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. :)

Rollover Process

If you were not admitted for Spring 2012, there is a possibility that you can "roll over" your application for Fall.  You found some limited instructions on this in your electronic letter.  If you would like to be considered, please email undergradadmission@virginia.edu or send us a letter.   Email is faster, so I would recommend going that route.  When you write, put the word "rollover" somewhere in the subject line.   If you would like to switch schools (Commerce, Engineering, Architecture), please include that wish in your letter as well.

Students who are not eligible for rollover are current juniors attending a four-year university.  Unfortunately, these students are no longer eligible for transfer.  Please check out the main UVA website for information on our graduate programs.

Decisions will be released around May 1 for any rollover student who added to the Fall process.

**Most importantly, you need to send your updated college transcript including your Fall 2011 grades when they become available.  These will be due by March 1, 2012**

Spring 2012 Transfer Decisions

Hi everyone!  Sorry to have disappeared for so long.  The spring transfer process coupled with early action
for high school applicants is keeping us very busy.

All transfer decisions will be posted online this evening at 5PM EST.  Remember that you have to consult your SIS account to get your decision. You'll have information about this in your UVA confirmation email. We will post all decisions online, but we will only be mailing letters to admitted students.  A student is either offered or not offered.  There is no waitlist process for spring admission.

Do not call the office to ask for your decision.  We do not give out decisions over the phone. To get to your account, go here and click on the "SIS Login."   If you don't remember your account information, seek out the help information on the left-hand side of that same page. 

Good luck! 

Transfer Open House

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, we will have an transfer open house on Friday, November 11. We would greatly appreciate if you would register and you can do that here: https://virginia-uga.edu.185r.net/Event/
Make sure you click "Transfer" and that will give you the option to register for the Nov 11 session that starts in Maury Hall, Room 209.

The program will have three parts:
10:00am -10:45am: Transfer Information Session (tentative student panel planned)
10:45am - Noon: Walking Tour of Grounds
12:15pm - 1:00pm: Individual School Sessions

In the individual school sessions, you'll have the ability to visit the Architecture, Engineering, Education and Commerce schools. A session for the College of Arts and Sciences will take place in Maury Hall as well.

We encourage you to have lunch on grounds and visit classes on Thursday afternoon or Friday morning. Check out the Open Class List for a listing of available courses.

We hope you can join us :)

More VCCS Visits

We will be attending fairs at various Virginia community colleges and high schools until the end of the month on what's called the Virginia Tour. Please check with your counselors.  Some of the NVCC fairs are this week, so keep your eyes peeled.  We'll be making non-fair visits during the dates and times below.

NVCC- Loudoun - 10/12/11 from 10-4pm
GCC - Fredericksburg - 10/25/11 from 11-2

For more information and sign-ups for these, please contact the school's transfer offices.

Spring Deadline is Approaching

As many of you know, the spring (January admission) deadline is October 1, 2011. Let's go over the basics.

-We only take students in January who are entering the College of Arts and Sciences and the Architectural History program.  We want to admit students who truly want to matriculate and graduate from these programs.  This is not a back door for the Commerce School, Engineering School and the like.
- The application is online at www.commonapp.org.  Yes, there are essays, but I promise you that they are not difficult to answer. Take the time to really think about why you are applying to UVA and go with that.
-In order to do our review, we require the high school transcript/GED, the college transcript and standardized testing (SAT or ACT). For applicants who have been out of high school for more than five years, we will allow you to apply without the SAT or ACT. For applicants whose second language is English, we require the TOEFL exam.  The deadline to mail these materials is a postmark deadline.
-UVA is a selective institution.  We require these parts in order to admit the most qualified and best prepared students no matter your age or where you are in your education. These requirements are on our website and they were required long before the internet.
-On the right panel of this blog, you'll see tips on the forms offered to you by the common app.  We do not require any of these, but see the right panel for more info.
-Unfortunately, we are only able to admit about 10-15% of the students who apply for January. If you don't gain admission at that time, and you are not a college junior at this time, you will likely be eligible to apply again for fall, where we admit 35-40% of applicants.

Transfer Open House

The next transfer open house will be on November 11. We are working on the details, but we hope you can join us. Plan to visit us for most of the day. Registration and schedules will be available soon.

Community College Visits

Representatives from our office will be visiting a small number of community colleges next week. If you are interested in coming to meet with us and discuss the ins and outs of transfer admission, contact your transfer counselor or student/academic services office for details.

NVCC - Manassas -- Tuesday, September 6 - 10am-2pm
NVCC - Annandale -- Wednesday, September 7 - 9am - 6pm
NVCC - Alexandria -- Thursday, September 8 - 9am-6pm

We'll be visiting other campuses later in the fall.
Stay tuned for those details and information on a transfer open house here in Charlottesville.

The Common Application is Completely Live!

Hello everyone!

I hope you had a safe and happy summer. I want to welcome any new readers to the blog. Thanks for stopping by to see us.

Some of you may have noticed that there was a hang-up with the supplement. That has been fixed and the ENTIRE application is now live. Once again, the deadline for the spring application will now be October 1. We hope to release decisions in mid-late November, but that notification date is tentative.

With the spring process, we only take applications for the College of Arts and Sciences and the Architectural History major. Typically, 300 or students apply and we will make offers to about 40 students. It is very competitive for spring, but if you are not admitted and still eligible for transfer, you may apply for the following fall.

Best of luck with the start of the school year! See you on the blog again soon!

The Transfer Class is Complete

We made our final transfer offers yesterday and with that, the fall process for transfer is complete. I know it has been a long wait. On the bright side, we finished up three weeks earlier than we did last year. Imagine that wait.

Today, we will email all students remaining on the wait list. In an effort to be environmentally friendly, we will not be mailing letters.

I know this may be disappointing news, but hopefully it takes you out of limbo and will allow for clarity going forward. Like I said in a post a couple of weeks ago, soon we'll start looking towards the spring 2012 process.

Thank you for asking great questions, cheering each other on and generally being cool as cucumbers. Believe me when I tell you that those characteristics made it very easy to communicate with you over the course of the year.

Wait List Update #3

We released a few more decisions this afternoon. Some for the College of Arts and Sciences and a few for nursing. At this point, all wait lists are still open, but we are coming towards the end of the wait. Again, I'll let you know when all lists are officially closed.
Later this summer, we'll start the conversation about spring transfer. The (new)October 1 deadline is less than four months away.
P.S. Thank you for your genuine and positive comments these last few weeks. You guys are great.

Wait List Update #2

Adam beat me to it. The time has come. We are making offers from the wait list today. These students will be emailed. We've offered to about 50 students. Most are Virginians because we were lacking in that area. Some from Commerce, but most have come from the College of Arts and Sciences. This is our first "wave" with the wait list. We may offer to more, we may not offer to more. But, I will announce it here when everything is closed. This will likely be at the end of the month, but only time will tell. I'll update when I have more information.

Waiting List Update

Thanks all for being patient. Our staff has been traveling for work and letting the numbers come in and settle. We likely won't move to the waitlist until the end of the month.

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.

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 15^th. 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.

Taking Stock

Hello everyone,

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...