Art Supplements 201

The Regular Decision arts supplement deadline is Decmeber 1st. Here are the most frequent questions I received and how I answered them:

Who should submit an arts supplement?
Anyone who intends to major, minor, or be significantly involved in the arts at UVa should think about submitting an arts supplement.  Submission is not required for anyone.

I don't think I'm going to be involved in the arts. Can a supplement help my application anyway?
I guess you could submit a supplement, but consider the fact that your supplement will be reviewed alongside those of students who are going to major/minor.  Submission alone doesn't help you.  The review by faculty is what could help you.

Can I submit ________ as part of my supplement?
Each type of arts supplement has specific instructions regarding format, length, and submission.  There are forms for visual art, dance, drama, music, and marching band.  Follow the directions on the form that corresponds to your discipline.

Can I combine a few areas into one supplement?
The supplements go to different departments for distribution and review, so if you want to submit a music and marching band supplement, you need to submit two supplements. One will get sent to the Marching Band Office and the other will go to the Department of Music.

The deadline is really early.  Can I submit late?
The deadline early because faculty need to review the supplements and send their notes to the Office of Admission in time for our review.  We don't encourage late submissions.

What about the Common App Arts Supplement form?
For now, we want you to use our forms.  We don't want recommendations (those are mentioned on the Common App's Arts Supplement form).  Just follow the directions on the UVa forms.

What questions do you have about arts supplements?

Important Links

The Arts at UVa

UVa Application Instructions (deadlines and basic info)

Arts Supplements Submission Iinfo & Forms

Missing document emails going out today!

A little over 400 Early Action applicants will be sent an email today about having an incomplete file.   If you get one of these emails, log into SIS to look at your to-do list to see what specific item is missing.  We aren't mad and you aren't in trouble.  Do not panic.  Calmly, but quickly, get us the missing item.

If getting the missing item to us requires a visit to your counselor, consider the possibility that the item was sent, but lost in transit.  I cringe at the thought of someone flying into the counseling office in a panic, accusing staff of not submitting credentials.

If your application is incomplete and the missing item is something for which you were responsible, get it done today. We aren't going to throw out your application because you didn't have your SAT/ACT scores sent.  Unfortunately, you're going to have to rush missing test scores and that's going to cost a some money.  I had hoped that addressing this earlier would have avoided that. Regular decision applicants, follow that link to see why you need to send your scores soon! 


We want you to complete your application. We aren't going to penalize you because you forgot one part of the process.


If you do not get an email, relax.  Do not send us a document unless we have asked for it.  Sending duplicates slows down the processing of documents we really need to complete other students' files. 

The only kind of duplicates we like (CavDog has 11 siblings)

Admission Chat TONIGHT!

The UVa Chat rooms will be open from 7 PM to 9 PM tonight. We'll have students and admission officers in the rooms to answer questions about UVa or the admission process. You'll have to register a username to participate and you can do that now or just before entering the chat.

Hope to see some of you there!
UVa Chat Rooms

Some notes about what you see in SIS

Let's talk about your status pages.  When you log into UVa's Student Information System (SIS), you should see a check list on the right side of the scree showing items that need to be submitted to make your application complete. Here are some notes about your status pages:

-"Initiated" in a term used by our SIS to show that an item has been added to your to do list. It means the item has not been completed yet.

-Mid-year reports come out whenever your first semester or second trimester is over.  The timing is different from one high school to the next.  SIS can't discern whether your school will have them before or after Early Action decisions are released.   The item is there for everyone.  If you are an Early Action applicant who just has the mid-year report on the check list, don't do anything more.  You're done!

-Below the chart where you list other schools attended, the Common App had one question asking if you are sending transcripts from all of those schools.  Ideally, you'd be able to select yes or no for each school.  Since you can't, that question doesn't really help us.  SIS is going to ask for transcripts from every school you list as having attended.  If you want that transcript taken off your to-do list, you can email about it. Put "Checklist Adjustment Request" in your subject line with your name.  Be sure to include your date of birth day high school in your email.  Do not include your Social Security Number.

-Once your application is complete and it moves to the "ready to read" mode, you'll see a box pop up at the bottom of the status screen. "View decision" will appear in the box. It doesn't mean your decision is ready. That's just something that's built into the computer system. If you hit "view decision", you'll just see a note about decisions not being ready at this point. When decisions are ready, we will release them.  I promise!  We are always excited to get to notification day!


-If you ever forget your SIS password or want to change it, you can follow the steps in that first email you got to generate a new password.

Do you have questions about your SIS status page?

Caption this: What is CavDog doing?

Admission officers often read applications at home a few days each week.  It helps to get away from email, the phones, and unannounced visitors and concentrate on giving each file a thorough review.  Usually, CavDog sits next to me while I read.  This year, something changed.

Part of the day is spent doing this:

So, for those of you who are looking to take a break from the waiting (or preparing of Regular Decision applications), let's play "caption this."  Give that photo a caption.

If you aren't familiar with "Caption This" entries, check out these ones from past years.

Admission Chat TONIGHT!

The UVa Chat rooms will be open from 7 PM to 9 PM tonight. We'll have students and admission officers in the rooms to answer questions about UVa or the admission process. You'll have to register a username to participate and you can do that now or just before entering the chat.

Hope to see some of you there!
UVa Chat Rooms

Outreach chat TONIGHT!

The UVa Chat rooms will be open from 8 PM to 9:30 PM tonight for a diversity chat hosted by the Outreach Office. We'll have students and admission officers in the rooms to answer questions about UVa or the admission process. This chat is meant for seniors. You'll have to register a username to participate and you can do that now or just before entering the chat.

Hope to see some of you there!
UVa Chat Rooms

Admission Chat TONIGHT!

The UVa Chat rooms will be open from 7 PM to 9 PM tonight. We'll have students and admission officers in the rooms to answer questions about UVa or the admission process. You'll have to register a username to participate and you can do that now or just before entering the chat.

Hope to see some of you there!
UVa Chat Rooms

Preliminary Early Action numbers

I have very early numbers for you.  Please understand that I don't have any other statistics to share right now.  Once we process all the applications that were submitted last night, I'll have more information.

We have 11,415 Early Action applications right now.  About half of those were submitted this week and 2,000 were submitted yesterday. 

The Early Action application period is now closed.  If you started your application with EA in mind, but now are planning to apply under Regular Decision, go to the "Future Plans" part of the application and change your response about how you're applying to reflect the change.

We have a lot of work ahead of us!  I'm going back to reading...

Happy deadline night!

Our deadline is tonight at midnight. Technically, you could submit an application at 11:59 PM and meet the deadline.

The Common App has a grace period to account for time zones and in case there are technical problems, but I strongly encourage you to hit submit before that final hour. There is obviously a lot of traffic on the Common App servers during these final hours and while I'm sure they can handle it, I can imagine the panic you'd feel if your internet connection cut out with minutes to go.



Once you submit all three parts of your application (the Common App, Supplement, and payment must be submitted for anything to be sent to us from the Common App system), it will take a couple days of processing to prompt a login email for UVa's Student Information System (SIS) to be sent to you. Add that address to your contact list so the email doesn't go into your junk/spam folder. Just follow the directions in the email and log into our system successfully.  You can do it!

When you log in to UVa's SIS for the first time, scroll to the bottom of the main page and become familiar with the different areas of the status page.

Don't be alarmed by your to-do list at this time.

Credentials may be in our system, but not yet linked to your file. It may take a couple weeks to get through all the applications submitted in these last few days, so please be patient! If your transcript arrived a while ago, it was scanned and put in a miscellaneous credentials file. A script and/or a staff member must link that transcript to your newly submitted application.  This can take a little time.

We will contact you when we are through the bulk of the processing if we are still missing documents.  Do not send duplicates of any credentials unless we contact you asking for them.  Don't worry about those status pages right now. 

Good luck, everyone!