Tag: timelines

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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2020 Transfer Admissions at UGA

  David Graves      February 3rd, 2020

While the focus this time of year seems to be all about freshman admission, February is the time of year when we receive a majority of our transfer applications and our Evaluation Team begins to work on our transfer reviews, posting credit for work and helping students with any transfer issues. As such, here is some detailed information on the transfer process and the reasons for our deadlines, consideration levels and timelines. Deadlines Our most up to date deadlines for all of our applications can be found on our deadlines page, but here are some details about the transfer deadlines (for the Athens campus): Summer/Fall term transfer deadline – March 1 for both applying and for all materials to be submitted. Spring term transfer deadline – August 15 for both applying and for all materials to be submitted. The deadlines, especially the Summer/Fall March 1 deadline, are set at that time so that UGA admissions can review the transfer files in a timely manner and get decisions out to applicants early enough for students to both make plans for the future and attend orientation. If we had an application or materials deadline in June, we would not be able to turn around decisions until close to the start of the fall term. As well, if we had a later deadline in June, the consideration levels for admission would have to increase dramatically, as we would see an extremely large increase in applications, and we have limitations on how many transfers […]

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Summer/Fall 2019 Transfer Application

  David Graves      January 22nd, 2019

The Summer/Fall transfer application will open today, January 22. While the application opens today, please take your time completing it. Make sure you are applying for the correct program, the correct campus, the correct term, etc. Here are a few suggestions and updates for transfer applicants.  We project we will begin reviewing transfer files in early February, and we will start releasing decisions in early March. Once we begin releasing decisions, we will do so every Friday afternoon. If a decision is made on your application, you will receive an email late afternoon on that Friday notifying you that a decision is available on your status page. Review our transfer procedures and requirements, as well as our academic consideration levels. The summer and fall deadline for both the application and the materials is March 1.  Select the term you wish to attend, not one you have heard is easier to get in (this is a myth). If you select summer, for instance, we expect you to attend for summer, and if you do not, you cannot then attend in the fall. We are fine if you send in transcripts before or after you apply. As well, we need all transcripts from colleges ever attended as an undergraduate, even if you attended a college during HS. If a transcript has a different name than the one you applied with, please make sure to let us know so we can match up documents. The “other last name” filed is the place to […]

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Why Self-Reported Grades?

  David Graves      October 2nd, 2018

In our admissions recruitment system, we have 39,427 organizations listed as high schools. We have schools with 1,500+ seniors and schools with one senior. We have Syrupmakers and Sea Kings, Jaguars and Leopards, Dragons and Wolverines, and even Jem Bears and Unicorns (You go Unicorns!). And you know what? It seems like all 39,427 schools have their own way of doing things, especially when it comes to grades. Different grading scales, different grades, different weighting systems, and just plain being different in how they do things. Even the transcripts look different, with some being hand-written, some being 12 pages long, and some with grades from kindergarten up to 12th grade. The one big thing in common is that many of them will have students applying to UGA, and we have to somehow convert these varying grades and grading scales into a somewhat common GPA system so we can look at the academics on a level playing field. As you can guess, the recalculation of GPA’s for 27,000+ applications takes a while. And the more time we spend on trying to figure out a GPA, the less time we have to do holistic file reads. As well, the longer we take in trying to decipher each grading system, the longer it takes to get out admission decisions. This is why we decided roughly eight years ago to ask our applicants to self-report their high school grades on their application. UGA uses these self-reported grades as a framework for the GPA calculation, […]

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Random Admission Thoughts- September 2018

  David Graves      September 24th, 2018

Sometimes when writing the admissions blog, I have a specific topic to present based on the time of year, what is happening in our office at that time or something in the news that is timely. Other times, I just have random thoughts and ideas in my head of what is important or being talked about on social media or questions being asked about during our travels. Luckily for you, this is the second type, so no philosophical ramblings. As such, here are some random UGA admissions thoughts: There is no award for applying early in the process, but there are some consequences in waiting until the deadline to apply. We will treat your application the same if you apply on the first day or the last, but a majority of the files that are incomplete at decision time happen due to applying on the deadline. If you wait until the end, you cause others in the process (counselors, teachers, test agencies, etc.) to do things at a later time, causing some things to be late. Don’t wait until the end to apply. UGA uses “best scores” in the admission review, so we only look at the strongest sub scores for your SAT or ACT tests. If you take the SAT or ACT multiple times, we will only look at the strongest scores. What does this mean? Don’t wait until the last minute to send in scores after you see how you did. UGA requires a school report as a […]

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2018 Early Action Decision Timeline

  David Graves      November 9th, 2017

For all of you who are waiting anxiously by your computer/mailbox, nervous about your Early Action decision, here is some good news. UGA is planning on releasing the EA decisions on the Status page on Friday, November 17 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. If there are issues, the release date and time would then be a little later, either over the weekend or the early part of the next week.  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. 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. Here are a few suggestions on how to react to the four different decisions: Admit: Celebrate with family, buy a lot of UGA gear to wear for the Thanksgiving break, but remember that not […]

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Summer/Fall 2017 Transfer/Transient Applications are Open

  David Graves      January 25th, 2017

The Summer/Fall transfer and transient applications opened on Tuesday, January 24. While the application is now open, please take your time completing it. Again, please take your time, as it is much easier to submit a correct application than fix problems with a error filled one. Make sure you are applying for the correct program, the correct campus, the correct term, etc. Here are a few suggestions and updates for transfer applicants. While the application is open, we project we will not begin reviewing Summer transfers and transients until mid-late February, and we will not start with Fall transfers until March. Review our transfer procedures and requirements, as well as our academic consideration levels. Select the term you wish to attend, not one you have heard is easier to get in (this is a myth). If you select summer, for instance, we expect you to attend for summer, and if you do not, you cannot then attend in the fall. Please send in all the required transcripts after you apply, not before. As well, we need all transcripts from colleges ever attended, even if you attended a college during HS. When you are at the page where you enter in your previous schools, start typing in the name or city of the school, and it will auto generate schools that match. Select the correct one and the right code will then populate. If a transcript has a different name than the one you applied with, please make sure to let us […]

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April 1 Random Admission Thoughts

  David Graves      April 1st, 2016

It is April 1, so we are juggling a wide range of things at this time. We are working with freshmen, transfers, deposits, recruiting future classes, orientation planning, etc. I am also in the middle of a large installation of a new recruitment system (which is going great), but it is eating up most of my time right now. As such, here are a few notes about what is happening: Transfer applicants: We are well into reviewing transfer files, but each ones takes time, as we have to determine how your courses transfer into UGA, calculate an overall transfer GPA, determine hours, etc. Transfer decisions go out daily once we start the review process, and we are averaging roughly 50 files reviewed per day, M-F. I cannot guess when an applicant will hear a decision, as it depends on the number of applicants, when a file is complete, how complex the files is, etc. I am an admissions officer, not a fortune teller who can predict the future. Documents: Transfers, please remember to give us 10 business days from the day a transcript is sent OR you submit your application, whichever is last. It is a mostly manual process to match college transcripts, so it takes a while. If you left a college off the application this will cause problems, as we need official transcripts from every college you attended as an Undergraduate. Timelines: The Timelines page at under the blog header is the best place to understand more about […]

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Fall 2016 Transfer Reviews

  David Graves      March 7th, 2016

On Tuesday, March 8, our office will start reviewing Fall transfer applications.  We are finishing up the last of the summer applications now, so that will allow us to start with Fall transfers. The deadline for Fall has not passed yet, and we are still receiving applications and documents, so we cannot say how long it will take us to finish or guess when you will hear a decision. Make sure to check your myStatus to see if we have your most up-to-date transcript(s), as we cannot make a decision without the most up-to-date work.  If you were enrolled in coursework last fall and have not sent a transcript with your fall grades, you should have one sent as soon as possible.  To be complete and ready to review, we must have a transcript from each college/university you have previously attended (we try to review files based on the date of a file being completed).  If we see that you were enrolled in courses last fall and we do not have a transcript with those grades, you are not complete and this will delay a review of your application. The good news is that our evaluation team will be able to put all their attention towards transfer reviews now, so I expect a jump in the number of files reviewed per day. Transfer decisions are made on a daily basis Monday through Friday, and it varies on how many decisions we can make in a day due to the complexity of some […]

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Ok…So What Happens Now?

  David Graves      January 12th, 2016

We are about to hit the RD application/Deferred EA part II deadline, and everyone now starts to get into the mindset of “Now what?”. Here are a few hints to get you through the next few weeks/months. Patience. Patience is key, as any deadline brings out a rush of supporting materials. We will receive tens of thousands of documents, and we need time to match these items up, enter them into our system, and have them show up on the myStatus page. The myStatus page is not a live feed, so if a teacher recommendation is added to your file right now, it will not show up until at least the next day. If documents were sent prior to you applying, it will take longer to match things up, as we need to do it by hand. As well, some items get split up when we receive a packet, such as a fee waiver form, as different steps need to be taken with different items. A school/counselor form, for instance, needs to be reviewed by hand if it is not done through our online portal, and thus takes a little longer to enter into the system. Same with residency documents/permanent residency cards, etc. You do not need to call/email us if you do not see an item on your myStatus page. Give us 10 business days from when you applied or the document was sent (not requested but actually sent), whichever was later. Test Scores. We will take the January […]

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