You are probably right. A mom last year said that in the beginning of December last year, some students had a link for 7th semester grades and they were all deferred and eventually all denied. When I said we had both I meant, we had SRARs that came in after the 11/15 b/c of applications to other schools, and we had the button link. So yes, based on stats (very high SAT, but a high school that offers few APs and therefore lower GPAs) we are not surprised at deferrals from southern schools. Fortunately have had success at private schools with merit. Thankfully.
1 Like
This is a good warning. My daughter (25) attends a small private school with much more limited AP and honors scheduling options than my son had in public school , so her GPA is about a 3.75uw/3.9w. I was actually worried about this when we sent her there, but I assumed colleges would have mechanisms for sorting through that…maybe not so much. Grrrrr.
1 Like
We are in NC and very close to UNC-CH and NC State. It is extremely difficult to get into these school from our county because they have to diversify from counties across the state. So my daugter didn’t even apply to Chapel Hill. That is why we look OOS.
1 Like
Does anyone actually know last years average SAT for UTK? I’m finding discrepant information… The first screenshot is the composite which usually is the 25th-75th percentile , and would put the average somewhere around 1320 (I know not exactly but statistically should be close…). The econd screenshot shows it to be 1266… What am I missing? Were there that many scoring closer to the 1240 end that screwed the average?
s
Could it be the difference between the accepted cohort and the enrolled cohort?
2 Likes
Ah. Could be…
Exactly what it is. It’s admitted versus attended. Kids in the higher end of the range for admittance likely had other options that might have been “better” (however one wants to define that).
2 Likes
Just a wild thought, this could explain what is happening this year with EA. Perhaps they have a strategy of intentionally only “dealing” with high stats kids first in order to weed out who’s actually going to commit to Tennessee and then going through the regular decisions based on that info. After digging into a couple of what seem like the most “comparable” SEC schools, Tennessee has a significantly larger differential between the average accepted SAT and average enrolled SAT. This could be a stat they’re trying to somehow address. Idk. I could be way off base…who knows. lol.
1 Like
EA or RD both have a commitment deadline of 5/1. They might have historical stats of how many kids commit much earlier than that to gauge if they are above or below trend but that’s a WAG (technical analytical acronym). 
But yes - the EA round for most schools is going to be centered around the more desirable student. Try to incentivize them with Merit and plenty of time to send a bunch of schwag and do accepted student day. The more marginal student gets deferred to RD and the school will see if there’s still a lot of desirable kids that apply RD or maybe those deferrals are worth a second look. That line of desirable/deferral is going to be different school to school and year to year.
One of the more frustrating parts of the whole college admissions process is you’ll likely NEVER KNOW why you ended up in one pool over another. Why one kid got merit $$ and you didn’t - or vice versa.
We want to think that Universities are some altruistic organization but at the core they’re a business selling a product and the kids are the customers. The good news is that there’s many of those businesses selling products that don’t differ a lot one place to the next.
3 Likes
I also think it’s very important to look at the outcomes of each desired major by university to see what the starting wages and placement rates are. Those numbers vary widely…… Certain schools that are ranked similarly have job placement and starting wages that are vastly different even in the same region…… I don’t believe those are the types of things that change because alumni tend to go back to their schools year after year, and it takes a long time to move the needle on placements statistics
Hi there! Could please clarify what you mean about out of state v. in state for UF? Thanks!
https://irsa.utk.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/107/2023/07/CDS_2022-2023_Full.pdf This gives you all the published data
Congrats! So did mine. We are from NC.
1 Like
Congratulations to you both! Same here!
SRAR Issue. Update: deferred. 50,000 ED applicants, 2.5 million made by university. Another 50,000 RD applicants, another 2.5 million made by university. It’s big business. I think last year about 28,000 fall undergrads were accepted. This year UTK also has the automatic entry for IS 4.0/top 10% applicants. Odds don’t seem good for deferrals, especially if OOS. Luckily, there are a lot of great universities out there for all these great students.
Go check out stats for last years accepted in state vs out of state. And some of the stats for in state kids who did not get in.
I think you’re probably, dramatically, over-stating the expected number of RD applicants. They received just under 50K total applications last year (which was a 40% increase from the year before).
They’re also in a bit of a no-win situation. If they ramped up staffing to read 50K applications and received 70K it puts them behind. They could reduce the number of applications received by increasing the application fee or making it more of a pain to apply (additional essays, etc). Both of those would get complaints from one population or another.
The annual budget for the UT system (couldn’t find UTK specific) is $3.2B - the $2.5-$5M sounds like a lot but it’s rounding error in the broader system. All those acceptance packages and schwag cost $$.
LOTS of kids get accepted after being deferred (or waitlisted!). The only reason not to stick with it would be if the kid gets into their #1.
Yes, she was accepted.
1 Like
Just so you know, you are misunderstanding their published application numbers.
They had about 49,000 apply early action, and then about another 8,000 apply by December 15, including those early action apps. NOT an additional 50k.
In total they had 57,278 applications total according to their admission blog.
6,190 Tennessee students who applied qualified for automatic admission. That means that only 971 TN students were admitted outside of the automatic admission. That really stinks for those who go to competitive high schools.
2 Likes
My son was admitted to UTK, but did not make it into Honors. His ACT is 35.