DS was waitlisted OOS Engineering. 1410 SAT (one sitting). 8 AP’s, 3.8 UW GPA, Eagle Scout. Lots of EC’s and Volunteering.
I would agree on the Cornell statement on the surface, however, Cornell sent an alumni ambassador to her school to talk to 2 candidates (this is very unusual, students usually request to talk to an ambassador according to their website). Of the two, my D has a superior GPA and service / activity record, the other candidate has a superior SAT. In the 'interview my D asked more questions and was more engaging. Does this mean anything? Who knows… Looking at the quality of WL students here, VT has a lot of answers to provide. Honestly, I do not think this is anything malicious, it appears to be an issue where they did a very poor job of handling the application process. I do not buy the ‘holistic’ approach because all that says is, “We are not going to be held accountable for any of our decisions and we don’t have to tell you our process”. I will be talking to them in the next day or two, based on others, I am prepared for the run around (a key word is, “we look at the whole student”… so which part is missing not making the candidate whole?
I am not a Hokie fanatic, I would rather her not go. That said, it is her school of choice and I work with many Hokies, most are good engineers. This whole fiasco does a lot to convince me that VT is not a top notch school.
@Makingsense wrote:
Please have your D’s GC call, has your D asked them to do so?
My concern is that a call from the parent, wanting an explanation for their kid’s admission decision will not be looked at favorably by admissions…especially when the time comes for VT to choose some waitlisted applicants.
She has asked the GC to call. Funny thing is, she knows of no one else in her school that has been denied, the majority have inferior GPAs and about 50/50 in terms of SAT. Her GC is very reluctant to call. A Tidewater GC did call about their #2 student (a high ranking private school) and got the run around.
All any of us want is answers? If the answer is, “we randomly chose because of seats” that is an answer (not a good one, we expect criteria for decisions). I am an engineer and also write for a media outlet from time to time. I know how to investigate, I am not very good at dealing with cop out answers. All of these kids that are wait listed applied in good faith because they expected VT to process their apps in good faith. They all deserve valid answers. We do not have to agree with the answers, but specifics are needed.
Assume you had your power cut off because of a payment that was a day late while your neighbor had not paid for months and still had power. When you called the power company you would expect a good explanation as to why the discrepancy. “We treat all customers differently” would likely not be a satisfactory answer. VT needs to be forthright.
I don’t think the GC’s will even make the call. In our high school, they are not even responding to the kids let alone for the parent’s email/ phone.
Without answers and us not able to reach the admissions office directly is frustrating
Usually the GC in public schools wouldn’t call -only the private schools as they sometimes have relationships with admissions esp in small or highly selective schools.
I agree with @Makingsense about more transparency. I am sure we wont get it . Everything now a days is protecting against lawsuits- you never can find out the real story
Really folks… now it’s the school didn’t process applications in good faith?
@jgwolf You’re not getting any less information on why a student was waitlisted than you would from any other university re: a similar outcome.
My GC called and received a general response. We had around 13 accepted from our school and a few waitlisted, two being in the top 10 (me and the #1 student in our class). They responded by saying it has nothing to do with the reflection of our ability to succeed and more to do with space availability. I’m wondering if they began reading apps, found that the earlier applications they were reading were excellent, decided to accept those students, then realized the latter were on par with the earlier ones they already planned on accepting and decided to waitlist those instead? If this makes sense.
@ShenVal18 , focus on one statement of many? Ok… good faith implies that they evenly and fairly apply their criteria. Did they do so? What is their criteria? Sure, all criteria can be subjective to some degree. That said, it looks like they may have had some criteria, the came up with a pool, and once the pool was established, the wait listed people at random, or possibly even shaving from both the top and bottom (leaving only the average to survive). Another theory that has been proposed (and I hope this is not true) is that they weed out based on probability of acceptance… meaning higher credentialed students are not expected to accept thus would kill their offer acceptance rate. If that is the case, then they are NOT processing the apps in good faith as they are making assumptions on the students’ intention and allowing said assumptions to influence their decisions. This would explain why high achieving students are being left out in the cold while the average or slightly above average are accepted.
Of course not . In this case though there are many students who are almost over qualified and would just like answers. They will never give up the info just like if you applied for a job and didn’t get it.
Another thing to think about @Makingsense is if VT’s avg SAT and GPA goes up above where they may want it, this may cause a drop in applications down the road. My son didn’t apply to UVA cause he knew his stats were below the 50th percentile. So you could imagine instead of a 1290 avg SAT they may have a 1330 Avg that would keep many of those who applied from even thinking they would have a chance.
This is just a thought but could be why they want to keep numbers within a certain range.
@Makingsense I took a look at what several schools mentioned on this thread had to say about what they were looking for in students. Some strong similarities - short on static details, long on overall fit for the particular student body.
Tech doesn’t have a reputation for being too uptight about yield protection. And they are certainly not the only university who takes into account the likelihood of an offer being accepted as part of their decision making process re: students that may be somewhat statistical outliers. VT has provided a hedge vs. that via early decision.
No one is going to change your position. With what seem like strong add’l opportunities, moving on to focus on them would probably serve you and your well qualfied student well.
I know that it’s hard to accept denials/waitlists, but let’s be honest. We have blindspots when it comes to our kids. Where I’m from in VA, high stat kids are the norm. Everyone has an impressive internship or got a prestigious award or built an app, etc. Not to mention the kids that have connections. It’s crazy how competitive it is with the kids and parents.
In recent years, VT has come into a position to be more selective and they are exercising their right to do so. UVA does the same thing. When kids get denied by UVA, everyone just shrugs and says “oh well, it was a reach!” I think the denials just sting more now because VT used to be considered a safety not so long ago.
@dmvmomx2 that all seems good but when you have kids getting deferred from JMU and getting into VT over kids getting scholarships from JMU who got waitlisted at VT, you can’t really compare it to say UVA. VT is getting more competitive as is JMU but UVA doesn’t seem to take kids below certain SAT/ACT or GPA unless there is a diversity or first gen. Piece to the puzzle. VT almost seems to want to do things differently than other schools and if that’s the case , there will never be a way to figure out who can get in
The bottom line, and I will be done here. She was selected to contend for the top COE scholarship available, the Davenport. It is not an easy task to have those credentials. Davenport deemed her worthy to contend, yet VT admitted other students who DID NOT qualify to contend for Davenport. We will never know if she was selected as wait list automatically makes her ineligible (and I do not think she got it, but we will never really know), HOWEVER, there were others she was in contention for and now all those are out the window. Why on earth would any school discard students who met the requirements for their number 1 scholarship award while accepting those who did not meet the requirements of the award?
Really, there is no point to even accepting the wait list because VT has basically taken all incentive (scholarship) for top achievers off the table by wait listing them in favor of those who are not eligible for said merit scholarships. Does this make sense at all?
Virginia Tech also has diversity, first generation goals that they have committed to. https://vtnews.vt.edu/articles/2017/06/inclusive-insight-2017.html
They have increasing applications , particularly in the more selective majors. There is just not room for all qualified applicants. Good luck to all!
I may be alone in this, but when I read that a student says that X university is their first choice I don’t think of scholarship availability as the reason why. Since it appears that might be a thing, it may explain the phenomenon of a student not taking their best advantage and applying ED, only to later say that VT was their #1 after news of deferral, etc. Not first choice enough to go all-in, but first choice if the price is right.
@ShenVal18 but they are far more likely to work hard to get good scholarships at their top schools (at least they should). The fact that one goes for the top scholarship should also indicate to the school that the student is serious. I am getting more data and it appears that virtually all top 10 students at our high end schools in the area got wait listed. Not all, but we are up to 13 of the 15 my child knows at different HS.
First off, definitely don’t agree with not applying to a school just because some stats are below 50th percentile, especially if you are talking about test scores. S19 was at or below the 25th percentile for his SAT Verbal score for 4 of the 7 schools he was accepted to, including UVA and OOS GaTech (VT maybe slightly above 25th). No, he isn’t 1st Gen or URM. No need to limit yourself if it is a school you are really interested in.
I also highly doubt the VT purposely wait listed high stat kids because they don’t want to drive up their SAT averages by a little. I can’t really see any negative of having high stat kids at your college. Maybe it deters a few lower stat kids from applying, but that would be offset by more high stat kids applying. Take a look a GT, in the past 10 years they have more than doubled the number of applicants and the average SAT has gone from 1330 to 1470. All while keeping enrollment the same. Now I can buy into the idea that VT may have played around with yield protection by wait listing some high stat OOS kids. I will also agree that the whole thing with @Makingsense 's DD and being a Davenport finalist and then getting waitlisted is just ridiculous.