Submitting the First Semester/Trimester Grades Report

The mid-year report for UVa is super easy. We don't need anything from your counselor. You simply log into the online application to fill out a form. You'll have room to explain any changes in curriculum or to give us updated information about testing and activities.

Here are some screen shots to get you to the report.

When you log into the online application website, you'll see the general admission menu:

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Click on "Apply Online" to get to the online application's menu. At the top of the menu, you'll see a message confirming that your application has been submitted and a link to the mid-year report form. Click that, fill in your courses and grades, submit it, and you're done!

If you applied with a fee waiver and haven't provided documentation yet, you will not see this link. Your application is not considered complete until the documentation has arrived.

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Hope that helps! If you are admitted to the University, your need to have your school send a FINAL transcripts as soon as the second semester is over. We'll verify the grades you submitted at that point.

The final transcript is very important. You will not be able to sign up for classes at orientation without it! I'm going to give you this heads up many times over the next few months. Every year, a number of students show up for orientation without ever having submitted a final transcript and they get stuck hanging out at the Office of Admission waiting for their school to fax a transcript while everyone else is registering for classes.

Let's hear some ideas for weekend topics

I promised the return of the weekend topic, but instead of writing about what I think is interesting about live at UVa and in Charlottesville, I'd like to know what's on your mind. In the past, we've talked about transportation, restaurants, outdoor activities, and weather (40 degrees today). The idea is to have topics that aren't admission related and to instead give a better idea about what life is like in Charlottesville.

What topics would you like to see discussed on the weekends?

Should UVa's Office of Admission have a presence on Facebook?

facebook Originally uploaded by annieee

When I first joined Facebook, I thought it was neat. I saw it as a way for people in a college/university community to communicate without all the "sketchiness" of other social networking websites. When the idea of having an official UVa Admission presence on the site came up a few times, I toyed with the idea, but saw Facebook primarily as a student site. I was kind of indifferent about having an official profile for the Office of Admission. If it was deemed important, I'd create it, but I wasn't particularly enthused by the idea.

That opinion was formed back when a .edu email address was required for membership. These days, it seems that Facebook has exploded in the same way that MySpace did. Third party applications dominate the site and people with an anonymous Gmail account can sign up and get a profile. It looks like a very different site and while some features are great, others impede navigation and clutter pages.

Today, The Chronicle's Wired Campus blogger writes about one professor who has written a blog entry predicting that this the year of Facebook's demise (he goes on to talk about positive effects of Facebook). He writes about the things that Facebook users probably find tedious about the current state of the site.


What do you think? Do you think we (UVa Office of Admission) should have a formal presence on Facebook? Do you think Facebook is falling out of favor? If so, what site might fill in that space for students?

The return of the weekend topic

I started writing about non-admission topics on the weekends last year and thought I'd return to doing that. It's nice to get away from the admission talk for a little bit and I think it also helps some students who might want to ask questions about life in Charlottesville.

I'll start things off with a correction. One of my topics last year was the weather. I confidently wrote that we didn't close UVa for snow. Well, looking back, I found a day or two in 2003 when classes were canceled (but the school stayed open). This past week, classes after 4 PM were canceled because of another storm. Now, that didn't really affect a large number of undergrads, but it's worth mentioning. Mea culpa.

Our "storm" this week brought about three inches of snow to Charlottesville. It was nice to get a taste of winter, but it was also nice to see it melt away within a day or two.

Despite it being his first time seeing snow, CavDog was unimpressed by the falling flakes.

Online + paper = slowing down our process

There's a practice that seems more common than ever: sending paper copies of documents already submitted online.

I don't know why this is being done, but it defeats one of the nice things about having an online application, which is having less mail to open and less paper to process. Many counselors seem to be enclosing a copy of applications that have been submitted by their students online, many students are sending copies of essays, and many teachers are sending duplicate recommendation letters.

Online applications are supposed to streamline the process. However, if we have to handle two copies of everything, the flow of documents is significantly slower. Trust the online process! Know that if there's a problem, we'll email you.

Which reminds me...please keep checking the email account you gave us on your application. You can update it if it changes, but that is the primary way that we will contact you if there is a problem.

New status message

I decided to update the message on the status message to make it more clear and to use some HTML to make it look a little nicer.

Your application has been received and is being processed. At this time, we are data-entering thousands of credentials which have been mailed to us. If items are not listed as received, please do not call our office as they may have arrived, but not checked into our computer system. We will contact you if we are missing any documents crucial to the review of your application.

First-year applicants should log back in to submit mid-year or first trimester grades online as soon as they are available. Please check the admission blog at http://uvaapplication.blogspot.com periodically for updates about our process.

Thank you for applying online to the University of Virginia!

Book of the Year so far...

The most popular book I've seen used as a topic for essay 3 so far this year is....(drum roll)....


Obviously, it's still early in reading season, so my "Book of the Year" may change, but it seems as though this bit of existentialism is being served up quite routinely in AP English classes this year. There have been some fantastic essays in which students have talked about how this book affected them and how they act. Of course, there have been plenty of essays that read like a book report, summarizing the plot.

I'm personally enthralled by absurdists like Camus, Ionesco, and Bérenger ( and other French writers like Sartre and Hugo), so it's been fun for me to read your "take" on this one.

Some surprises in the numbers

When we decided to eliminate early decision at UVa, we were convinced that the move would cause a drop in the number of applications received. We thought this was an acceptable trade off.

Well, the preliminary numbers are in and we have a big surprise. Our applications numbers are up. Now, the increase isn't dramatic, but it's still very exciting. I think a number of schools out there are interested in eliminating early programs and they are watching Harvard, Princeton, UVa, Florida, and Delaware this year to see how our application statistics are affected by the move.

Looking at the Data Digest, we had 18,046 applications last year and 17,798 were completed applications (meaning students followed up with all the required documentation). At the moment, we have over 18,500 applications submitted (the number . It will take a few weeks to know how many become completed applications and then a few months for profile data to be compiled.

Deadline Extension

In a few hours, the application will be back open. Those with accounts created should be receiving the following email:

Late last night we experienced technical difficulties with our server which resulted in some students having problems submitting their on-line application by the January 2 deadline. In light of this event and the power outages in some areas of the country due to heavy snow, we have decided to extend our application deadline one week to January 9th. We hope this will give students additional time to complete their applications. The on-line application should be accessible this afternoon. Students who have any questions or difficulties can call the admission office at 434-982-3200 for assistance.

Thank you very much for your patience.

A gentle reminder about status

Please remember to read the note on your status page once you submit. I'll repost it here:

"Your application has been received and is being processed. At this time, we are data-entering thousands of credentials which have been mailed to us. If items are not listed as received, please do not call our office at this time. First year applicants can expect to see items listed as received at the end of January. We will contact you if we are missing any documents crucial to the review of your application. First-year applicants should also log back in to submit mid-year or first trimester grades online as soon as they are available.

Thank you for applying online to the University of Virginia."

No reading today

We aren't reading applications today. Instead, the entire staff is opening mail. The conference room table is full of deans with date stamps, staplers, staple removers (really, one is sufficient), highlighters, letter openers, and candy. After lunch, our daily mail delivery will arrive and the stacks will get much, much bigger.


As you can imagine, it will take quite some time to process and check in all the documents that are arriving right now. If you submit an application today, you probably won't see a change in your status page for a week or two.

Letters! We get letters!

Whenever I look at the mail bins downstairs, I think of the that little song...

Anyway, the mail is pouring in and that's great. Our mail services staff is busily opening bin after bin of letters and passing them along to the processing staff to be checked in and then filed. However, something else is pouring in: FedEx and UPS packages from students living in the US. Now, it's perfectly normal for international students to send applications via one of those delivery services (DHL seems most popular), but there really isn't any need for students living in the United States to send their applications or supporting documents by special courier.

Pass the word around. Don't spend $20 (or whatever it is) to mail anything by FedEx or UPS or DHL if you live in the US. There's plenty of time for documents to get here via the US Postal Service.

This is considered a very small amount of mail.

The status of your status page

There seem to be many students checking their application status at odd times. I thought I'd explain how the status page works and when you'll see updates to it.

First of all, you won't see anything about your credentials until you hit the submit button. At that point, anything that our staff has already checked in will show up. As we get closer to the deadline, the amount of mail we get grows dramatically and mail may sit for a few days before the staff is able to process it. It could take around two weeks for something that arrives in early January to get through the system.

If recommendations are submitted online, the name of the writer and the date they submitted their letter will show up on your status page. Paper recommendations are not logged into the system. You will not see information about them on your status page.

Once your application is complete, your status will not change until the notification date in late March. The exact date and time of that will be posted here and on the UVa website.

Though your status won't change, you need to log into your account to send us your mid-year grades as soon as they're available. We do not need your school to send an updated transcript with your first semester grades. You simply need to log in and report them through the online application website.

Hope that helps! Please use the comments if you have any questions about status!

Transfer status update

Spring transfer decisions are going to be turned off today. By now, everyone should have their official letters. If you haven't received any notification, contact our office.

Application supplements

The deadline for sending performing and visual art supplements has passed and we're now in the process of sorting and sending mail bins off to various departments around grounds so faculty can start their review of CDs, slides, DVDs, and other media. Of course, in the mix are a few items that aren't really mean for arts faculty. Some people send DVDs, books (I wrote about those last year),
and other items. Unfortunately, the extras don't get much attention unless we're in the mood to procrastinate and throw in a DVD that didn't fit any of the art categories.

Thanks for your submissions! The faculty will review them in the next few weeks and then notes will be added to your files to let us know what they think.

A blurry picture of some art supplement sorting

Ready for the onslaught

I took CavBear down to the file room this morning to have a look around. It's a pretty different scene than the one I showed you all just a few months ago, isn't it? Those red boxes are full of file folders and I know there are plenty more stacked up in one of our storage rooms.

We're ready and waiting!

The good news is that many students have hit the submit button already. Those applications will be reviewed by the Office of Virginia Status, then get matched up with any supporting documents that arrived earlier in the season, and finally be marked "ready to read". I'd guess that about 3,000 applications are either in processing mode or being read right now. In a few weeks, that number will jump dramatically.

Good luck finishing up those applications, everyone!

Miscellaneous credentials waiting for an application

Spring transfer decision time

In roughly 45 minutes, I'll be "flicking the switch" (which is really typing "-1" five times) to turn on decisions for spring transfer applicants. Good luck to all!

Shock! Panic! Horror!

There seems to be a problem with one of the email servers at UVa today. If you've emailed us in the last few days and haven't gotten a reply, sit tight. I'm sure things will be back to normal tomorrow.

Yield Protection

Years ago, when I was just a wee student worker in an admission office far, far away, an admission officer showed me an article in the Wall Street Journal about a new practice that was growing in popularity. Interestingly, when I looked the article up this morning, I found that it was written by none other than Dan Golden, the author of The Price of Admission. Anyway, that's not the point...

The article was about the practice that is sometimes referred to as "yield protection". Schools that use this "strategy" often waitlist top applicants under the assumption that those students are using the school as a safety and will opt to go elsewhere when they make their final decision. This has become common enough that outside consulting groups offer to give admission officers some sort of predictive rating for each applicant (don't ask me the details of that process...I don't know much beyond the fact that it exists).

Here and there, I'm asked about this practice and whether it's used at UVa. We do not practice yield protection at all. The applicant pool here is so broad that it'd be hard to compile a profile for a student who wouldn't enroll. I think the practice might be more popular at smaller schools.

Students take over AccessUVa blog

This is pretty neat news, in my opinion. 'Hoos for Open Access, a recently formed CIO (Contracted Independent Organization...our name for a student club), has taken the reigns of the AccessUVa blog.

They have one great idea mentioned on the blog already: they'll be online to chat every Sunday evening from 8-9 PM EST. They also have an email address for questions outside of that hour.