Peabody is the building, Jack is the dog, and I'm Dean J (she/her, btw).

There are years of posts here. The search box works well, but please consider the age of the posts when you find them. The college admission process changes every year!

References to emailing updates to your application are from the years when we didn't have the current applicant portal. Please follow the instructions in your portal to submit all updates.

Welcome to the blog and thanks for reading!

Friday, December 06, 2019

Five Notes about the #UVA24 Early Decision Release

Jack's ready!

I've been fielding a lot of questions via DMs in Instagram and reddit, but I really need to read applications right now. I'm going to answer the most frequent questions here.

1. I don't control the release time. Our operations team has to run several processes to make the decisions show up. Please don't open multiple tabs or constantly hit refresh your portal. Set a time tonight when you'll check and do something else until then. We'll send a mass email when the decisions are posted, but news usually spreads quickly on social media when people notice the update happened. 

You don't need to call us to verify that decisions are going up tonight.The receptionists can't tell you an exact time or your decision.

2. I've seen the chatter on reddit that multiple schools are releasing decisions this weekend. This is always an exciting time, but some of you aren't going to get decisions you wanted. I hope you'll focus on the college options you have instead of the ones you don't at the end of the day. I hope those of you who get offers will celebrate your success, but also be gracious around those who might not have gotten good news.

3. I will post blog entries where you can talk about the different decisions. I'll be back to work through any questions that are asked in the comments tomorrow.  I trust you to be respectful of others in the comments. A lot of people on Grounds will be watching #UVA24 on social media so they can welcome our newest Wahoos to the UVA community. We love seeing your reactions when we check that hashtag!

4. Please don't post personal information in the comments (contact info, statistics, etc.). As I discuss often around here, school-specific statistics like GPA and rank are meaningless without context. There have been times when enough information about an applicant has been shared that their classmates could identify them.

5. EcholsRodman, and College Science Scholars will be notified after Regular Decision.



And here's my biannual (now triannual, I guess) thank you/pep talk...

THANK YOU to all of you who have read and commented on the blog and chatted via social media so far this season.

Regardless of what SIS shows you tonight, you are going to attend a great school. You're going to learn from amazing, inspirational professors, administrators, and peers. You're going to meet people with whom you will stay friends for the rest of your lives. You're going to pull all-nighters studying. You're going to pull all-nighters not studying. You're going to have great successes and you're going to fail miserably at some things. What's going to make or break those experiences is your response and what you learn from them, not your location when they happen.

Remember that your decision is not a statement about your value. Most of our applicants are qualified. They are perfectly capable of doing the work at UVA. Our first-year class just isn't large enough to accommodate everyone.


Best wishes to those who won't be back to the blog after this (if you're reading this by email, you can unsubscribe yourself at the bottom of the email). To the rest, I hope you'll continue to comment and stay in touch.

It's a big night and I'll be thinking about you all. Good luck!