We had a pretty quiet winter in Virginia up until about a week ago. Mother Nature decided to finally let us have a taste of what our friends up north are experiencing and sent us some snow. Schools around the Commonwealth were closed and we know that other regions have been experiencing snow closings away well.
We don't have many snow days at UVa (there was a stretch were we were convinced that UVa just didn't close at all!). CavDog never understands why people complain about going out in the fluffy stuff, but he doesn't have to shovel or commute. He also doesn't know that snow days affect when we release admission decisions.
When schools are closed, that means your counseling staff isn't in the office. When the counseling office is closed, that means mid-year reports aren't being sent to us. So we become stuck. Without mid-year grades, we don't have any new information when we review deferred applications that were moved from Early Action to Regular Decision. Without mid-year grades, we can't finalize a Regular Decision application.
In a couple weeks, when people start asking when we'll be done with the process, I'll probably refer them back to this point.
What's more, many districts still don't allow or have the capacity for the online submission of mid-year reports. We asked for mid-year grades to be sent to us by February 15th and we imagine that some of them are sitting in bins of mail that couldn't be transported due to the snow. Our staff has resorted to calling counselors to ask them to read grades to us over the phone so we could move forward with reading a file.
Please enjoy your snow days and bear with us as we work through all of your applications. As always, we aim to release early, but April 1st is the official notification day.
