What are my chances??

jdalu75
Tue, 21 Sep 2010 13:17:02 +0000

<< Being OOS will hurt you, since JMU accepts two-thirds of its students from Virginia.

The proper analysis from this data would infer rather that OOS would boost you a lot. And to make it official: for JMU, it does. >>

Actually, you’re right, but I figure it’s luck since you gave no reason. Two Virginia schools, UVa and W&M, are harder for an OOS applicant to get into. Reason? Virginia requires two-thirds of students to be in-state, and the number of OOS applicants for the remaining one-third of the places is overwhelming. UVA has acceptance rates of around 22% OOS, 40% IS. I had assumed that this applied to JMU too, but it doesn’t. The data is very hard to find, but it’s here: [Search JMU Applied, Accepted and Enrolled](http://web.jmu.edu/oir/stdnt/vw_AAE.asp#Results)

For Fall 2009, the most recent year shown –

In-state applications: 12,810. Acceptances: 7076. Acc. Rate: 55%
Enrolled: 2616. Yield: 37%

Out-of-state applications: 8153. Acceptances: 5796. Acc. Rate: 71%
Enrolled: 1336. Yield: 23%

So the acceptance rate for OOS applicants is higher at JMU than for in-state applicants. This is probably because they expect the yield to be lower than for IS. I didn’t see anything that suggested that OOS admits are more or less qualified than IS admits.