A blog for undergraduate students interested in transferring to the University of Virginia
Monday, May 23, 2011
Waiting List Update
Here comes the hard part. Our yield was almost spot on for Commerce, Nursing, and Engineering. This means we won't be making many offers for these schools.
We will be making a good number of offers for the College of Arts and Sciences. The reason for this is that it's our largest school and even though the majority of applicants apply here, the process just allows us room to budge. Remember that the list is not ranked. We will just go in and review these students again from now until probably middle and late June.
Like I said in the past, close to 400 students have elected to stay on the wait list. We will make offers to about 40-50 students, the majority of them coming from the College of Arts and Sciences.
If you are on the waitlist, please, please mail your official final grades when they become available. If you are reading this and you were not offered admission or the waitlist, there is no need to send grades.
I will give you updates when I have new information. Thanks again for being so patient.
Wednesday, May 4, 2011
Answers
Hello Readers,
Now that the dust has settled a bit, I am going to attempt to answer your general questions from the last five days or so. I encourage you do research on the school’s various websites and these will give you answers to more personal questions. Some questions were answered by fellow bloggers. I think giving this post some type of structure will be most helpful to you.
Decisions
If you have a question about your decision, you may call our office. Please know that we do not have an appeals process, but if you would like to know more, it might help you understand the process. It’s just that under no circumstances do we change decisions. The bottom line is that you must remember that this is not a reflection of the person that you are. This is a review of your academic and educational profile, not you in a personal sense.
Wait list
Per usual, most of our phone calls come from waitlisted students.
-You want to know what’s next and how to improve your chances of getting in off the wait list. As I said before, you want to click the button to remain on the list. After you click it once, it should work. The reason why it stays there is in the event that turn down the offer of the waitlist.
-Please send us your final semester grades. If they won’t be released until late in this process, send us your quarter grades or mid-semester grades. You may also send us a continued letter/email of interest written by you, and lastly, you may send an additional letter of recommendation.
-We won’t know how many students we’ll be able to take off the wait list until the deposits are in around May 15th. I will announce it here when we move to the wait list.
-The wait list is not ranked.
-You likely will not hear from us before you have to deposit elsewhere. Please make sure you have somewhere to go by putting down that deposit.
Deposit
The deposit is due by midnight on May 15. Please disable your pop-up blockers. This should help. The moment you deposit, you will be asked to submit your Final Transcript. If you don’t submit this, your courses won’t be evaluated by your school by the time orientation rolls around, or worse yet, you won’t be able to attend courses in the Fall. There is no one rule about the grades we expect to see after the spring semester, but we would hope that your strong grades would continue this semester. If you receive weak grades, please write to us and let us know. It's better for you to take the initiative in this situation.
You should already have your SIS ID number. It will take 48-72 hours for the deposit to go through the system.
Financial Aid Awards
Student Financial Services started posting preliminary awards yesterday. They will continue to work on these as files become complete. Again, please keep checking your to-do list to see if they need additional paperwork. They tend to ask for a lot, but it's all to get an accurate picture of what we can give you and what you owe.
Stats
You'll find some general stats in the post below this one.
I believe McIntire was slightly less competitive because we had fewer applications, but the admit rate was still 17%.
We do not have Days on the Lawn or Admitted Students Days for transfers. You are welcome to visit keeping in mind that it is time for final exam and the University will be abuzz with studious studiers.
Housing
There are many options for transfer who want to live on-grounds. For more information see the Housing Division’s website here: www.virginia.edu/housing. For those who pay the deposit, you'll soon get an email from the Dean of Students about our specific transfer housing community.
Evaluating Credits
Once you deposit, we'll wait for your final transcript. Transcripts are evaluated by the individual schools. The information will be released in late May, but mostly June. In order to get an idea of what would transfer, please check out the transfer credit analyzer found here.
Orientation
Orientation has a great website with lots and lots of helpful information. www.virginia.edu/orientation
Course Registration
Course registration doesn't technically occur until summer orientation. The schools need time to evaluation your transcripts. Transfers go through this every year. First-year and transfer orientation happens concurrently. It can be slightly bumpy getting into courses during your first semester of transfer, but if you declare a major at orientation/you're an incoming 3rd year, you'll have pull as far as getting in off of waiting lists goes. If you don't get into it the first time around(I'm looking at you 2nd years), the great thing about UVA, is that it will probably be offered again at another time.
Monday, May 2, 2011
Taking Stock
I will attempt to answer important questions today and tomorrow. With over 100 comments and normal work that we have to do, this will take some time.
A couple of notes: Please do not email or call the schools or Deans of schools to ask about your application. We handle application questions here in admissions. If there's something we can't answer, we'll check it out for you. If you are not contacting an admissions dean, you are not contacting the right party.
If you have been admitted, please check your SIS To-Do List to make sure all financial aid documents are submitted. It's REALLY important that you get these in ASAP.
All told, this is still a selective process. We are looking to see if you've been successful where you are and if you'll do well here at UVA, be it academically or as a contributor to the community. Of the 2300 that applied, about 400 students are on the wait list. About 31% of all applicants were admitted - that's 36% of Virginians and 24% of non-Virginians.
Stay tuned for answers to the comments posted over the weekend...
Friday, April 29, 2011
Waitlisted for Fall 2011?
You may use this entry as a place to post comments or questions about the wait list.
If you are still interested in us, please make sure you click the button (on your self-service page) that indicates that you want to “remain on the wait list.” If you don’t do this, you will not be reviewed again in the future.
After the deposit deadline of May 15, we’ll begin to look to see how many students we can take off the wait list. This varies from year-to-year and can be a long process. We hope to make our decisions by mid-June, but this is a moving target and I will keep you updated.
Most importantly, we will need to see your Spring 2011 grades in order to make these decisions. After final exams are completed and your grades are finalized, please make sure you mail us your official transcript. Our address is University of Virginia, Office of Admission, P.O. Box 400160, Charlottesville, VA 22904.
Not Offered Admission?
This is the hardest part of it all. You’ve worked so hard and unfortunately, we’re not able to admit all of our great applicants. Please be polite and considerate of others’ feelings in your commentary if you must write here. You all have been very supportive of each other and I assume you’ll continue that attitude here.
Offered Transfer Admission?
Every year, we create a forum for you to leave your comments in three different places. This streamlines the process in seeing comments and answering questions. Please be respectful of your fellow commenters and UVA. Per usual, I will delete any comments if necessary.
**Feel free to ask questions here if you’ve been offered admission.**
Your status page is self-explanatory. Just below your “letter” are buttons to accept or decline our offer to you. If you accept, you’ll then be instructed to pay the $400 deposit. Clicking only “YES” will not secure your spot in the class. You will need to pay as well. You can pay with a credit card(we don’t accept VISA) or with and e-check. You’ll have until May 15 to put down your deposit. If you decide not to come to UVA, please decline our offer in the same spot. This will help us in our next phase. I will address questions about housing, orientation, financial aid and credit evaluation next week.
Offer letters will go out Monday and Tuesday of next week.
Thursday, April 28, 2011
Decisions will be released online on Friday(4/29/11) at 5pm
DO NOT CALL THE OFFICE ASKING FOR A DECISION. We will not give it to you.
As you read in my last post, in an effort to be environmentally conscious, we will only be mailing welcome packets to admitted students. Again, everyone should be able to see their decisions online, meaning your online account. We don't email decisions.
The place to go is here where you would next click on SIS Login on the left hand side. Again, using your UVA Computing ID and Password will get you into your self-service account.
If you can't remember this information, please contact our help desk at 4help@virginia.edu. We, in the office of admission cannot help you with this issue. You can also call them at (434) 924-HELP. They are available 24 hours a day.
Regarding Financial Aid: For a few weeks, Student Financial Services has been working with what they've received from all applicants. They plan to release financial aid information beginning Tuesday of next week. Check your to-do lists to see if anything is missing. If there is something amiss, please follow directions to get it to them as soon as possible.
Good luck to everyone!
Thursday, April 21, 2011
Email coming to you
Thank you for bringing up the strange email you may have received yesterday. We got some phone calls about it as well. That email was directed towards first-year students. NEW: We sincerely apologize for the confusion surrounding the initial email. You should receive a follow-up email tomorrow(4/22). Here are the contents of that message:
Dear Student,
Thank you for applying to the University of Virginia as a transfer student. We are quickly approaching the decision release date. In order to access your decision, you will need to be able to log into your Student Self-Service account. If you have not yet logged in or have questions about logging in, please contact the UVA Help Desk in the upcoming days. The Help Desk is available 24 hours a day by calling 434-924-4357. In an effort to be more environmentally friendly, we will only mail welcome packets to admitted students.
If you received an email yesterday suggesting that the May 1st deadline is approaching for deposit, please disregard that message and accept our apologies for the confusion. That message was designed for our first year applicants whose deposit deadline is approaching, but it seems that some of our transfer applicants may have received the message as well.
After transfer decisions are released, admits will have about two weeks to deposit, and I can guarantee that your deadline, yes, you transfer applicant reading this, will not be May 1st.