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 […]
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Tags: academic, file reading, final decisions, holistic, statistics
2020 Freshman Wait List
David Graves March 13th, 2020
We plan to make the final wave of freshman decisions available today, March 13th, in the late afternoon timeframe. For some students, you will be offered a place on our wait list. Every year our office has to predict approximately how many students we can admit in order to enroll our freshman class, but we can never be sure how many students will enroll until after the May 1 commitment deposit deadline has passed. If the number of students who say they will be attending UGA is lower than we expect, we may need to go to our wait list group in order to get the size that we want for our freshman class. This year we have 1,158 students on the wait list. We carefully monitor the deposits coming into the University to see where we are in comparison to the predicted freshman numbers. The FAQ can answer information on Wait List numbers, past year Wait List data, and other details (such as no, the Wait List is not ranked). For those of you who have been wait-listed, here is a chance for you to ask questions. Please remember that this is not a blog where you should post statistics or throw fellow classmates under the bus. These types of comments will be deleted. Before commenting/asking questions here, please review the decision letter and the FAQ, as they give a great deal of details of the Wait List process. The Wait List FAQ can answer some questions, but the most important […]
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Tags: freshman admission, waitlist
2020 Freshman Denial
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. Unfortunately, we are not able to admit a number of strong applicants as we are limited in the size of our freshman class. We know that you have a number of other strong college options and suggest you focus on the other great opportunities that are ahead rather than on a denial from UGA. If your ultimate goal is to graduate from the University of Georgia, then we suggest you look at transfer opportunities down the road. For now, focus on your current college options, find one that fits you best, and have a great freshman year there. Please read our Denied Student FAQ if you have questions. If you decide to contact us next week, please understand that we will not be able to give you a specific “reason” for a denial, as in this process we have looked at everything within an applicant’s file, and the overall reason is really that the overall applicant pool is very large and very strong. Things to Remember: UGA does not use the GPA from a HS transcript, but instead we calculate our own HS GPA based on core academic courses. For our admitted freshman, roughly 88% of their core grades were A’s, and 11.5% were B’s, with a majority of these strong grades being in Honors/Advanced/AP/IB/DE courses. In our holistic review, we also look at grade trends to see how a student has progressed […]
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Tags: denial, freshman admission
Admissions Urban Legends and Conspiracy Theories-the 2020 version
David Graves March 4th, 2020
For some reason, people love an urban legend or conspiracy theory. Are there really aliens being kept at Area 51? Do Bigfoot and the Lock Ness Monster really exist? Was there really a second shooter on the grassy knoll? When there is the unknown, some individuals look for any explanation, no matter the proximity to reality, to try and make sense of things. An Urban Legends horror movie trilogy was even made in the late 1990’s/early 2000’s based on a variety of myths (as well as a lot of dark stairwells, creepy villains and a lot of blood and gore). I still remember Leonard Nimoy hosting the show “In Search Of …” back in the 1970’s, and it has now made a comeback with Zackary Quinto as host. I guess you can never get enough about unsolved mysteries and unfounded theories about why something happened. After we release final decisions in mid-March, a whole host of admissions urban legends and conspiracy theories will pop up on social media, in comments on this blog, and in high school hallways. I can’t stop these rumors from starting, but I can at least give you some ammunition to stop these theories from spreading. Rumor #1 – UGA admits only a certain number of students per year from my high school, and after a cap is met, they stop admitting students. Fact – We don’t have the time, energy or desire to have a quota of admitted students for each high school. We are […]