Be careful with your personal information

I've just heard reports that someone is calling college-bound students and requesting credit card information under the guise of being a financial aid officer. The students are being told that their next tuition payment is due immediately and that they can take care of it over the phone by giving some personal information.

Obviously, when you get a spoof email, it's easy to ignore, but I imagine it's a pretty scary when someone calls from a college or university and says there's a problem with your account. Just be forewarned that tuition bills at UVa are sent by mail and no one from our Student Financial Services office would call and ask for a credit card payment to be made.

If you get a call from someone claiming to be an aid officer from UVa, report it to the police (I imagine caller ID information would be very useful) and let our Student Financial Services office know about it (you can reach them toll free at 866-391-0063).

The UVa student blog is born!

As if you couldn't see it coming, our Summer Guides, students who spend the summer working with the Office of Admission, have started a blog. They've come up with a pretty spiffy title: The View from Grounds. They're just getting going and I'm sure they'd love to field questions from prospective students about anything on your minds.

Hoos for Hokies message finally comes down

After a record setting 50 days, the Hoos for Hokies message that was painted on the Beta Bridge has been painted over. At first, I hoped that this new message was painted on the opposite side of the bridge, but alas, it is directly over the original and over the update that was added by an art class at UVa (the artists were unknown at first, but were later revealed).

2008 Essay Questions

We've already posted the 2008 essay questions on the Office of Admission website, but I thought I'd post them here as well. See this as a hint. If you spend time working on college applications this summer, work on your essays. A lot of the time we spend reviewing applications is spent reading essays. Analyzing transcripts and reading forms can get a little dry, which makes us really look forward to getting a sense of personality from your essays!

(1) Please answer the question that corresponds to the school you selected on Part I of your application in half a page, or roughly 250 words.

College of Arts and Sciences: What work of art, music, science, mathematics, or literature has surprised or unsettled or challenged you, and in what way?

School of Engineering: Discuss experiences that led you to choose an engineering education at U.Va. and the role that scientific curiosity plays in your life.

School of Architecture: What led you to apply to the School of Architecture?

School of Nursing: Discuss experiences that led you to choose the School of Nursing.

(2) Answer one of the following questions. Limit your response to half a page, or approximately 250 words.

• What is your favorite word, and why?
• Describe the world you come from and how that world shaped who you are.
• Discuss something you secretly like but pretend not to or vice versa?
• What issue of local,national,or international significance concerns you? Why?
• "We might say that we were looking for global schemas, symmetries, universal and unchanging laws - and what we have discovered is the mutable, the ephemeral, the complex." Support or challenge Nobel Prize winner Ilya Prigogine's assertion.

(3) Please write on a topic of your choice.

If an essay question for another college piqued your interest, feel free to submit your response to that question. Please limit your submission to one page, or approximately 500 words.

It's maintenance time

It's almost time for the ApplyOnline website to come down so that we can prepare it for the next season. The site won't be coming down, but I just wanted to give everyone a heads up just in case there are some hiccups in the next few weeks. You'll still be able to log into your application, though there will be a point over the summer when we archive all accounts to have a nice, clean database ready for the next group of applicants.

You'll see a note about that when the time comes.