What Matters
David Graves June 19th, 2020
“Everything’s been said, but it needs saying again.” Ernest Gaines Everything in college admissions seems cyclical, with each new year seeming to be an updated version of the year before (except of course when Covid-19 throws a wrench into the system!). Admissions advice always seems to use similar themes and language from year to year, with slight changes to keep the message fresh. I am certainly guilty of this, as I am going into my tenth year of writing the UGA Admissions blog, and at times my messages seem be on auto play. So, in order to say what “needs saying again” but in a different way, I will rely on words of wisdom from people who are much smarter than I am. “I do not know anyone who has got to the top without hard work. That is the recipe. It will not always get you to the top, but should get you pretty near.” – Margaret Thatcher A great deal of what we look at in admissions is the end result of the hard work you have put in during your high school years. We are focused on how you have performed in the high school classroom, as this is a key indicator in how you will do in a college setting. This does not mean that we only admit straight A students, but instead we are looking for students who have worked hard and show real strength in their academic success. It is not the critic who […]
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Tags: activities, file reading, freshman admission, holistic
Information on the UGA 2021 Application
David Graves May 7th, 2020
Big News!! For the UGA Freshman 2021 application, the UGA Admissions Office will accept the Common Application as an option for prospective student applicants. Okay, now that you have recovered from your shock (it only took us 10+ years to choose this option), here are the details for applying for next year. Applying UGA will accept any of the following freshman applications: The Common Application, The Coalition Application and the UGA based Application (only submit one application from one of these options). We will still accept documents from all the same providers (SCOIR, Naviance/Parchment, documents submitted through the UGA admissions site, mailed in materials, etc.) We will still require a Secondary School Report (SRR) from a counselor, an official transcript sent from your school, and we will accept optional letters of recommendation from teachers/community members. Currently, we will still require an official SAT or ACT exam result sent to us from the testing agency. If the University System of GA and UGA change this policy, we will announce it ASAP. The Freshman Application will open up on September 1. Essays UGA will require two essays, a longer personal essay (250-650 words) and a shorter essay (200-300 words). The longer Personal essay will use the Common Application prompts or Coalition Application prompts for 2021. I have listed the Common Application prompts for the Personal Essay below for your knowledge. We will also be using these prompts for the UGA based application. Some students have a background, identity, interest, or talent that […]
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Tags: application changes, applications, essays, freshman admission
2020 Wait List Update
David Graves April 30th, 2020
At this time, we are currently making a small number of decisions for students on the Wait List. Because of the unusual circumstances that we have seen this year, I cannot predict when we will complete our Wait List review, and I do not have an exact date for any future offers or when we will be done with the process. Given that our deposit numbers are close to what we predicted for next year, and that we have the uncertainty of Covid-19 impacting decisions, we do not know yet how many Wait List decisions we will need to make. As such, I predict that if we were to go deeper into the Wait List, we would then make small waves of decisions over the next month or two while simultaneously monitoring deposits, withdraws and Wait List responses. May 5 update: In reviewing the deposits we received as of May 1, we are extremely close to the number of students we plan to enroll for Fall 2020 (projected new freshmen is 5,600), but since we always project about 2-4% of our deposits to ultimately not enroll (due to personal situations, WL offers elsewhere, etc.), we will be admitting students off the Wait List. Out of the 1,150+ students who were offered the Wait List, roughly 700 decided to remain on the list. Late this afternoon, we will be offering admission off the Wait List to 300 students for the Fall 2020 term. For these students, their status page will show a […]
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Tags: decisions, waitlist
Admissions in a Changing World
David Graves March 18th, 2020
While this year in admissions and higher education started out as normal, it is going to end up as anything but normal. We are still in a state of unknown surrounding the actions that will need to be taken in response to the COVID-19 situation concerning admissions, so please take this as an initial post. I have been in admissions long enough to get through challenges both big (Hurricane Katrina) and small (the status page overloads/collapses on decision), and I know we will get through this situation. Here are a few things that have or will come up, and thoughts on these issues. Admitted Student Events: As you can guess, admitted student events in the near future, either on campus or off, are canceled. We will be following the policies of the state and the University and will not have any physical face to face events until we are sure that the situation is safe to do so. In place of these events, we are working on setting up virtual events, and we will be communicating with admitted students and their families about these as soon as they are ready to go. Please be patient, as we want to make sure to take the time to set up events that meet the needs of the student. I expect you will be hearing something from us soon. We know that for many accepted students, you are still making up your mind on where you want to attend college next fall, […]
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Tags: admissions, campus visit, grades
2020 Freshman Final Admits
David Graves March 13th, 2020
We plan to make the final wave of freshman decisions available today, March 13th, in the late afternoon time frame. For those of you who have been admitted to UGA, here is a post for you and a chance to comment. Please remember that this is not a blog where you should post statistics or throw fellow students under the bus. These types of comments will be deleted. Congratulations to all of the freshman who were admitted and we look forward to you becoming part of the Bulldog Nation. The next steps for a new student can be seen in the flyer in your admission packet, so please go ahead and review what you need to do next. In addition, there will be a great deal of information you can access off of your Status page. When you have the time, please review this, as there is key information in the Next Step materials. Please remember a small number of students will be admitted to start in January 2021. You will find specific information on your Status page and in your admissions packet. Here are some rough statistics on the Entire Freshman Admitted Class for 2020-November, February and March waves, where we admitted 13,131 students total, which is slightly above last year’s offers of admission (I do not have separate data on just the final group, sorry): UGA Calculated Grade Point Average mid-range/average: 3.97 – 4.22, with a 4.08 average Please remember this is not the GPA students see […]