VCCS Guaranteed Admission to the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences

Are you a Virginia community college student looking to pursue one of our Guaranteed Admission Agreements?  Currently, we have three:  1) School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, 2) College of Arts and Sciences and 3) RN to BSN program in the School of Nursing.  All are only available for fall admission, not spring. You should spend the next year completing these requirements if you are on this path.  All coursework and the degree must be completed by the end of spring 2017 if you want to enroll in fall 2017.

Guaranteed admission does ask a lot of its students, but if you fulfill all of the requirements and meet all of its conditions, admission is guaranteed to the school of application, not the major.  We never guarantee admission to any major. Today, we thought we would create a sort of checklist for the Engineering GAA, but you should sit down and take some time to read the agreement yourself, found here. Let's hit the highlights in this post.

-Earn an associates degree stipulated in the agreement
-Earn a 3.4 GPA or better
-Earn 54 transferable credits
-Earn at least 45 credits at the community college
-Submit a high school transcript or GED
-Submit all college transcripts from your past and present
-Earn no grade lower than a C except in the case of English Composition, and all math, physics and chemistry courses where you need a B or better.
-Submit SAT, ACT or TOEFL scores (The TOEFL can be a substitute for students who have been studying in the U.S. for less than two years).
-Submit the common application
-Take the prescribed courses in Section II of the guaranteed admission agreement.
-These include english composition, Calc 1, 2, 3, differential equations, Physics 1 and 2(with labs), Chemistry 1 (plus the lab), and computer science (EGR 125, 126 or CSC 201)
-Yes, you have to take all of these courses.
-Depending on your scores, you can use AP scores to earn credit towards the agreement, but you must take at least 45 credits worth of courses at the community college.
-Finally, yes, you have to take (or show AP credit for) all of these courses.

Last year, 30% of admitted VCCS students, were admitted under the GAA.

VCCS Guaranteed Admission to the College of Arts and Sciences

Are you a Virginia community college student looking to pursue one of our Guaranteed Admission Agreements?  Currently, we have three:  1) College of Arts and Sciences, 2) School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, 3) RN to BSN program in the School of Nursing available for fall admission, not spring. You should spend the next year completing these requirements if you are on this path.  All coursework and the degree must be completed by the end of spring 2017 if you want to enroll in fall 2017.

Guaranteed admission does ask a lot of its students, but if you fulfill all of the requirements and meet all of its conditions, admission is guaranteed to the school of application, not the major.  We never guarantee admission to any major. Today, we thought we would create a sort of checklist the GAA, but you should sit down and take some time to read the agreement yourself, found here. Let's hit the highlights in this post.

-Earn an associates degree stipulated in the agreement
-Earn a 3.4 GPA or better
-Earn 54 transferable credits
-Earn at least 45 credits at the community college
-Submit a high school transcript or GED
-Submit all college transcripts from your past and present
-Earn no grade lower than a C (from any of your colleges) except in the case of English Composition where you need a B or better.
-Submit SAT, ACT or TOEFL scores (The TOEFL can be a substitute for students who have been studying in the U.S. for less than two years).
-Submit the common application
-Take the prescribed courses in Section II of the guaranteed admission agreement.
-These include english composition, foreign language, social sciences, humanities, history, math and science and a non-western perspective course.
-Yes, you have to take all of these courses. 
-Depending on your scores, you can use AP scores to earn credits towards the agreement, but you must take at least 45 credits worth of courses at the community college.
-Finally, yes, you have to take(or show AP credit for) all of these courses. 

Next time, we'll go over some cliff notes for the guaranteed admission agreement for our school of engineering.

The fall semester is upon us!

For better or worse, the summer is coming to an end and soon you'll be finalizing your course schedules for the fall.  Below, we are recapping a post we made last summer. It's a great idea to review our entire transfer website, but we get a little specific in this post.


As you prepare to return to school (or maybe this is your first semester of college), it's important to be aware of the pre-requisite courses necessary for transfer to UVa. We realize there are courses you'll need to take at your institution, but it's important to overlap, or incorporate what we're looking for as well.

If you go to our website admission.virginia.edu/transfer and click on "Transfer Course Requirements" on the left-hand side, you'll see some very helpful introductory information.  Once you click through to each school -- the College of Arts and Sciences, the School of Architecture, etc -- you'll see a list of exactly what you need to take.  Follow this closely.  If you would like to see how your school's courses might transfer, you can use our transfer credit analyzer.  This will show most of your institutions and many courses.  Do not fret if courses you have taken do not appear on the analyzer.  It doesn't necessarily mean that they won't transfer, but our registrars will evaluate the credit once you're admitted.

More offers from the wait list

This afternoon, we'll be offering to about 20 students from the engineering and arts and sciences wait lists.  Once again,  you'll see an email notifying you if you have been selected.  That said, your SIS account will also show whether you remain on the wait list, or if you have been admitted. These admitted students have about 48 hours to respond.  After we tally up our numbers, we'll see if there is any more room left early next week.

Offers from the Wait List!

As we mentioned in another post, a few weeks ago, we made some offers from the nursing and commerce school wait lists.  Today, we've made the bulk of our other offers.  We've offered to about 50 students who applied to the College of Arts and Sciences and the Engineering School.

If you have been offered, you'll receive an email within the hour.  You can also check your SIS account to see if your decision has changed.  If it still says you are on the wait list, then your decision has not changed.  Those who have been offered will now see a request to pay the $400 tuition deposit.  These students will have a short window of time to deposit.  Once we've seen who has deposited, we'll look to see if we have space to offer to more students. We hope to have all of this wrapped up and closed by the second week of July.  This will allow everyone to move on with other plans. 

If you have been offered and need an extension on your deposit deadline because you need to know your financial aid situation before you deposit, please reply to the email you received. We may be able to assist you with some extra time. We will not give you an extension if you did not submit the FAFSA and CSS Profile by the deadline of April 1.

We're excited to make some offers and we'll update you here as needed.

Final Transcripts

We just wanted to send a quick reminder about submitting those final transcripts.  If you have paid your deposit, this is imperative.  If you want to be considered for a spot off the wait list, you should send your transcript.  Do us a favor and make sure all of your grades have been posted before you request the transcript.

You must send a transcript including your spring grades even if you are taking summer courses.  If you are in summer courses, you'll need to send two transcripts - 1) now and 2) when your summer courses are over.

Some of you attend a school with trimesters where transcripts won't be available until June.  Please make sure to send those as soon as possible.

We expect to go to the wait list for the College of Arts and Sciences and Engineering during the second week of June. The other schools are up in the air.

We look forward to taking a look at your updated transcripts!

Financial Aid To-Do Lists

For those of you who are admitted, you may be wondering about financial aid.  As long as you applied using both the FAFSA and the CSS Profile by April 1, you are entitled to a full review by Student Financial Services(SFS).  Every student's situation is different, so sometimes SFS requests additional documents and information.  Please keep an eye on your to-do list.  Every day that passes is one less day to make your decision before May 15th.  I know SFS is working hard to get awards out to our transfer students.  Let them help you by sending in those documents as soon as possible.

Were you offered admission?

Please use this post to ask questions if you have been offered admission.

Congratulations! As I said in my previous post, you will receive an offer letter (in a thin-ish envelope) in the snail mail.  We never promise admission to a particular major.  You have been admitted to the school to which you’ve applied. Major declaration and planning will occur at orientation and over the summer. For those of you who applied to the Curry Teaching program, you’ll find out whether you’ve been admitted to the Master’s program in your letter. For those of you who applied to Architecture or McIntire, watch out for information on required summer courses (in your offer letter).

Your $400 admissions deposit can be paid online.  This goes towards your first semester’s tuition. Below your online “letter,” you should see buttons to accept or decline our offer of admission.  Clicking “YES” will not completely secure your spot in the class.  You will need to pay your $400 deposit to set it in stone.  You can pay with a credit card (we do not accept VISA) or with an e-check.  As specified in the letter, you will have until May 15^th to put down a deposit.

Financial aid information will start to go out next week, if your financial aid has been reviewed.

You should keep an eye on your to-do list in the event that Student Financial Services needs more information from you. 

We do not have open houses for admitted transfer students. You are welcome to visit and look around, but keep in mind that our students and faculty are in the midst of final exams.

As far as the next steps go, 72 hours after you deposit, you should be able to take U.Va.’s responsible computing quiz, officially set up your email account and register for orientation. Housing and dining information will take a couple of weeks to come.   It is so important to keep an eye on both your old and new email addresses.  EVERYTHING happens on email.  Don’t miss important deadlines by ignoring these accounts. Your academic credit will not be evaluated until you pay your deposit and send in your final transcript. This evaluation is ongoing until summer orientation.   If you’re curious about what might transfer, check out our transfer credit analyzer. 

If you decide not to come to UVa, please be sure to decline the offer using the other button-- the "NO" button. We and our wait listed students would really appreciate you taking the time to do this.

Lastly, keep up the good work.  We’ve admitted because you have shown us you can perform well in college-level coursework. You’ve come this far.  Let’s keep it up!   Feel free to come back to the blog for moral support during that last final exam or paper.

Not Offered Admission?

This is obviously not the decision you were looking for when you set out on this journey.  We wish we could admit all of the wonderful applicants who have applied.  The reality is that we only have so much space, making admission highly selective.  We want you to be proud of your accomplishments and proud of the fact that you stuck your neck out and applied to transfer from your world to a whole other world. Even that is an accomplishment. This decision is not a declaration of your personal worth or who you are.  We trust that you have other options and hope you can find peace in that next step.

                        

We do not have an appeals process, but depending upon the length of time you’ve been in college and your desired UVa school, you may be able to apply again in the future. You’ll need to complete a new application. Spring 2017 applications (available beginning on August 1) will be due October 1. Again, this might not be open to your school of interest.  If you post here, please be considerate and supportive of each other’s feelings, emotions, reactions and the like. We will delete any inappropriate commentary. We wish you the best of luck wherever this decision may take you.

Have you been placed on the waiting list?

You can use this post as a space to make comments or ask questions about the wait list.

If you are interested in staying on the waiting list, please make sure you click the button labeled “remain on the wait list.”  If you don’t do this, we will not review your file again in the future. Once you’ve clicked it, that does the trick.  This page stays the same after you click the button in case you change your mind at a later date. So, if you change your mind and want to leave the waiting list, please come back and decline the spot.

After the admissions deposit deadline of May 15, we’ll begin to look to see how many students we can take off the waiting list.  These numbers vary from year to year and unfortunately, it can be a long process. We won’t make any decisions on May 16^th.  There is a bit of a wait. Why? Because we have to wait for your final exams to end, and for you to send us updated grades. We hope to make our decisions by the end of June however. Offers are usually made in waves.

How do we make these decisions?  We absolutely need to see your transcripts listing your spring 2016 grades.  In short, send us your final transcript. Trust me. If you want us to look at your file again, send it along.  You’ll want to do this, but only after your exams are completed and ALL of your grades are posted.  You’d be surprised how many people send us blank transcripts. To send this transcript, please use the same address that appears on the right panel of this blog. Ideally, you would want to get these to us by the first week of June, but there is still time after that period. We know there can be extenuating circumstances. If you were not taking classes this spring, feel free to send a note/email/letter of continued interest to undergradadmission@virginia.edu.

If your grades are strong, this may help you earn the offer, but we can’t offer to everyone from the wait list, so we’ll be looking at the strongest candidates.  If you earned poor grades this past spring, it would be difficult for us to admit you.

The waiting list is divided by school – Arts and Sciences, Engineering, Architecture, Nursing, Batten, Commerce, Kinesiology.  So, you are only on a waiting list for that particular program.  It is not ranked, and it is only made up of students who elected to remain on the waiting list.  That’s why we can’t give a firm number of right now.  It seems to be, historically, that 20% of the applicants are offered a spot on the wait list, but not everyone stays.

If you are offered admission from the waiting list and need financial aid information in order to make your decision, we will do our best to help you with this.  If you post here, please be considerate of each other’s feelings, emotions, reactions and the like. We will delete any inappropriate commentary. Good luck all!

It's Almost May 1, but...

Decisions will be released this evening! Please make sure you read this entire post.  You wanted an update, so please read it. While we've been commenting on our last post, it might have been a little quiet on our end. That's only because we were happily charged with reading 2,400 transfer applications immediately after reading 32,000+ first year applications plus greeting all of our great March/April visitors. We are so excited to complete our transfer process. One year, there was a hitch and we had to release on May 2, so announcing this any sooner would have been risky.  We are just about ready, so you should be able to see decisions sometime after 5PM today.

DO NOT CALL THE OFFICE TO ASK FOR YOUR DECISION. OUR REPRESENTATIVES DO NOT GIVE OUT DECISIONS OVER THE PHONE OR OVER EMAIL.

Let’s review how you can see your official decision.  In order to view it, you must be able to get into your UVa SIS account. If you don’t remember or can’t find your SIS login information, use the links on the login page https://sisuva.admin.virginia.edu/psp/epprd/EMPLOYEE/EMPL/h/?tab=PAPP_GUEST to generate a new password.  If you need additional assistance, you can call the UVa help-desk at (434) 924- HELP or toll-free at (866) 469-4866. 

Please do not overwhelm the system by opening multiple windows.  Take your time and use one window.  If you need to give it a rest, walk around your house or apartment one time and come back to it. Do some reading, dishes, laundry and let the system relax as well. Your decision will be there 2 minutes, 20 minutes or 2 hours from that point. 

The decision pages online will give you limited information – Offer, Waitlist, or Not Offered. Once again, we do not email decisions.  Detailed information for admitted students will arrive in the mail next week.  In an effort to be environmentally conscious, we only mail letters to admitted students.  In addition, please look out for important inserts in your letters if you applied to McIntire, Architecture or the Curry Teaching Program.  Many of these students will have additional requests or things-to-do in their letters.

We’ll be creating spaces on this blog for you to comment, similar to what you’ve seen in past years. Look out for that later this afternoon.

Thank you for reading our posts and posting your questions throughout the whole year.  There is less to cover with you all because you are already college students, but we are happy to try and address any general topics you can think of regarding becoming a student at UVa.  We DO work most weekends during our reading season of October to April, but find it’s best to let the decisions settle in and we’ll address your thoughts and inquiries next week.  

APRIL 1 Financial Aid Deadline!

Need-based financial aid (which is an option for Permanent Residents and U.S. Citizens) is just as available for transfers as it is for first-year applicants. 

This serves as your reminder for the April 1 deadline.  Student Financial Services (SFS) is very strict about this deadline. They require TWO forms in order to properly apply for aid.  Please don't fill out the FAFSA and assume you have completed the task.  We also require something called the CSS Profile.  So again, we require both the FASFA and the CSS Profile.  If you don't comply by this deadline, you may miss out on some great state and UVa aid.  For more information, please check out the SFS website at http://sfs.virginia.edu/new/undergrad/transfer.  If you have questions about aid, please contact Student Financial Services. We are a need-blind institution and thus we do not handle financial aid inquiries here in the admissions office.