Greetings from Northern Virginia!

I thought I'd post my travel schedule in case any Fairfax County students want to ask questions in person this week. I'm hitting about 20 of the 25 public schools in the county. Wish me luck with the traffic!

Monday
10:00 am - Hayfield Secondary School
12:00 pm - West Potomac High School
1:15 pm - Mount Vernon High School

Tuesday
8:00 am - Lake Braddock Secondary School
9:30 am - West Springfield High School
11:45 am - TJHSST
1:00 pm - Edison High School

Wednesday
7:30 am - Chantilly High School
9:00 am - Centreville High School
10:30 am - South County Secondary School
1:00 pm - Robinson High School
7:00 pm - Bishop Ireton Evening Program

Thursday
8:00 pm - Fairfax High School
9:15 am - Woodson High School
10:45 am - Annandale High School
12:00 pm - JEB Stuart High School
1:30 pm - Marshall High School

Friday
8:00 am - Madison High School
9:30 am - Oakton High School
11:30 am - Langley High School
1:15 pm - McLean High School

One of my colleagues will be visiting other Fairfax, Arlington, Alexandria, and Loudon schools. If your school wasn't on the list, sit tight and check with your Career Center in a few weeks!

A first for Dean J

Walking down the stairs from the dome room in the Rotunda where I gave this morning's information session, I saw something I've heard about, but never seen at UVa. A letter to the Seven Society. The Sevens are one of the "secret" societies at UVa (the quotes are because only a few of the societies are really secretive). The Sevens are a philanthropic group of alumni that's been known to help people in need with a financial boost now and then.

There's a great story about The Sevens giving tuition money to a student who had lost both his parents in an accident. The roommate of one of our summer tour guides once got a letter instructing him to go to the 7th aisle of the supermarket, to the 7th box, etc. and he found an envelope with $277 in it and instructions that he was to buy a needy family in Charlottesville a Thanksgiving dinner. It's definitely one of the most interesting groups we have!

To get a message to The Sevens, put a letter in the arms of the Thomas Jefferson statue on the second floor of the Rotunda.

The Essay Topic

If you were a college admission officer at UVa, you'd read about 100 application essays each day. The vast majority would be in response to the question that asks students to write about a challenging or unsettling work, as the majority of students apply to the College of Arts & Sciences (CLAS). Many of the essays written in response to that prompt will contain, roughly, one of the following ideas:

• Calculus is hard
  
• AP _____ (fill in an subject) is hard
  
• 1984 is an unsettling book
• The DaVinci Code is an unsettling book
• Guernica is an unsettling painting

Those may all be true, but the fact is that they are common topics and no matter how eloquently a student writes about one of them, it's unoriginal and to an admission officer reading 100 essays each day, it's boring.

This is one exercise in which you want to stand apart from the rest of the applicants. So, while Calculus may be challenging, it might be more advantageous to write about something a little more unique. While the work you've been studying in your AP or IB class may be unsettling, keep in mind that students around the country are taking AP and IB classes with a similar syllabus.

I'm not completely certain about how students arrive at these common topics, but "over thinking" might be to blame. After reading the essay topic, something must pop into your head. Don't second guess it and talk yourself into writing about something more "impressive" or academic. Write about what comes naturally...we'll probably get a better sense of your voice and style in that essay than from something that's been contrived and coached into existence.

Sound good? Feel free to use the comments section for asking questions.

How important is the essay?

It's a beautiful Saturday morning in most parts of the country and a lot of you are stuck inside with your first weekend of homework since going back to school. Your college application essays are probably at the forefront of your mind in addition to the work that comes with the new school year. I've given essay advice in the past, but I thought I'd revisit the topic since it's an extremely important one. I'm going to do this over the course of a few entries. Let me start actually convince you that your essay is important because I don't think students believe this when they hear it.

Inside your application folder (and folders can be electronic or physical...we have physical folders this year and will be using electronic ones next year) is your application form, the School and Transcript Report form filled out by your counselor, school profile, transcript(s), recommendation(s), and a reader sheet that has your simple biographical data on it, testing, and areas for making notes about every component of the file.

There are a lot of forms in there and a lot of the information is in the form of data. It seems as though students know how the data elements need to look to be competitive. Your transcript should show a strong curriculum and good grades, your resume should show some involvement in school and/or community, your recommendations should be from people who can say wonderful things about you, etc. Most students wind up looking pretty strong. So, what's to distinguish one student with a strong curriculum, good grades, and nice recommendations from another student with a strong curriculum, good grades, and nice recommendations?

On top of that, consider the human element in the application review process. I hope you've picked up on this during your campus visits...admission officers like students. When we read your application, we're looking for reasons to admit you, not reasons to deny you. Reading a strong application with boring or predictable essays isn't very exciting, but when we're "won over" by amazing essays, we're quick to advocate on an applicant's behalf. If you're worried about getting into some of your schools, I think you should spend more time editing your essays than on reformatting your resume.

Are you convinced?

Ranking season comes again

Once again, it's ranking season. US News & World Report rankings will come out shortly and I feel compelled to once again point out that success isn't only found at a top ranked school. This year's methodology hasn't come out, but I imagine that, once again, US News did not take student satisfaction, student services, study abroad options, graduate school admission, or job placement as criteria. Aside from the average SAT scores, no student information seems to be included in their calculation.

That being said, I guess I have to write about UVa's ranking...tomorrow. I can't believe I had to do this, but the rankings are "embargoed" and aren't supposed to be released, though someone at another school sent them to me before the numbers sent to UVa directly made it to my inbox.

With UVa's hiring of some very prominent researchers, we might see our ranking shift in the coming years because the methodology used by US News puts a high value on faculty resources.

Update:

UVa has crept up one spot on the national list to #23 (tied with Georgetown and ahead of Michigan, which shared the #24 spot last year with UVa). The public school list hasn't changed since last year with Berkeley at the top the list and UVa coming in 2nd.

What does the application process say about the school?

I was away from the office for a few days to welcome the newest member of the Dean J household, Cav Pup (no, that's not his real name, but it will be on this blog). After he had someone's attention during virtually every waking moment for a few days, I decided to let him have his first taste of solitude and run to the recycling center yesterday. It was a quick trip, but as I flung old copies of the newspaper, The Hook and Cville Weekly (our two alternative weeklies) into the newspaper recycling container, I wondered how much of the bin was taken up by college brochures, fliers, and application materials.

Did you know that a 2% rate of return on an admission mailing is considered pretty good? Did you know that a large portion of every admission office's budget goes towards designing, printing, and mailing brochures? Does it all seem a little absurd in light of that 2% return rate?

At UVa, we've decided to cut back. We've never been big on having an elaborate "package" of mailings, but we have mailed out tens of thousands of viewbooks and applications each year. This year, we decided that with over 90% of applications coming in online, it was time to end the printing and mailing of the applications. Those who really want to apply on paper can download the application from our website.

Are UVa students conservative or liberal?

Every once in a while, someone mentions that they were told that UVa is full of conservatives. This originally surprised me, seeing that most colleges and universities in the United States are liberal places, as are the cities that surround them. Charlottesville is no exception, with it's eclectic mix of musicians, artists, writers, politicos, lawyers, and academics (the list could be longer).

Some statistics from our Office of Institutional Research just came my way and they point to UVa being a bit more left than some people believe it to be. 28% of UVa students designate themselves as conservatives, 35% are liberals, and 37% say they're "middle of the road".

Do those numbers surprise anyone?

2008 Undergraduate Application is available!

The 2008 undergraduate application is live!

Application website down

You'll notice that the application website is down today. You probably know what that means. Stay tuned for an announcement...

One last note for the Class of 2011

There was a nice story about the incoming class on our local news station last night featuring one of our summer student workers and Parke Muth, one of our admission deans. It dealt with the percentage of students who are international, African American, Asian, and Hispanic. The incoming class is the most diverse one we've ever had!

The wait is almost over!

The new online application is almost ready! We'll be making some final text edits and testing the application's functionality for the next few days and anticipate "going live" with the new undergraduate application in early August (stay tuned for an exact date).

I hope you've had a great summer and are getting excited for the start of your senior year!

CavBear enjoys a little summer reading

Is PR's "Counselor-o-matic" just a revenue tool?

Our student workers did an interesting project last week that prompted me to revive the old issues blog. They started playing around with The Princeton's Review's "Counselor-o-matic", which is on their webpage. The "tool" is supposed to suggested appropriate matches for students after they have answered a few pages of questions about their academic profile. We were wondering what sorts of responses would prompt the Counselor-o-matic to suggest UVa as a reach, match, or safety. Below are the "profiles" we used (GPAs are unweighted):

Profile 1: 4.0 GPA, top curriculum, top 5% of the class, 2000 SAT
Profile 2: 3.9 GPA, top curriculum, top 5% of the class, 2300 SAT
Profile 3: 3.9 GPA, weak curriculum, top 5% of the class, 2400 SAT
Profile 4: 3.8 GPA, top curriculum, top 10% of the class, 2200 SAT
Profile 5: 3.7 GPA, good curriculum, top 10% of the class, 2300 SAT
Profile 6: 3.6 GPA, top curriculum, top 10% of the class, 2100 SAT
Profile 7: 3.2 GPA, okay curriculum, top 20% of the class, 1700 SAT

The results: UVA didn't come up for a match for ANY of the profiles. One of the "top 5%" students specified their location as Virginia and still didn't get UVa as a match. She then got more specific and said she lived right here in Charlottesville and didn't get UVa as a match. At the same time, some very random, unknown schools came up time and again as "match" schools. The only changes that allowed UVa to show up on a list where designating ethnicity or an interest in sports.

The whole exercise has me wondering about whether the "Counselor-o-matic" is a marketing tool (schools are offered the opportunity to pay for "increased visibility" on that website). What's more, it has me worried that some students are going through the survey once or twice and think the resulting lists are reliable.

I think The Princeton Review has some explaining to do.

It's your turn to talk back

Around this time of year, schools around the country send out something called an admitted student questionnaire. Some schools pay The College Board to administer the survey for them, others (like UVa) create something themselves. Regardless of how it arrives, I think I speak for my colleagues when I saw we hope you take a few minutes to answer our questions. This is your chance to tell us about how you decided to go to the school in which you enrolled. It's also your chance to tell schools if they could have done something a little better.


Most ASQs have questions about where you decided to go instead of the school behind the survey. This is to help schools know what their "peer" institutions are. We know where our admitted students are often accepted, but it helps to see if there are new names to consider.

Some students are concerned that the colleges may "track" what they say in these surveys. I'm not quite sure why there's any concern, especially if you've already turned the school down, but let me assure you that we don't care about matching your answers up with your name. We are, however, interested in matching your answers up to characteristics about you. For example, we look at how students who applied to a certain school responded, or to how the answers of out of state students compared to Virginians. The data collected will help us focus on the programs and activities that students found most useful and also help us plan our travel season in the fall.

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.

Did you forget to respond?

There are still a good number of students who have not sent any response to our offer of admission. Today, we'll assume those students have turned us down and change their status.

If for some reason, you were offered admission, haven't replied yet, and want a spot in the incoming class, call our office. This does not apply to waitlisted students who were offered a spot. The letter those students received informs them of their reply deadline (usually one week after the letter is received).

Yet another UVa blog

Inspired in part by the traffic to this blog and the high number of comments from transfer students, yet another UVa admission blog has been created, the UVa Transfer Admission blog.

I hope some of you transfers will still visit Notes from Peabody, but I imagine you'll all be very excited to see a blog dedicated to addressing your concerns.