Applying for scholarships equates to confirmed interest that a school is a student’s #1 choice? Correct me if wrong - isn’t application for Davenport open to every CoE applicant? What’s the ratio of 2nd stage applicants to actual awardees? How many different schools/“top” scholarships did your student apply to/for? I think you just proved my prior point that VT wasn’t/isn’t your student’s #1 - unless offered aid. The opportunity to increase your student’s chance for acceptance was ED. It was not taken, perhaps on assumption that it wasn’t necessary?
I don’t want this to be taken as diminishing your child’s accomplishments, since it’s clear your student clearly has very good opportunities available to her/him - but being a “high end” school doesn’t mean that grade inflation isn’t an issue. Best of luck on the remaining app results.
Curious if anyone thinks that when admissions Is processing applications -they split In State and OOS into different cohorts ? It just seems I have seen a lot of OOS with lower stats than in state, in can’t all be about the money and they have a set % they are taking from OOS . So maybe each college has a set % of OOS and let’s say for example -business there were a lot more in state than OOS applications. OOS may come up with lower stats just due to lower number of applications.
Don’t they split up the applications by the different officer’s territory? I don’t know how they then combine those results into a common review, but if they split by admissions officer, then there would be some elimination by area, which might not be consistent. I have no idea, but I thought that’s how it worked.
Yes, Davenport is open to all COE applicants, about 10-15% make it to tier 2. Not sure what your point was… but the fact my child was selected as a finalist puts her in the top 15% of those who applied. If VT had a 15% acceptance rate (or less) then a wait list while a finalist would appear possible… BUT…
If you must know the truth, at this time my child has applied to no other school top scholarships, but she has been offered very good scholarships by some very good schools (not quite a free ride) but she still wants VT. After seeing some of the other people here that are in a similar situation, perhaps a look into how things are done is warranted.
Also, I am not sure what you mean by grade inflation? Even if it did exist, it could in no way factor into the decision making process because GPA is GPA. As I said before, she is in IB (and there is one other IB school that is suffering a similar fate in our area with VT).
Since you did choose to talk stats… it is statistically next to impossible (but then again Heisenburg said anything was possible) for 13 of 15 top 10 kids wait listed without a conscious effort to do so. All theories are pure speculation, but what I am seeing makes no logical sense.
The good thing about this all is now my child is seeing that all the good but not stellar kids are being admitted while the top performers are being left out. Their question to me today was, “I worked by butt off to keep up good grades to get into the school of choice and now this happens, what is the point of working hard?” Thank you Tech!
The amount of energy with confusion around the admissions decisions show that although VT wants to be one of the big boys it is not. Each student applies to multiple schools and NONE have this confusion about selections. The admissions team failed the applicants and their great school. I will not let any of my other kids ever apply and will spread the word as my daughters school guidance department will not be recommending either. They reviewed who was admitted and who was waitlisted and confirmed there is no essay that can warrant the decisions. Sad time for a great school.
Part of the problem is that VT doesn’t have a real EA. It more like RD1 and RD2. A real EA would have the ability to deferre instead of wait list. That is what some other schools, like UofM, do for OOS high stat students for yield protection. They deferre during EA to see if the student has a real interest and hasn’t been accepted to their top school.
If every school offered admission starting at the top stats and working down, then the same students would get offered admission to many schools and some students would get no admissions. IMO, VT is focusing on their “sweet spot” and using holistic factors to offer admission, since they cannot offer to everyone qualified. I also think the requirements vary by major. There are also other factors like which courses were taken in HS, whether the candidate had STEM related ECs (for those majors), leadership, service, diversity objectives, etc.
@VTAdmDebacle totally agree. Interesting that of about 12 tours we took over the course of our college search VT was the worst tour . I was disappointed then and I am disappointed with the what they have done to some of these high stat kids . And @racereer i agree that they need to change their timing for EA.
I do not know of a school that does not offer from the top down. We have schools begging her to come. We had scholarship offers through the roof to the point of free rides to many lower end schools (that she did not even apply to). Their programs were not a good fit. The school draws its student body based on what it has to offer, the school does not weed out the high statters because it will make them look too good.
My neighbor’s son is an outstanding student. He’s currently a junior CS Honors student at UMass Amherst. You know what he told me last summer when I asked him about AP/IB/SAT strategies to be the most competitive applicant? “If I knew what type of CS students I’d be studying with, I would have worked a lot less in high school and had a lot more fun.”
@Makingsense There are other schools that waitlist top stat applicants for yield protection. This is not unique.
Also, those of you with “my kid is smarter than everybody and therefore should have gotten admitted” may want to consider whether that attitude came across in the application. VT is very community oriented and service oriented.
But not a single enthusiastic, positive post on any of those schools’ threads.
You should spend some time reading up on grade inflation.
As said previously, no one is going to change your position. But there is plenty of info out there that contradicts your assertions about college admissions.
As I pointed out earlier in this thread, I think it is more common to defer from EA than waitlist. Because of how VT does EA, they can’t do this so they have to wait list.
Have to agree as a parent of an “average or slightly above average” accepted son (who BTW has stats just under this poster’s “high achieving student” 1300SAT/3.88UW/4.228W). I was pleased he was accepted into VT engineering as this is the last school we were waiting on, however, we were realistic as he is OOS and it is a competitive major, especially after the over-enrollment last year. What he did have which is not reflected in those scores, but demonstrated in his essays, is 4+ years of experience working PT in machining on CNC equipment (family business, he is interested in Industrial) plus he has some local community volunteering that is unique (helping maintain/restore a historic covered bridge) and as a HS senior has been enrolled in a year-long Engineering Academy class through Lafayette College that will transfer as a 4-credits for Penn State’s Intro to Engineering class. Did some of that put him ahead? I’d like to think so, but I sure would not have been so salty if he had not been accepted or assumed he was more worthy than another student. In the end, he will probably choose Penn State because it is IS with 40+K savings over VT, even though we love the school and area and will likely retire near Roanoke someday. With a twin sister starting DPT at a private college at the same time, gotta save where we can!
I think that VT is going through some growing pains and it’s going to take some time for everyone to adjust. When I went to Tech a bazillion years ago, it was a matter of checking off a very short list. Grades, SATs, some ECs. When my kid got in, it was weighted GPA, ACT, prerequisites, course rigor, types of ECs, SAT subject scores, clas rank, essays, LOR, on and on. VT has gotten more and more selective, and it’s not a surprise. VT is arguably the best engineering school in a state that has a ton of kids going onto college. I think I read that ~80% of the kids in northern VA go on to college. The overall cost of VT is one of the lowest in the state and it’s an awesome campus. Add in a rising reputation outside VA, and here we are.
I don’t subscribe to the theory that Tech is turning down high stats kids. They’re not having trouble with yield. I would bet that VT could fill certain majors with just high stats kids from VA. I think it’s more of a shift of what is the ideal VT student.
Like I mentioned before, VT needs to give preference to instate kids first or come up with more guaranteed tracks for instate kids to get accepted. Lots of other publics do it. So on that front, Tech has work to do.
@VTAdmDebacle
You said that VT wants to be one of the big boys and it is not. Not sure exactly what you mean by that, but our discussion here actually shows the opposite. Why do colleges turn down high stats kids? Because they can. Last year showed that kids want to come to Tech.
@Makingsense
Your situation does seem odd and if I was in your place, I would probably reach out to the school too (“I” meaning your student, of course). The only situation I can think that this could happen is that the first round of cuts for the scholarship are based on raw numbers only (GPA, test scores, # of ECs, etc.) Which is not to say that your student isn’t well qualified, but the criteria for admissions may be different. I remember an Admissions Officer say once that they aren’t just picking students, they are picking a whole class.
Interesting Felicity Huffman and Lori Laughlin had their kids accepted. Hmmmm…
“Holistic” means we do not take the best students but we hit our numbers with qualified students and hide behind non quantifiable things to justify it.