Hi everyone. My admissions counselor sent me this via email yesterday:
“ Thank you for checking-in. Yes, you are welcome to send us a letter of continued interest, and you can upload it via your applicant portal or send it directly to uncsubmit@admissions.unc.edu . We still have not made any additional decisions about the waiting list. Right now, our class is fully enrolled, and if we do take any additional students from the waiting list, it will likely be a small number and may be as late as June. I know this is not necessarily the news you want to hear, but I do want to be honest. Again, we do promise a decision no later than June 30th. Please reach out with any other questions.”
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Thank you very much for sharing this. Well, they were right, not the news we want to hear!!
Omg, that analogy “overbooked like an airline” is awesome and dead on. Like an airline a lot of these schools won’t know until the very last second or until people have to pony up more money.
Also @VirginiaBelle agree 100% with you that no school needs to have a waitlist of thousands of kids at this point. Mine isn’t moving and is going to Michigan, but on that waitlist page (where I believe not a single person has been admitted from the waitlist) people keep thinking there will be an actual wave of acceptances. First they thought it would be April, then the different weeks in May, but no one wants to admit that Michigan, like other schools is probably over-enrolled because they are the beneficiaries of some of many of the students that didn’t get into the Ivies that likely would have in a more typical year without covid and when test scores were required. Last year they had 12k on their waitlist. I would not be shocked if it’s at least that high this year and 100% they can slim it down. Their freshman class I don’t even think is that high considering Purdue has the largest at 10k for this year. Also, while Purdue was always planning to have a bigger class this year, I wholeheartedly agree that I don’t think they planned for 1,200 more!
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I’m so disappointed the way it worked out this year and agree with what you’ve written. I know we are not supposed to bank on waitlists but my theory is that this year threw off the school’s formula for waitlists. I’ve read schools are now struggling with housing since they over-enrolled. I believe it was a knee-jerk response to last year and they took more in and didn’t expect their yield to be as high. I believe, as you said, without tests it increased the applicant pool and diluted the normal, somewhat predictable pool of applicants. I believe many more were admitted than normally would have been in a testing year.
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Agree. And oddly it seemed to disadavantage kids with good scores as compared to a regular year.
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Yes, my daughter was admitted 3 years ago with test scores lower than my son’s. What a crazy year!
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Same here. D21 had significantly higher scores than D13, who was admitted EA. A couple of students from D21’s class were admitted with very few honors and AP classes, which left a lot of people wondering about the matrix UNC used this year. Our HS typically sends anywhere from 25-30 students to UNC each year but this year is at an all-time low (I believe it’s just 11 enrolled, and her class is very high stat with kids going to Duke, Notre Dame, Wake Forest and Yale).
Nonetheless, I believe D21 landed where she is supposed to be and where she will thrive - directly admitted into her program where she can begin taking relevant classes on day 1 vs having to wait until sophomore year at UNC and compete for program admission.
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Similar story here and at our high school. We’re in the midwest so many students stick around here generally and go to Vandy, Wash U, Northwestern, Michigan, and then the outliers would be the Ivies, Texas, Emory, Duke, top California schools, etc.
My S21 had higher stats than both my D19s and significantly higher than the one at the Ivy, with more Honors and he’s salutatorian. The big difference is their gender obviously. Same major though.
Overall we’re sending 1 to an Ivy (who is a super legacy - building named after grandparents) vs the 8 or so we normally send.
None to Duke (or even got into Duke) when we normally send 1
3 to Vandy vs a normal 5 and again these are the only 3 that were accepted (2 for ED)
4 to Texas when we usually send 7, and have about 14 or so accepted (yes, even for an OOS), but maybe 10 were accepted.
My son did get into UVA which no one gets into at our school so I guess that is one anomaly
Emory we had the normal number with 4 it seems
1 to UCLA, 1 to Pomona, 2 to USC, 2 to LMU - all much lower to those schools and other UCs than normally we would have…usually someone goes to UCB
Wash U we only have 3 when we normally have 5 and similar issue that’s all that got in
Lastly, we had only 4 get into Northwestern this year, with 3 going. We normally have about 10 acceptances.
We have the most >30 going to Wisconsin which is unheard of because usually they don’t like our school and this year took a lot of kids probably right at the 50th %, we have more kids going to Purdue than in most years (that was the best school they got into), we have more (about 12) going to Tulane which is more than usual, Minnesota we have 7 also more than we normally have, a lot going to Indiana, Michigan State but then the biggest beneficiary of getting rejected from all the other top schools seems to be Michigan where we have 17 going. That’s not significantly higher than usual as we often have 14 but it’s still higher and more had gotten in but chose elsewhere. There was a definite shift with kids who didn’t get into better schools winding up at the next tier of schools like an Indiana in our case because they didn’t get into better business schools for instance. Or Purdue because they didn’t get into better Engineering programs, yet none of these programs are anything to sneeze at, other than they’re not the first choice of these kids.
I work in a high school district in another suburb near ours, which is ranked slightly higher than ours. We’re top 15 in the state they’re in the top 10 in state. If you take away the Chicago Public School high schools that are ranked higher since they’re like magnet schools and so they get the best of the best in the city, both of our schools would be top 5 in the state. Anyway, their college results were very similar to ours. I have heard this pretty commonly around here as well.
Many parents around here pay 20k or more for college counselors which they hire beginning in freshman year or even in 8th grade. Lots of bad advice was given this year. Kids just need to be kids. My oldest had some special needs so we hired a counselor (not for 20k either) to help find schools that could meet his needs, but for my other 3 no way would I need to do that. I learned very quickly how easy it is to do your own research. They had someone to bounce their essays back and forth with and they did some test prep and each took the ACT 2x after about 5-7 test session, my younger one even less. But college is so expensive and when I hear what people are paying it just blows my mind.
We all do what we have to do but I totally agree with you @CollegeNerd67 that our kids land where they’re supposed to be and my son is one that was deferred then rejected from his ED choice and is going to Michigan for Engineering and honestly, he can’t be more excited. I thin once he stepped away from the rejection and saw all the opportunities available there he realized just how awesome of a program it is. He has a plan and is aiming to conquer it. He registers in about a week, so we’ll see if he’s still excited then, lol. He’s doing his research on classes and professors and learning fast.
Kind of hijacked the UNC WL thread, so I will add he was also waitlisted to UNC which was a shock because no one from our school ever gets into UNC either. But it would’ve been fun to have had that in the mix!
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Any updates
I wonder when they will start rejecting. I can’t understand why they would want to string us along through this entire month
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Is there an affirmative obligation to reject? Can’t they just leave folks on the wait list until time runs out?
Why would they go out of your way to reject someone–who is very likely related to some UNC alum–when they can simply let time run out. It’s sort of like the prospective dating partner that never says no to a date but always has an endless string of conflicts.
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My son was notified today of guaranteed Sophmore acceptance
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Did he receive a notification in his email or just on the portal? (thank you for posting this news)
Are you in state? And Congratulations
He received an email that there was an update on his decision. We are OOS
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Congratulations.!!
Some students received their rejections/decisions yesterday.
Thank you!
I am curious to see how many…if any…got off the waitlist and were accepted outright. Guaranteed sophomore acceptance is not ideal but he is happy to get there any way he can.
I was also guaranteed sophomore admission. My friend was rejected. Both of us are Out of state!