Tag: admissions

The Zanzibar Effect

  David Graves      August 6th, 2021

There is a myth about a sea captain and a jeweler living on the island of Zanzibar, and it goes something like this: A long time ago, a retired sea captain lived on a remote area on the island of Zanzibar. Each day he had a ceremonial flag raising and lowering at sunrise and sunset, and he fired a cannon at exactly noon each day. A friend who was visiting the captain asked how he knew the exact time that noon occurred on the island, and the captain responded by saying that he updated his pocket watch daily based on the time shown on a large clock displayed in the window of the town’s jewelry store. Later that day, the friend was visiting the town center, and he came across the jewelry store the captain had mentioned, as it had a large antique clock front and center in it’s display window. He entered the store and found the jeweler hard at work behind the counter. His curiosity got the better of him, and he asked the jeweler how he set the time on the antique clock in the window. The jeweler replied, “oh, that’s easy, there is a retired sea captain on the other side of the island who always fires his cannon at exactly 12 noon each day, and I use the sound to set the time on my clock”. The moral of this story is that when you are trying to set a gauge for determining information (in […]

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Fall 2022 and Test Scores

  David Graves      May 17th, 2021

  The Board of Regents for the University System of Georgia (USG) announced this week that the twenty-six USG colleges and universities for the state of Georgia will be requiring submission of an SAT or ACT score for admission for First Year students applying for the Spring/Summer/Fall 2022 terms and subsequent semesters. As such, the UGA Admissions Office will move forward with the implementation of this requirement when we open up the application for next year.   As stated in past communications about the academic portion of our admissions review, UGA will continue to put much greater emphasis on what a student has done over four years in the classroom and in their core course selection as compared to a four-hour standardized test. In addition, UGA will continue to use a whole student review process in our admissions evaluation in order to look at an applicant’s academic and co-curricular strengths in our overall review.   We hope this information will help you plan out things for next year, and Go Dawgs!

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2021 Wait List Update

  David Graves      May 3rd, 2021

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 2021 (projected new freshmen number is 5,800), 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 some students off the Wait List. Out of the 1,900 students who were offered the Wait List, roughly 1,000 decided to remain on the list. Late this afternoon, we will be offering admission off the Wait List to a little over 200 students for the Fall 2021 term. For these students, their status page will show a new decision, and an email will then be sent out alerting them to a change in their status. Over the next few weeks/months, we will then see what the response to these offers is, and how our deposits and deposit/cancels are looking. 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 this has been and continues to be an unusual year, 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 […]

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January 2021 Admission Thoughts

  David Graves      January 21st, 2021

January in Admissions means two things: Exhausted admission counselors reading files, and nervous applicants waiting for a decision. I can’t do much about the first one (especially with almost 40,000 applications), but I can try to help with the second one. As such, here are suggestions on what to do and not do from now until we release final decisions. The first group is focused more on the next few months of the UGA process, as many questions cannot be answered at this time or our counselors are tied up reading your file. The second group is broader based concerning Admissions as a whole. UGA Specific Suggestions (for the next few months) DO NOT feel the need to call or email us to let us know you are still interested in UGA, love us and that we are your number 1 choice. While it is nice to be loved, it will not change a decision. DO take the time you would have put into professing your love for us into telling your teachers thank you for all the hard work they have put into this year, especially with so many challenges facing everyone. DO NOT call or email us if you have been admitted and want to ask about any additional scholarships that might be available, as we are still a long way from finishing the scholarship process and we will be working until April on this situation. DO celebrate if you have been admitted to UGA, and hopefully enjoy […]

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Uncomfortably Comfortable Owning the Admissions Process

  David Graves      September 29th, 2020

I remember when my wife and I bought our first house, a small 3-bedroom home in a little starter neighborhood less than a mile from downtown Duluth, GA. We were able to determine the color of the house/rooms, the look of the landscaping, the shape and color of the front door awning, and the overall feel of our home. We were thrilled, as it meant the end of apartment living and a chance to own our own place. Of course, with any new home comes new responsibilities. The day after we moved in, we had the bright idea to wallpaper the kitchen. My in-laws gave us a 30 minute instructional on how to wallpaper, then quickly escaped before we got started. Needless to say, the wallpaper went up, but I will never, ever, ever wallpaper anything again. My sanity and my marriage are too important to try that again. From there, we had to learn about water heaters, AC units, how to build a back deck from scratch, and later on how to baby proof a house. Side note, the most challenging thing we have ever done house wise has been to install a baby gate at the top of a set of stairs. It was like putting together a one-color jigsaw puzzle with 22 pieces missing. We almost threw it away and planned on just bubble wrapping our kids until they were three. When you own a home, you have to be okay with being “uncomfortably comfortable”, or comfortable […]

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UGA Admissions Director’s Cup

  David Graves      September 23rd, 2020

For the last four years or so, UGA Admissions has given out an award every year to the Georgia High School whose previous year’s class has the highest GPA for their freshman year at UGA. We have a requirement that the school must have a critical mass of students in the freshman group, so the 2019-20 contenders must have at least 10 freshman who enrolled for Fall of 2019. While we celebrate all students who enroll at UGA and their high schools, we wanted to recognize the academic success of these specific students. For 2020, the UGA Director’s Cup goes to Richmond Hill High School, as their UGA Freshman had a 3.86 UGA GPA this past year. Looking back at the last 4 years, here are the winners of the Director’s Cup: 2020 – Richmond Hill High School 2019 – Winder-Barrow High School 2018 – Madison County High School 2017 – Whitewater High School In addition, here are the schools for 2019-20 that had the highest UGA Freshman GPA in the other ranges of total freshmen: 5 or more freshmen – (tie) Fannin County Comp. HS/Vidalia HS – 3.87 UGA GPA 10 or more freshmen – Richmond Hill HS – 3.86 UGA GPA 20 or more freshmen – Cherokee HS (Canton, GA) – 3.81 UGA GPA 30 or more freshmen – Johns Creek HS – 3.79 UGA GPA 40 (and 50 & 60) or more freshmen – Northview HS – 3.77 UGA GPA As you can see, there are a […]

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I don’t know

  David Graves      July 14th, 2020

I have always been very comfortable with telling people “I don’t know”. I am a father of two kids, so according to them I haven’t known much for a long time. Even in Admissions, I am comfortable saying I don’t know. Will I get admitted if I do X? Will I get a full season of football tickets as a freshman? Will all my classes be after 9 a.m.? Will I get a scholarship if I have X GPA and Y test scores? Will I be able to get into the first Orientation session? Will I get off the Wait List if I do X? I cannot guess about any of these things. I used to think that that these questions were the hard ones to answer, but if nothing else, the first six months of 2020 has taught me that I truly do not know the answers to a lot more important things.   Here is a brief list of some of the things I don’t know at this moment: I don’t know exactly how things are going to work on college campuses in the Fall. I don’t know about college football, fans at the stadiums, tailgating, or how many games we will win. I don’t know if my socks actually match right now. I don’t know when we will be able to have tours and information sessions. I don’t know exactly how classes will run throughout the year. I don’t know the air speed velocity of an unladened […]

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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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December 2019 Admission Thoughts

  David Graves      December 4th, 2019

It is early December, and as such we are about two weeks removed from the Early Action decision releases. At this point in time, we are getting a wide range of questions from admitted freshmen, deferred EA applicants, Regular Decision applicants and potential transfer students. As such, this blog post will go into detail about the different questions that come up this time of year. Freshman Applicants What do I do now that I am deferred from Early Action? The first thing is to be patient. The next step of the review, which is the holistic read process, takes a while and we need time to look at everything within the files of the students we will be reading. Review the deferred EA FAQ for more details about what a deferral means, and what you can then send us to help in the review. If by mid-late December you know your fall grades but your school will not release an official transcript until January or later, go ahead and put your fall grades into your Update form along with any new activities or leadership roles. When will deferred EA or RD applicants hear a final decision? We have three decision dates for freshman, with the first one being in November. The next decision date is in mid-late February, and this will be a very small group of students who are mostly RD applicants, and would have been admitted in November if they had applied Early Action. A small percentage of […]

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EA Decisions and Suggestions

  David Graves      November 18th, 2019

As we stated earlier this month, UGA is planning on releasing the EA decisions on the Status page on Friday, November 22 in the late afternoon unless some serious problem arises, which I do not expect. If this changes, we will let you know, but this is the plan at this time. Please do not call/email/text/message/tweet asking for the exact time of “late afternoon”, as I cannot give an exact time. We will post a message here when it opens up. We are excited about this, and I am guessing you are as well, and hopefully it will allow for a little less nerve-wracking Thanksgiving break for some of you. I will also have an updated post on Friday with data on the applicant pool and mid-range data on the admitted group. In addition to the decisions being available on the Status page, letters will go out in the mail for Accepted students. Freshman denial letters will not be mailed out, as almost all applicants see their decisions online, and we, along with a number of colleges, did not want to have a letter that only served to reinforce the negative feelings they might already have. As well, initial scholarship and Honors offers will be released on 11/22, but know that we will reviewing students for scholarships through early April, and Honors will open their application in early December. Here are a few suggestions on how to react to the four different decisions: Admit: Celebrate with family, buy a lot […]

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