying to find an excuse for laziness (quite the contrary, I’m scrambling for every extra credit point I can get) but the few people I’ve talked to who did or had siblings who did the Spring transfer in the last 2 or 3 years have given me much more reassuring testaments such as “Don’t get Ds and you’re fine”, “As long as your GPA doesn’t drop like a mother” (and mine will definitely continue to rise even if the transcript is worse), and my personal favorite, “My brother finished the year with straight Cs except an A in math and was still able to transfer from Lowell to Amherst”. I also note the fact that in the end, my end-of-year transcript is going to be significantly better (in addition to being much more rigorous) than many of my peers’ mid-year transcripts who were waitlisted with mostly Cs for senior year.
Again, I appreciate any posts but I’m specifically looking for personal experiences on how the Spring transfer even worked because that is much, much more sparse on the internet and my circle is obviously somewhat closed.
EDIT: I feel like my school is just plain weird. Looking directly above me a 4.6 out of 6 would be a 3.06 which would almost be a guaranteed accept this year at my school. Within my class of about 400 nobody above a 2.6 got outright rejected (while dozens were waitlisted). And this is a HUGE jump in difficulty from 3 or even 2 years ago, I definitely see it’s not a safety anymore.
Maybe the fact that I go to an in-state exam school consistently ranked within the top 100 national high schools changes things a bit? I don’t know, but when our median GPA is a 2.9 and our median SAT is in the 1900s (high 1800s is the very lowest it could be) something is clearly a bit different.
@rayword45 It was not my intention at all to make it seem like I was being harsh on you! My point was just that with Umass this year (and also last year) they have been accepting people with very different GPA ranks and SAT scores, and as we have seen this year even the best of the best have been, not only waitlisted, but denied flat out. But, also kids with lower GPAs and SAT scores have been accepted, so Umass must look at a lot of other factors too. If you were waitlist and accepted to be waitlist for Spring 2017 I’m almost positive if your grades are kept at the gradepoint average which you applied at, or a little lower, they will still accept you and send you an admissions packet. They are mainly looking at your last semester grades if you accepted a waitlist offer and if they have gone up thats even more of a security blanket that your admission offer is still there. They want as many people to go there as they can get, so even if your grades drop a little, overall they will still accept you. I know many people who have gotten in still with grades dropping (one or two C’s compared to honors/high honors) but that is because it was only last semester for them and Umass can see that! And as you said you are trying and working hard and if anything it should go up, so you should be fine and expect to recieve an admissions packet in November. The biggest factor for them is if you gain any crimminal history in the time being, in that case they would deny people. I’m sure that would not be the case for you. If you are looking to transfer into Umass that is a lot different than waitlisted because they will look into your college semester grades (if you choose to go before Umass) and high school grades too, plus you have to apply again. Good luck with everything, I’m sure Umass will accept you as a waitlist or transfer since your grades are well and going up!
@ Andover2016, sorry to hear about your UMass result, but Skidmore is an excellent school. It was the only school out of 8 that waitlisted my dtr, but because it is smaller in size (almost equal to her high school) she decided not to go there. As you stated, you value smaller sized classes and they will give you individual attention. Best of luck to you!
FYI, My son just received his acceptance decision on his SPIRE account this morning, 4/28. He asked his high school counselor for help 2 days ago because he had not heard anything from UMA-Amherst. She called admissions immediately, and she was told that he had been accepted. Also, admissions told his counselor that the application had been ‘mis-coded’ and was in the wrong pile! We would suggest seeking your counselor’s assistance if you are still waiting. What a white-knuckle ride!
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This is an amazing and fun opportunity to ground yourself on campus and in our larger community before embarking on the whirlwind that is Freshman year!! Please feel free to message me with ANY questions or if you just wanna talk about the program, and I hope to see you this summer in the beautiful Pioneer Valley !!
@CGumass Don’t worry, I didn’t take any of what you said as personally disparaging. And trust me, my school has seen the jump in difficulty much more clearly than any others (though to a hilariously different scale, I’m guessing it’s my school’s reputation combined with in-state benefits). Safety no more indeed!
Let’s just pray for the best I guess because I’m taking a gap semester under the expectation I’m getting in (everyone said it was pretty surefire).
My D received her decision at 2:45 pm today, April 28, 2016. She has been waitlisted with a guaranteed Spring admit.
To recap, she applied on January 4, and her SPIRE account has been reporting her application as complete and under review since February. When she still hadn’t heard anything on April 18, she sent an email to one of the admissions officers and discovered that they received her mid-year grades in February, but never received her original complete transcript. Her guidance counselor faxed the transcript on Monday April 25 (the school was closed for vacation break last week), and she received her waitlist decision today April 28. Thanks to everyone who waited with us. #shakingmyhead
I simply do not understand, who are the incompetent people hired to run the admissions office of UMass?
It makes no sense that every Ivy and other highly ranked schools can drop bombs on Fools Day yearly but these guys wait until days before enrollment. I don’t mean that as a criticism of the quality of the school, but they NEED to fix this nonsense.
Question, do you think the wait list is worth it? I too was waitlisted, but curious to know if you think it’s worth the wait or even worth the fact that you enter the school “undeclared” (I applied for engineering and apparently I don’t get accepted into the engineering program since I was waitlisted). thanks!
Well once you enter you can choose any major that isn’t one of the five listed, and of those five you can transfer to four of them later, so if you’ve got some good work ethic to you (better than me lol) you can still do basically any major. I’m personally interested in Political Science and Mathematics & Statistics, both of which I can enter right when I go there so I can’t say much. Did you get into any affordable schools with a better engineering program?
Worth it is obviously subjective. For me, UMass is simply the highest ranked school I could dream of getting into since very few colleges give a shit about the rigor of my high school relative to others (I know for a fact BU does not at all, although it seems Clemson accepted a few kids from my school this year with 2.6-2.8 GPAs) while simultaneously being one of the cheapest as an in-state student. For me, it’s financial sense to go in the Spring, in fact it’s the ONLY financially sensical option I have. I really think the value of the waitlist lies upon your other options, because for someone like me who is being asked for $40k from every other school, this Spring list is a blessing. Contrastly, friends of mine who want to go into Engineering have already finalized on other schools like URI and UNH.
@rayword45 out of curiosity, what is your high school? Most colleges know how to weight grades from various high schools or prep schools and it’s pretty formulaic. If you got into UMASS for January, I would think it would make sense to go there as opposed to paying double, even for one semester, to an out of state or private school.