Tag: decisions

Admissions Causation and Correlation

  David Graves      March 5th, 2021

Fifteen plus years ago, I did a presentation at a local library just north of Atlanta for a parent group, talking about admissions in general but also going into detail about the UGA admissions process. The room was full of eager parents waiting for a glimpse behind the curtain of admissions (not exactly my plan, but that is what it felt like). Prior to me giving my talk and taking questions, the organizer of the event introduced herself and let the audience know of her college knowledge. She stated that her son was admitted to a prestigious university (insert whichever top 20 college you wish here), and that the reason he was admitted was due to her insistence that he play the tuba in high school. The subtle message was that while other students were playing standard instruments like the saxophone or clarinet, her child was playing a unique/unusual one, and that made him jump off the page. Why do I still remember this story? Two reasons. First, I always wonder if her son really wanted to play the tuba, much less any instrument, and if he still harbors some resentment about the decision that was forced on him. Second, I always wonder what that college’s admission office would say about the assumption by the mom’s statement. When I read admissions files, it is always interesting to see an applicant try something unusual, but it does not then cause that the student’s chances of admission go up. I recently tweeted […]

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2021 EA Decisions and Data

  David Graves      November 20th, 2020

Early Action decisions will be released late this afternoon, so here are some details about the EA applicant and admitted groups. I will also add a comment to the top of this post when decisions go live, and I will announce it on Twitter as well. When you log into your status page, you will see a “View Update” link under the Status Update, and that is where you will see your decision. About 20 minutes after we release decisions, an email will go out to students who have not already checked their status letting them know a decision is available on their status page. For students who were deferred, please understand that this is not a denial decision.  We want to be able to have a more in-depth review of you, including short essays, activities, recommendations, etc.  Please be sure to read the deferred student FAQ page before commenting on here. There will also be an article in the UGA News next week which will give more broad details on the class as a whole, so I suggest you also review this information when it is available. Quick Early Action Numbers (These numbers are mid-ranges, not minimums.) Applications Received: 20,901 (20,871 with fee paid or fee waived) –UGA received roughly 27% more EA applications than last year. Based on the data on applications started for RD for this year, we expect a larger group of applicants to apply using that option than last year. Offers of Admission: 8,086 -This […]

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2021 EA Decisions & Suggestions

  David Graves      November 16th, 2020

As we stated earlier this month, UGA is planning on releasing the EA decisions on the Status page on Friday, November 20 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. Due to the large increase in applications, initial scholarship and Honors offers will be released in early December, but know that we will reviewing students for scholarships through early April, and Honors will open their application in early December. Here is some data on the overall EA applicant pool so that people have a […]

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2021 EA Timelines

  David Graves      November 2nd, 2020

This morning the UGA Admissions Office announced that our Early Action decision release date would be Friday, November 20 in the late afternoon. If you have been following my blog for a while, you will know not to ask when late afternoon is, as I cannot give you an exact time. In the lead up to the decisions going out in three weeks, here is some data about this year’s Early Action application group. Total EA Applications: 20,800 (submitted and app fee paid) This is an increase of 28% or so from last year, which is a very big jump. Complete Early Action Applications as of today: 20,550 99% are complete right now, very impressive. EA Applicants Applying within 3 days of Deadline: 11,620 Wow, just wow. Percentage of EA Applicants using Common App: 80% We are fine with any application source, but in our first year with the Common App, this is big (and it part of the reason for the increase in applications. Residency data on EA apps: 51% in-state, 49% out-of-state/international We do not make different decisions based on residency, but it is an interesting data point. Most common majors: Biology – 2,211 applicants, Undecided Business – 1,765, Psychology 1,253 We do not make different decisions based on major, but it is always interesting to see the different academic interests of our applicants. I order to deal with the large increase in applications, UGA will be delaying the release of EA scholarship information and the Honors decisions until early […]

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Freshman Application FAQ

  David Graves      September 4th, 2020

The UGA Freshman application opened up on September 1, and in the first 4 days, thousands of students started an application. We generally have a small spike of students start the application right away, but only about 200 have actually submitted the app right now, so don’t panic if you have not started. But now that the application is open, here are a few things to think about concerning your application to UGA. Should you apply EA or RD? I have no idea, as this is really up to you. The EA and RD reviews are the same, just on a different timeline. We have an initial academic review of each applicant, and then for a number of students, we go into more detail in our holistic review process, where we look at everything. We will be reading a large number of files during the October/November EA initial process, and we will also defer a number of applicants where we want to look closer at their file holistically but we need more time to read the files (mid-October to mid-November does not give us a huge amount of time for holistic reads). The big question you should ask yourself when choosing EA vs RD is as follows: Are you comfortable with us reviewing your file on October 15, or do you need more time to work on the app, get in later test scores or fall grades? If you are good with us reviewing you somewhere around 10/15, apply EA, […]

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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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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 […]

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UGA 2020 EA Decisions and Data

  David Graves      November 22nd, 2019

    Early Action decisions will be released late this afternoon, so here are some details about the EA applicant and admitted groups. I will also add a comment to the top of this post when decisions go live, and I will announce it on Twitter as well. For students who were deferred, please understand that this is not a denial decision.  We want to be able to have a more in-depth review of you, including short essays, activities, recommendations, etc.  Please be sure to read the deferred student FAQ page before commenting on here. There will also be an article in the UGA News next week which will give more broad details on the class as a whole, so I suggest you also review this information when it is available. Quick Early Action Numbers (These numbers are mid-ranges, not minimums.) Applications Received: 16,585 (16,511 with fee paid) –UGA received slightly fewer EA applications than last year. Based on the data on applications started for RD for this year, we expect a larger group of applicants to apply using that option than last year. Offers of Admission: 7,025 -This is somewhat below last year’s admitted numbers, but with the number of EA applications and current RD projected application data, it makes it harder to predict what will happen with overall application numbers. UGA Admissions wants to insure we make good decisions for the overall applicant pool, and as such we need to be thoughtful as to how many offers we […]

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2019 Wait List Update

  David Graves      May 3rd, 2019

Starting today (May 3), we will begin to finalize our decisions for students on the Wait List. I expect that all decisions will be completed sometime in the next few weeks, but I do not have an exact date. Due to the fact that our deposit numbers are very close to what we predicted for next year, we are very limited in the number of offers we are able to make. We will be making Wait List decisions in the same manner as our other admission decisions, where a decision will be displayed on the status page and an email will be sent shortly after a decision is made to alert the applicant that a status change has occurred. Admitted students have a  two-week Commitment Deposit deadline from the acceptance date. We will be releasing a group of Wait List admits late this afternoon totaling 150 students, with most of these being for Fall 2019. We are not finished with the Wait List yet, but will finalize things over the next few weeks. Only students who are admitted today will receive a decision and an email indicating a change in their status today. In reviewing the students who we admitted off the Wait List, there were a variety of individual reasons for the offers that were made. As such, I cannot give an overarching reason for the decisions. We did take into account our earlier reviews of the files, along with a wide range of information that we had on […]

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UGA Decision Dates for 2019

  David Graves      February 6th, 2019

The final two decision dates for UGA freshman applicants are now set (unless some major issue impacts our office), and the smaller February wave of decisions will be released on Friday, February 8, while the final decisions in March will be released on Friday, March 15. In addition, transfer decisions will begin being released on Friday, March 1. Decisions are all released in the late afternoon, but I do not have an exact time (so don’t ask me for one). February Decisions – UGA will offer admission to just around 2,000 freshman applicants on Friday, February 8. This group of decisions is made up of only offers of admission, and if you were admitted, you will be able to see the decision on your Admission Status page (so only admitted students will see a decision change on their status page) and these admits will receive an email communication. Additionally, an admissions packet will be sent out in the mail the following week. Our office is too busy reviewing files for me to run any mid-range academic averages at this time, but the academic information should be very similar to the Early Action admitted students (it will not be exactly the same, as we had a large number of EA admits who were applying for our top scholarships, which slightly skews EA stats a little higher). My earlier blog post about Early Action decisions gives you more insight into the academic strength of this range of student. As we did in the […]

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