More Information for the Admitted Students

Hopefully by now, everyone has been able to check their decisions.  About 30% of transfer applicants were admitted.  It is without a doubt, still a competitive process.  The smallest percentage was 14% for the Curry Kinesiology and Speech Pathology programs.  The largest percentage was 34% for the College of Arts and Sciences. 

If you have decided to attend UVA, submitting your deposit is the first step.  Sending your final transcript is the second step.  After that, it’s out of the admission office’s hands.  Slowly, but surely, you’ll start to receive information from student financial services, orientation, housing, dining, the dean of students, your schools and perhaps other sources. 

You will sign up for courses and see an advisor at orientation - transfer orientation dates begin July 19, and the dates are listed here -  http://www.virginia.edu/orientation/?page_id=25.

Many McIntire and Architecture (some Education) admits will find inserts/enclosures in their letters.  These will give you detailed steps on becoming a part of these schools. For instance, you may be asked to take summer courses.

You can see how some of your courses will transfer by taking a look at the transfer credit analyzer - http://es-sazwebdmz.eservices.virginia.edu/asequivs  Credit will evaluated in preparation for summer orientation.

More on the Wait List

Once again, if you want to be considered again, be sure to click the button on your self-service page that will allow you to "Remain on the Wait list."

In order to show continued interest in UVA, you may email or mail us a letter that expresses your continued interest.  You can also send a recommendation, but this is not at all required.  What is most important is that you send us a transcript containing your spring grades if you are in school this semester. 

Just over 500 students were placed on the wait list.  2350 students applied and  around 700 were admitted.   I’m not going to give individual statistics for each and every program, but know that most of these students come from the College of Arts and Sciences because that’s where we get most of our applications and where we have the most spaces.   We normally build in space to take students from the wait list across all schools, but in the event that the classes become full, we won’t go to the wait list.  This happened with Engineering last year.  We have tried to prevent that from happening this year, but you just never know.  I love it when we can offer to students on the wait list, so I really hope we can do it.   

We will begin to look at the wait list in late May and as I said we usually don't "close" it until mid-late June.  The reason for this is that your grades are rarely available before the middle of May and we have to see how many admitted students deposit.  

On the Waiting List for fall 2012?

You may use this post as an umbrella to make comments or questions about the wait list.

If you are interested in staying on the wait list, pretty please make sure you click the button to “remain on the wait list.”  If you don’t do this, we will not review you again in the future.

After the admissions deposit deadline of May 15, we’ll begin to look to see how many students we can take off the wait list. These numbers vary from year to year and unfortunately, it can be a long process.  We hope to make our decisions by mid to late June.

Most importantly, we need to see your transcript listing your Spring 2012 grades in order to make a final decision.  Trust me.  You’ll want to do this, but only after exams and after all of your grades have been posted.  To do this, please use the same address that appears on the right panel of this blog.

If you are offered admission from the wait list and need to have financial aid information in order to make your decision, we will work to help you with this.  Again, you can only help yourself by submitting the right paperwork – FAFSA, CSS Profile and tax return information.

Not offered admission?

It is most certainly a hard task to make a place for this, but as a selective institution, we cannot possibly admit all of our great applicants.  Please be considerate of each other’s feelings, emotions, reactions and the like.  We do not have an appeals process, but depending upon the length of time you have been in school, you may be eligible to apply again in the future.

Offered Admission for fall 2012?

In order to bring structure to the commentary that will come to the blog, I’m creating separate posts for each decision. Please be respectful of your fellow commenters and UVA.   I will delete unpleasant and offensive commentary.

**Feel free to ask questions here if you’ve been offered admission**

As I said before, your status page is pretty basic.  The admissions deposit which goes towards your first tuition  for the first semester is $400.00.   Below your “letter,” you should see buttons for accepting or declining our offer of admission.  Clicking “YES” will not completely secure your spot in the class. You will need to pay in order to set it in stone.  You can pay with a credit card (we don’t accept VISA) or with an e-check. You’ll have until May 15^th to put down a deposit.  If you decide not to come to UVA, please decline our offer on that same page. This will make for a cleaner wait list phase.

We do not have admitted students’ days for transfers, but you are welcome to visit before you have to make your decision.   I can address questions about orientation and housing next week.  I’ll let you know when financial aid awards begin to go out. These are only posted online.

Make sure to apply by April 30 if you are interested in need-based financial aid.  As I posted a little while ago, no exceptions will be made with this deadline. If you haven’t completed the FAFSA, your CSS Profile and submitted your tax information, then I guess you have some homework to do for this weekend.

Today's Email

You should have seen an announcement email in your inbox today. I’m excited to announce that we’ll be releasing decisions online today at 5pm(EST). This email does not contain your decision. Read on.

It seems most of you are very much on top of your SIS accounts, but just as a reminder, this is where you can check your decision.  The new tradition (started last year) continues of only mailing letters to admitted students.  These letters will go out on Monday.

DO NOT CALL THE OFFICE TO ASK FOR YOUR DECISION.  WE WILL NOT GIVE IT TO YOU.

Again, to view your decision online, just log into your account in the UVa Student Information System (SIS) using your UVA computing ID and password.  You can access your SIS account and retrieve your password here.  Oh, here is a tip. Make sure you scroll down to the bottom of the page to see “View Decision" come 5pm.

If  you need assistance with accessing your account (lost or forgotten ID/password), please contact the UVa Help desk at (434) 924-4357 or toll-free (866) 469-4866.

The online decisions give you limited information - Offer, Waitlist or Deny. We do not email decisions.   Detailed information for offered students will come in the mail next week.

Thanks for your patience! 

We are alive :)

Hello everyone.  I haven't posted in a while because there are no new updates and I wanted to make sure that financial aid post was front and center.   We are indeed working hard to get decisions out by May 1.  Yes, unfortunately, all we can promise is May 1.  If we are ready and able to release decisions earlier, I will let you know here.  We wouldn’t want to give you a date, have something catastrophic happen on our end, and then not be able to deliver.  As always, thanks for being patient.  Stay warm and dry!  That is, if you're on the east coast.

Important information regarding Financial Aid Deadlines

Financial Aid is available for permanent residents and citizens of the U.S.  If you've applied for aid in the past, you know that heavy-duty paperwork is involved. The preferred deadline to apply for financial aid was March 1. 

The absolute final deadline is April 30.  If you want to apply for financial aid, we require a number of forms and documents including the FAFSA and the CSS Profile. If you do not complete all of these forms by April 30, you could miss out on being considered for certain types of aid. 

For more information, check out. :  http://www.virginia.edu/financialaid/enter12-13.php and/or http://www.virginia.edu/financialaid/appdeadline.php. 

Missing Documents: Round 2

Today, we sent out another email to 250+ students who are missing documents.  Please check your inbox and spambox to see if this is you.  Better yet, check your to-do lists and that will tell you if something is missing.  If you are no longer interested in applying, please email us and we'll stop hounding you for these materials.

Green

I can see that there’s been a lot of paranoia and confusion about your SIS accounts.  Let’s all take a breath.  Being April and all, we are reading applications and making decisions on them, but current decisions will not be final until May 1.  Final decisions are not being made at this time. I should add that we do not have rolling admission. All decisions will be released at one time. A green circle and a green check are good for application material submission purposes.  What I mean by this is, your application is complete and we can review it.   Once again, mid-year reports are not required.  Receipt of this on our end does not impact the green circle or green check.  I repeat. The green circle and green check have nothing to do with your decision of admit, deny or waitlist.  Thanks for your patience all!

Missing Documents

An email went out this morning to 670 students with incomplete files.  A few weeks ago, I think I mentioned that this would be coming. If you get one of these emails, log into your SIS account and see what's missing.  Don't panic because you're not in trouble.  We have reached a  point where we've gone through all of the mail we've received and we have sorted through everything on file. We want to do our best to make your file complete. See, we're human too. Sometimes transcripts are lost in the mail. This is the time we notify you of the issue.  If something is missing, please work on this as soon as possible.  In fact, the deadline for turning in these materials is April 4th.  If you have questions about  it, you may email us.  Please be patient and we will try and get back to you within 48 hours of your inquiry.

Can I ask a favor?

Decisions for first-year applicants (not you all, but those applying from high school) will be released online tonight at 5pm EST.  The system will be overwhelmed with the clicks of potentially thousands of anxious 17 and 18 year olds.  Could you do me the favor and stay off of SIS for tonight?   I realize it’s an odd request, but I think it will really help and … well, I was getting tired of looking at the snow seeing as how it is now 83 degrees out.  Phew!  Thanks readers!

Cleaning Up

Poe Alley off the Lawn at UVA

Tomorrow, we will send out an email to applicants who did not submit all three parts of the common application (basic, supplement, and application fee).  I doubt many of the readers here will be included.   However, it would be good to keep an eye out on your inbox.

In other news, we had a nice surprise of 4-6 inches of snow today.  It's too bad the students are on spring break and not here to enjoy it.  This is a pic from this morning.

P.S. The office will be closed this Friday, 3/9/12, for a University holiday.  

Looking towards March 1st

You can see from the calendar that there are just a few days left until March 1.  If you are putting the finishing touches on your application, that's great. Please know that the application must be completed by the end of the day on March 1.   Please make sure you submit all three parts - Basic Application, Application Supplement, and the Application Fee.  If you do not do this, you run the risk of our not receiving your application.

Materials such as transcripts, testing and recommended parts are just beginning to be added to your files.  We received 28,000 first-year applications this year and we are still in the throes of that process. This will conclude on April 1st.  It is not until the end of February that we start to zero in on matching up documents/transcripts/etc for transfers.

Please use your SIS account to monitor whether we have received your required materials.  Please do not call the office to check to see if we've received your materials.  It will take time to scan and process your documents. I'll try to give an update on here about how our file services team is doing in a few weeks.

I will not have any statistics on the applicant pool until the application process is complete.  I hope to give you more information in April, but per usual, about 600-700 students will be admitted. 

Finally, I would request civility and respect on this blog. Our admission blogs and the information we give are a courtesy to our prospective students.   Again, please do not criticize others for their inquiries.  As I have said in the past, we have the right to delete disrespectful commentary.  Please do not answer questions of other commenters.  In addition to the work we do during this extremely busy admissions season, we will answer your questions as best we can and in a timely manner.   Thank you for reading and thanks for understanding.

Rolling over the spring application for fall

This is quick reminder for those who were not offered admission for January and would like to try again for Fall 2012.  Please email undergradadmission@virginia.edu to let us know.  This is not automatic.  Please do this by March 1.

-You won't have to pay another application fee
-Please send us a list of your spring 2012 courses and course descriptions
-If you would like to add any new updates or short statements, feel free to include this in the same email
-Most importantly, you should mail us your most recent transcript with your Fall 2011 grades. Again, our mailing address is on the right panel of the front page of this blog. 

Test Requirements for Admission

We had a blogpost request for clarification on testing.  Oh, by the way, the GAA = Guaranteed Admission Agreement.

-Testing is required for all students applying under the GAA, no matter your age or your time out of high school.  If English is your second language, you may substitute the TOEFL or the IELTS for the SAT or ACT.  We look for a 90 or above on the TOEFL; a 7.0 and above on the IELTS. We do not have specific requirements for the SAT or ACT, but if Verbal and Writing scores are low - typically, below 500, we may contact you and ask for more proficiency testing.

-If you are applying as a regular transfer without the GAA, testing is required for anyone who has been out of high school for less than five years.  If you graduated in 2007, to be on the safe side and to be more competitive, we recommend you report scores.  You can submit old test scores as there is no need to take them again.

-If you are applying to the Commerce school... they like to see testing.  We sometimes tell students whose first language is not English is that it's advisable to take the TOEFL and the SAT or ACT.  They are really big on quantitative(math) skills.

I understand we are very different in our testing requirements for transfers.  As a selective institution, we appreciate the information that standardized testing can give us and thus, that's why we require it for most parties applying.

A deeper look into course descriptions

If you are reading this, hopefully you have started working on your application. If you have not, others can tell you that we are looking for some background information and if you're not careful, it will sneak up on you.  On the Common App Supplement, you will find a little box that says:

In order for us to perform preliminary evaluations of your coursework, you must email a list of all of your college coursework (through the current term/semester) AND the course catalog description for each course to transferadmission@virginia.edu   

It is important for all students to do this, even GAA and/or VCCS students.  We have found that this task makes students quite anxious. I can tell you it is a lot easier and faster than any assignment you'll complete at UVA.  While it is tedious, it's easy and it will help us to better evaluate your application.  It will also help registrars evaluate your credit if you're admitted.  Usually students make a word or excel document/table with the information.  Here are some examples...

Fall 2011 - SOC 211 - Principles of Anthropology I

Inquires into the origins, development, and diversification of human biology and human cultures. Includes fossil records, physical origins of human development, human population genetics, linguistics, cultures' origins and variation, and historical and contemporary analysis of human societies. Lecture 3 hours per week.

 Fall 2011 - HST 111 - Europe and the Mediterranean World to 1500

This survey of major developments in the Mediterranean world begins with the ancient Mesopotamian and Egyptian civilizations, continues through Greece and Rome and concludes at the end of the Medieval Age. The course will cover the rise and decline of civilizations, the transitions of great empires, change versus continuity in economic, political,
social and cultural institutions over time, and interactions and mutual influences among different people. 

The easiest way to do this is to simply cut and paste course descriptions from your course catalog.  Make sure to tell us if you've taken courses at different universities.  It's so easy, you can do it while watching TV or waiting for class to begin!     

Thank you!    
 

Spring Transfer Open House

Well, it's that time again for the open house.  This semester's event will be on Friday, February 10 at 10AM.  If you attended the event in November, there is no need to revisit.   Visitors will hear from current students and faculty about the application and transition process to UVA.  The day will begin in the Newcomb Hall Ballroom.  Please register for the event here .    We'll cross our fingers that it doesn't snow that day :)

Let's Talk about the High School Transcript

We noticed that towards the end of our spring semester review, we were requesting/pleading for the high school transcript or GED(yes, we'll accept it) from a lot of students who had done a great job of submitting the application and college transcript(s).  

We do require high school transcripts or the GED.

If you're planning on applying for Fall 2012 and you're home for winter break, get a jumpstart on gathering materials and request or collect your transcript from your high school.  If you completed a GED, order your official score report now.  You can hold onto until you apply or you can send it to us ahead of your application. We'll match things up as we get them.  You'll be able to mark it off your list early and not have to worry about it when you're juggling the application process, mid-terms and other things life throws our way. :)