I think UVA does a great job supporting kids from a variety of backgrounds. I agree it’s worthwhile to take a risk on kids who don’t have the opportunity to take advanced classes in HS but there are also numerous kids with demonstrated abilities in those areas that are not accepted that perhaps could have utilized the opportunity at a higher level. My son has not ruled out UVA. He has friends that are happy there who have taken similar levels of math and science but they say their classes are not harder than what they have already taken in HS and are spending huge number of hours on outside activities like athletics and marching band. Nice to have a balanced life though of course and I suppose they could have selected harder classes but we haven’t heard this from other friends in engineering at other schools.
Engineering is not easy anywhere. One of my sons was in engineering at UVa. It was challenging enough and he still had a good social life and very good job opportunities. Are you in Virginia? If you are not, there are other engineering options.
We are in VA. My son is looking for a significant increase in challenge as he is frustrated right now with most of his classes. I think he would be fine at UVA as he would be able to place out of a number of things but hearing so much about all these kids who couldn’t handle Calc 1 on our engineering tour didn’t show UVA in the best light. He loves the atmosphere though. I would hate to see the rigor decline based on admissions “quotas” or for there to be a separation of kids from TJ/FCPS/rigorous out of state schools and then others. From our tours it felt like other schools are more deliberate about quickly getting all kids to the same place and not having a division even though they also take students from a variety of backgrounds. We probably did not have the best set of tour guides though either. Both had impressive, deep resumes with lots of activities but were not as deeply involved in the academics.
The average SAT in engineering there is 1420. My son had above that and still felt challenged in engineering ( 5’s in BC Calculus , AP Physics,etc). I would certainly not base decisions on tour guides. My other son went to VT in engineering- also great.
Here’s a really great blog post about this: http://theodysseyonline.com/uva/the-novaian-stigma/183074
All together now: There are no regional quotas at UVA. There’s a VA/OOS ratio of 2/3 to 1/3. Nothing more that limits how many students we can take from a high school, town, county, or region.
That blog post paints everyone in Northern Virginia as upper class. Do you think that’s fair?
Even if you are affluent on paper in No Va., you will be poor by the time you pay your mortgage or rent.
They disclose enrollment by city/county in Virginia. http://avillage.web.virginia.edu/iaas/instreports/studat/dd/enrl_city.htm
You’ll note that (2014 numbers) some 2634 undergrads are from Fairfax County alone. 763 are from Loudoun County, 433 from Prince William County, 304 from Arlington, 232 from Alexandria, 74 from Fairfax City, 91 from Falls Church City, 57 from Manassas, and 10 from Manassas Park, out of 15,405 total - that’s 4598/15405 (29.8%) from NoVa. There are only 11 other cities and counties that even have more than 100 students represented.
According to the US Census Bureau, those some locations have 2,419,504 population out of the total state population of 8,326,289 (29.1%).
http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/51000.html
Nearly the same, right? 29.8% of the state population, 29.1% of the UVA students.
You can combine the admissions data (9156 completed IS applications in 2015)
http://avillage.web.virginia.edu/iaas/instreports/studat/hist/admission/first_by_residency.htm
with SCHEV data on numbers of applicants
http://research.schev.edu/localities/LD01_Admissions.asp
to see that 4385 applications came from the above locations, 4385/9156 = 47.9% of the total IS applications were from NoVa!
29.8% of UVA population, 47.9% of IS applications, means NoVa applicants are WAY over-represented in the application pool.
I don’t have the yield (accepted admissions offers) breakdown by county. If NoVa students are admitted at the same rate as everywhere else (and I have no way to know whether this is the case), they would need to have a much lower yield to end up with that portion of the population after submitting so many more of the applications. On the other hand, if they are held to the same standard as the rest of the state (for example, top X% of your graduating class is a likely admission offer), then the applicants below that standard would be less likely to get admission offers, which would help explain why with so many applications they result in no more than proportional representation.
Remember that living in VA doesn’t necessarily mean you meet the domicile requirements. Similarly, there are people who aren’t physically present in the Commonwealth who are deemed residents.
Where there is population density, there are many high schools. Where there are many high schools, there are many applications.
I’m so glad I found this thread. I realize I’m chiming in late in the discussion, but I just wanted to share my personal experience. My sons attended a small private school in another state that was known locally to be an excellent college prep school. We moved to Virginia Beach in June and enrolled our children in a private high school. My older son, who is a junior and was in all honor classes at his previous school, and younger son, who is a sophomore and in core classes, were completely unprepared for the rigors of their new school. They did more work in their first nine weeks at their new school than they did all year at their previous school. The demands and expectations were in a different league. My Core student did more in 9 weeks of regular English 10 than my son who had taken Honors English 10 at the other school had done all year. It was overwhelming. I thought my kids were getting a solid education at their previous school, but now I know they weren’t. All high schools are most definitely not created equal. I’m so glad we made the move, and now the my kids have adjusted, they are too. They will be much better prepared for college, no matter where they go. I don’t know about schools in NOVA or ROVA, but I can tell you that my kid’s school here at the beach is tough.