David Graves      January 26th, 2022 in Blog


The applications are all in for the UGA Regular Decision group of students, so here is some information on the total UGA freshman applicant pool for Fall 2022.

  • numbers imageThe total application numbers (EA and RD) are roughly 39,700, which is slightly up from last year.
  • Roughly 21,600 students applied for Early Action, and 18,100 applied for Regular Decision. We do not treat either group differently in the review process, only in the timelines for decisions.
  • Roughly 47% of the applicant pool is in-state, and 53% is out-of-state/international. For the most part we review each applicant the same no matter the residency, but there might be a slight difference favoring in-state students in the final decisions that will come out in March.
  • We have applicants from just over 6,300 high schools, with the range going from 1 applicant (a number of schools) to 416 applicants (Lambert HS). We do not limit decisions based on the high school a student has attended, but instead look at each student individually.
  • The top five choices of major by applicants is Biology (3202 applicants), followed by Business (3021), Finance (2327), Psychology (2058) and Computer Science (1633). A student is not tied to their initial choice of major, as enrolling students can change their major prior to orientation using the UGA student system called Athena. As well, this means we do not have different decisions based on different majors, as this would not make sense due to the ability to change majors.
  • We have applicants from 156 of the 159 GA counties, with the three outliers generally being from counties without a high school in the county, ones with a tiny HS age population, etc.
  • The most popular first names for applicants are William and Emma, and most popular last name is Smith, with seven William Smiths having applied. Does your name impact a decision? No. But I thought it was an interesting fact.
  • The average core course GPA for the entire applicant pool of 39,700 is roughly a 3.90 using the UGA GPA calculation method. This is not the GPA you see on your HS transcript, as that is usually very different from our GPA. We see such a wide variety of HS GPA’s and grading scales, ranging from 4.0, 5,0, 6.0, 12.0, and 100 methods (and more), thus using the various HS GPA’s on a transcript does not allow for equal comparisons. The link I have provided shows exactly how we calculate a GPA. Again, this the UGA GPA average for the entire pool, so as you can see the applicant pool is very strong academically.
  • The average SAT and ACT for the entire applicant pool of 39,700 is roughly a 28 Composite/1300 Total. While core grades and a student’s curriculum are much better indicators of academic strength than test scores, I am giving this data out due to the state of Georgia mandating test scores for all the GA public colleges/universities. Always take test score data with a grain of salt, and know that they are the least important academic factor by far.
  • The average Wordle score for a UGA applicant is Three. Actually, I have no idea of the Wordle success of our applicants or if any really play this newly popular game, but I figure that if you made it this far, you needed a laugh.
  • The projected freshman class is 6,000 students, and since we know that not all applicants we admit will enroll at UGA, we will offer a much large number of students than the size of the class (we do not have details on this specific number). We will not know exact details until we are able to look at the overall applicant pool, do analysis of how we project the admitted students will yield (meaning will they select UGA), and are then able to finalize decisions.
  • Currently, we are deep into the review of freshman files, so that means we are reading hundreds of files daily. As such, we are limited in our ability to respond to emails and phone calls.
  • We will have two waves of decisions going out in the next 3 months. A small group of students will be admitted in mid-February, and these students are academically at the top end of the applicant pool, would have been admitted in EA, and are almost exclusively RD applicants. The final decisions for all RD and deferred EA students will be released in mid-March. No dates for these two waves are available now, but we will give them out prior to the decision dates.
  • We continue to review files for both admissions and scholarships, and the next round of scholarships will be tied to the mid-March decision date or after.

Good luck, and Go Dawgs!



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