Mar 22, 2013

UVa admits 8,528 for the Class of 2017


University of Virginia

Minutes after the admissions folks at the University of Virginia pushed the button releasing decisions last night, the “regulars” on College Confidential began lighting up the discussion board.

“Accepted! So elated! Really nice news after a waitlist and two rejections!” crowed one happy admit from New Jersey.

“Soo happy that I’ll have an opportunity to study in the university Thomas Jefferson built,” exclaimed another.

But the news wasn’t universally good. 

“I live in Northern Virginia and we have always said that we don't know WHO gets into UVA. Someone here or there, but honestly it's a long shot for most people,” mused yet another.

And for those who thought there is “no rhyme or reason” to the decisions, Jeannine Lalonde, senior assistant dean of admission (Dean J) is always quick to point out, “We dedicate months to this process and arrive at decisions after collaboration and discussion.”

To give the decisions some context, Dean J posted preliminary numbers for this year and recommended that admissions junkies with a real “need to know” could research numbers as far back as 1977 on the webpage maintained by the UVa Office of Institutional Assessment.

But the simple comparison with 2012 is interesting enough. Last year at this time, UVa reported receiving 28,272 applications (this number later decreased to 27,186) and made initial offers to 7,758 students. Including those pulled from the wait list, the total number of offers for the Class of 2016 was 8,039, of whom 3,446 eventually enrolled.

For this year’s class, the total number of applications went up to 29,005, with the number of in-state applicants increasing slightly from 8,788 reported this time last year to 8,831.

But the bulk of the increase in applications came from out-of-state students who submitted a grand total of 20,174 applications.

To provide for a larger class size, the admissions increased offers to 8,528—almost 10 percent more than last year. Of these offers, 3,594 went to Virginians (3,403 last year), and 4,934 went to out-of-state students (4,355 last year). Overall, the initial admission rate went up from 27 percent in 2012 to 29 percent in 2013.

There was no discussion on Dean J’s blog of the size of this year’s wait list. Last year, the wait list increased to 4,493 applicants, 2,540 of whom accepted spots. According to numbers provided for the Common Data Set, 287 were ultimately admitted from the wait list.

In any event, here are all the "unofficial" numbers released today by the UVa admissions office:

Total number of applications: 29,005 (up from 28,272 last year)
Total number of VA applications: 8,831 (up from 8,788 last year)
Total number of out-of-state applications: 20,174 (up from 19,484)

Overall offers:
8,528 (7,758 this time last year)
Total VA offers: 3,3,594 or 40.7% of resident applications (3,403/39.4% last year)
Total out-of-state offers:  4,934 or 24.5% of nonresident applications (4,355/23.4% last year)

The offers for nonresidents are higher because historic yield—or percent of students accepting offers—for nonresidents is generally lower.

Dean J also reports that the middle 50% SAT score for admitted students was 1990-2230. And 95.3 percent of the students receiving offers of admission were in the top 10 percent of their class.

“Regardless of what your status page says, you are going to be just fine,” concludes Dean J. “You are going to attend a great school and you are going to grow tremendously while there.”

Amen.

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