Before midnight on May 1st, you need to pay a deposit at one of the colleges on your list. If you have questions, you have until 5 PM to call admission offices and up until 11:59 PM to post questions online in the various forums students use to talk about admission. If you actually expect responses to your question, I'd post it a little earlier. I won't be at a computer for most of the day on Saturday, so get the blog-worthy questions in tonight.
Simply hitting the "accept" button on our offer page doesn't put you in the Class of 2014. You must continue on to the payment process (turn off your pop-up blocker to do this) to become and official member of the class. The payment system is a secure, e-check system, so you have to type in the routing and account numbers on a check to pay the deposit. You can use a credit card, but I believe the credit card company's fee is passed on to you and I'm pretty sure one brand of card (Visa?) doesn't work with the system.
Good luck to those who are trying to make a last minute decision! If you have any questions about UVa, don't hesitate to post them here. If you have technical problems, email 4help@virginia.edu or call (434) 924-HELP.
CavDog wishes you were here
Let me address one practice that is not acceptable: double depositing. There are some people out there who encourage students to pay deposits at two schools, thus buying them extra time to make their final decision. These students sometimes remain deposited at two schools for weeks. Some even attend more than one orientation session.
I think double depositing is unethical and it drags out the waitlist process many more weeks than it should last. Most of the time, waitlist movement trickles down in a fairly predictable fashion, with most schools finishing up their offers by the end of June. Double deposited students sometimes cancel much later than that and some schools have resorted to keeping an extended waitlist to ensure spots that open late in the summer can be filled.
If a student double deposits, we usually hear about it from their school when two final transcripts are requested. Many guidance officers are quick to make sure we know that a student was not advised to double deposit by their high school.
EDIT at 6:30 PM: I got an email from someone who confused double depositing with being on a waitlist. It is perfectly acceptable to deposit at one school while remaining on the waitlist at another. Someday, perhaps the admission process will allow for some sort of first step before a final commitment is required, but for now, you have to pick one school.
