I’m currently a senior and am stressing out about getting into UVA (of course). If you guys could give me some advice or let me know my chances I would greatly appreciate it!
gpa: 4.44
class rank: 12/312, top 4%
sat score: 1900-hopefully will bring it up a lot in October and November (I’ve been getting a consistent 700 on math and writing on practice tests)
I live in Northern VA
I am the NHS president this year and was an officer last year
I’ve done a good amount of volunteering but primarily only for a group known as “Birthday Blessings.”
I am a DECA president and have been active in DECA all of high school, and have won many awards for it
I played varsity tennis only freshman year
I did varsity cheerleading freshman and sophomore year, and did competitive cheer my junior year(not for the school)
I have a pretty good essay and am still working on it
I took 1 ap sophomore year, 4 aps my junior year, and im taking 4 aps this year(all in core classes) plus a DE class. I’m also taking three sciences because I’m interested in engineering. I am really worried that my schedule isn’t “rigorous” enough this year to compete with all the crazy smart people that live in my area. Should I take more aps? My total is only 9. And how high do my SAT scores need to get? I’m hoping my gpa will make up for my bad test scores but I’m not sure it works like that haha.
Thanks for reading all this, please give me some feedback if you can!
You will be fine. Really. Take a deep breath. Relax.
The single most important thing is your transcript; they want to know that you’ve taken the most challenging courses available at your school, and that you done well in those courses in comparison to the others taking the same curriculum at the same school. Your gpa is basically meaningless; your class rank counts for a lot.
Nothing else is nearly as important. That’s the backbone of your application.
1900 is not going to keep you out, as a Virginia resident. For in-state applicants, an unweighted gpa above 3.75, and an SAT 1900+, and the usual EC load to show that you have a life and interests and involvement outside of your classes, will probably result in an admission offer for most applicants in the top 10% of their class.
Believe it or not, UVA is not very hard to get into for in-state residents near the top of their class. The in-state admission rate is over 40%; you basically need to be among the top 40% or so of applicants statewide. You will NOT be competing with OOS applicants, they are competing with each other for a separate pool of seats.
Thank you so much for your response, it makes me feel a lot better about my average sat scores. I greatly appreciate your input. Do you think that my 4 aps this year and 1 dual enrollment class will cut it? Do you think I should toughen my schedule? or will it not really make that much of a difference in the overall picture
I think that is plenty. Does your counselor know you well and will they say you took a challenging schedule? That really helps. If you are doing things like taking AP Stats instead of AP Calc consistently I think they do notice especially if you want to major in Engineering.
Yes I know my counselor very well, and I ended up taking ap calc instead of stats so I’m glad I made that decision. Thank you very much for your input and reassurance!