There have definitely been denials.
There might be some reverse psychology at play. Maybe VT realized from past experience that accepting high qualified students right away leads to a situation where the students will likely choose another better school. But by waitlisting early on in the cycle, it gives false sense of prestige so that once they are accepted, they reconsider the school more.
@karenlynne Students (or parents of) who are denied admission rarely post those results on these forums. If you refer back to waitlist threads from prior years and count the posts, you might find the numbers to be comparable. With current RD result posts, there have been approx. 125 or less unique results posted - out of what is believed to have been 31,000+ applications.
I know 2 people that were denied so they have denied people, it is false that they put everyone on waitlist.
Our family visited a few weeks ago, and in the information materials, describing RD, there was a footnote “subject to space availability”. When asked about it, the presenter told the entire group that the school was giving preference to accepted EA candidates. I am not sure how many acceptances they issued, but clearly they decided to waitlist a lot of qualified candidates to hold them until they find out how many EA applicants accept their offer.
One question I have (since we did not visit the school until after the EA deadline), was did VT tell applicants about this policy before the EA deadline.
This is the new normal for VT. This should not be a surprise for anyone who has been following VT. In the last few years, # of applications have gone up (due to now accepting Coalition App), rankings went up (esp undergrad engineering), brand is up (Amazon partnerships), and the VT campus consistently lands on the top of student “quality of life” lists. Last year’s yield is proof of changing times.
I know it’s hard to hear especially for the in-state high stats kids that take for granted that they will be accepted by VT even when they are rejected by UVA. I don’t believe the theories that VT is doing yield protection by waitlisting high stat kids that they think will matriculate elsewhere. I’ve seen the stats of the kids they do accept and there are many excellent students. I do agree with @cbl1 that this will be the first year in a long time that the waitlist will come into play. But that said, now it’s time to focus your energy on getting your student to where they will be instead of playing the coulda/woulda/shoulda game. Your students have lots of great opportunities and another school soulmate is out there!
Posted loud and clear here:
Hi All 
I was accepted under the early action program. Upon getting my acceptance package in the mail, the letter said that the institution had 31,000 applications for only 6,675 spots. That leaves you with about a 22% acceptance rate. I mention this because I think it is commonly misconstrued how easy it can be to get into the University, and this year, with them lessening their class size in order to make up for the catastrophe that was last year - is no exception. They are probably, if I had to make a guess, only using early decision and early action applicants to fill up their class, and as these decisions come through, they will remove people from the waitlist if need be. This is just a guess, obviously, but it seems like it might be pretty accurate at that.
I am not saying that anyone deserved to be waitlisted. Because I know so many great applicants that were depending on Virginia Tech to be their home, that ended up on the waitlist. It is beyond disheartening, but I wouldn’t give up hope. I know plenty of people who don’t intend on taking the position in the class that they were offered under early action. Good luck to all, and again, if I can serve as to help, please let me know!!
@Antropeais12 The target number of enrolled students doesn’t generate the offered (acceptance) rate. Of those 31,000 + applicants, the number who are offered admission is what generates offered %. From that number, those who accept their offer of admission (enrollees) is where the class size (projected or final) number comes from.
Thank you @ShenVal18 good summary of past stats.
To clarify that is not a 22% acceptance rate. They need to fill 6675 spots but most likely have accepted in the range of 18-19,000 of the 31,000. That is about a 60% acceptance rate (which is continuing to decline).
I know some people with good stats got waitlisted here … but remember there are a lot of people with good stats. I think #1 yes they waitlisted more than usual but that is good in that some should be getting off waitlist. But #2 it shows they got a lot of good applicants. Its a competition … thats the way it works. Unfortunately when it comes to colleges its a competition where they don’t tell you the rules. So people at every college are going to question why some win and some lose since the rules are a mystery. Just the way it is.
We toured VT last year and I remember them saying then that regular decision was just to fill any empty spots after ED/EA. Which means zero spots for the more competitive majors.
I don’t get how someone could be waitlisted at JMU and get into VT? There is no rhyme or reason to that . I also know someone who was accepted to VT that had a brush with the law recently . Not sure if VT knows it but you just have to wonder what is going on in Blacksburg , Yes there were many very qualified people accepted but VT this year has created a monster
It’s a pretty clear scenario for applicants (or parents of):
Apply ED if you are certain that VT is your number one choice. EA is going to fill the largest number of enrollee seats. RD is for extenuating circumstance or extremely undecided applicants.
@jgwolf JMU and VT have different admissions criteria and goals, and of course different admissions staff. There are bound to be surprises. Good luck to your child .
No integrity or transparency (blaming essays is not transparent) will hurt them over time unfortunately. Best of luck to everyone.
So have there been any acceptances reported during RD?
@jgwolf if ur talking about me then I know why I got waitlisted to JMU. I didn’t submit a SAT score nor did I write an essay. I just went solely on my gpa. I treated it like a safety school. My stats were in the average for Virginia Tech. Don’t be salty and there is no monster created. Different factors cause different outcomes. In my case I didn’t do the essay.
My son’s guidance counselor talked to VT admissions and was told that no one in RD got offered admission. All were either denied or waitlisted. FWIW, my son applied ED, got deferred then waitlisted. Sounds like the WL pool just became olympic-sized.