UVa admits 9,416 for class of 2020

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

“Accepted from MA!!” crowed one happy applicant.  “It was my first choice I’m so excited does anyone know if there’s a Facebook group?”

Another reported, “I was deferred EA, but accepted RD OSS! Total shock. I thought I had no chance when I was deferred because I applied for engineering. So excited and can’t wait to figure out where I am going to go!”

And from Nebraska: “Surprised? Yes. Excited? Even more so! I’m seeing all of these applications that didn’t make it…GPA and scores aren’t EVERYTHING…They are a part of the picture.” That’s more likely to be true if you’re applying to Virginia from Nebraska.

But the news wasn’t universally happy.

“I don’t get it,” moaned another applicant. “I get deferred so that the committee can review my mid-year report…My report is flawless, yet I still get denied? Not even waitlisted.”

Others were more philosophical, “…being bitter solves nothing. Pick yourself up and move on UVA just helped you in determining which school is right for you—if you weren’t accepted, then clearly it’s not the best fit.”

To give the decisions context, Jeannine Lalonde Smith (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 2015 is interesting enough. Last year at this time, UVa reported receiving 30,853 applications (this number tends to jump around a little)—a slight decrease from the previous year—and made initial offers to 8,786 students.

For this year’s class, the total number of applications rebounded to 32,426, with the number of in-state applicants increasing from 9,147 reported this time last year to 9,653 for the class of 2020.

The biggest contributing factor to the overall increase in applications, however, was the bump from out-of-state students who submitted 22,773 applications—up from 21,706 during 2014-15.

To account for a steadily decreasing yield (percent of students accepting offers), which dropped from 53 percent in 2005-06  to 40 percent in 2015-16, as well as a need to continue growing class size, admissions increased offers to 9,416—about seven percent more than last year. Of these offers, 4,019 went to Virginians (3,800 last year), and 5,397 went to out-of-state students (4,986 last year). The early action admits accounted for 5192 of the total. Overall, the initial admission rate increased to about 29 percent from 28.5 percent last year.

According to information provided by UVa to the Common Data Set, 4,547 students were offered spots on the wait list last year, and 2,081accepted the offer.  Of those students, 402 were eventually admitted.  

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

Total number of applications: 32,426 (upfrom 30,853 last year)
Total number of VA applications: 9,653 (up from 9,147 last year)
Total number of out-of-state applications: 22,773 (up from 21,706)

Overall offers: 9,416 (8,786 this time last year)
Total VA offers:  4,019 or 41.6% of resident applications (3,800/41.5% last year)
Total out-of-state offers:  5,397 or 23.7% of nonresident applications (4,986/23% last year)

Overall offer rate for the defer group:  21.4%
Students Offered spots on the wait list:  15%

Note that the offers of admission for nonresidents are higher because historic yield for nonresidents is generally lower than that for in-state student.

In a press release, UVa reports that of those admitted, 933 are first-generation college students and more than 30 percent come from minority backgrounds. They come from 49 states, including Virginia, and more than 100 different countries.

And they present outstanding credentials. For those admitted who submitted SAT scores, the middle 50 percent range was 1970-2250 (CR, M and W), with a Critical Reading and Math combined SAT mean score of 1400. The middle 50 percent ACT composite was 30-34. And 92.8 percent of admitted students were in the top ten percent of their high school class, for those who attend schools that report rank.