They're coming back!

The UVa Grounds are started to come alive again. The Corner is bustling, traffic is picking up, and parking spaces aren't as easy to get as they were a week ago. Members of the Cavalier Marching Band are already here and I've been seeing the new RAs around for a few days. The UVa Express, which picked international students up at Dulles airport, arrived about 40 minutes ago.

Why am I telling you this on the admission blog? Because you should try to avoid visiting us this weekend, when most students will be returning to Charlottesville. The UVa police and the residence hall staff keep things moving all weekend long, but be aware that it will take much, much longer to get here than your GPS tells you it will. Once you get to town, you might get mixed in with the lines of cars headed to the first year residence halls. Here's what that looked like a couple years ago when CavDog and I wandered around during move-in:

To anyone from the incoming class who might read this, please travel safely! When you get to your hall, there will be greeters there to help you. They are amazing volunteers who can often get a car unloaded in less than 15 minutes. Once your things are in your room, you can park your car away from the dorm (I think most people use the stadium lot) and get settled.

For more information:
Move-in Information and Tips from the Office of Orientation & New Student Programs
Detailed information about move-in day from the Housing Office

An Application Tip: The Common App Writing Section

When you add UVa to your "My Colleges" list in the Common Application, you may be tempted to go directly to the writing section to look at the essays. If you realized that we post our application essays in June each year right on the blog, you might notice that something is missing.

Only one essay is showing at first.

You see, one of the essays is tied to the school to which you apply. To get that essay to show up in the writing section, you need to answer the academic questions. Luckily, the Common App is smart enough to alert you to the fact that you aren't done if you try to just fill in one essay and submit it.

Start at the beginning and fill out your academic information.

When you work through the questions and get to the writing section, you'll see that school-specific question on the page.

Good luck!

Essay Advice from UVa Students

I'm going to share some of my advice for essay writing soon, but I thought I'd share this great post by our Summer Interns about essay writing that appeared on the Hoo Stories Blog. Hoo Stories is a blog that's been run by a rotating cast of students since 2009. Every year, a new group of students take the reigns and share some stories from their lives at UVa.

This year's Summer Interns have been fantastic and I've enjoyed reading about the different ways they've gotten involved on Grounds.

If you haven't visited Hoo Stories before, check them out today! I know the students are eager to answer your questions about student life.

The 2013-2014 Common App is Live!

If you're checking an admission blog, then you were probably aware when the new Common Application launched on August 1st. I've been playing around in there for a month or so at this point and I am really impressed with how things are presented in the redesigned site.

I hope my Common App colleagues won't be upset that we used to say the Common App looked like a tax form. The user interface is now clean and sleek. The application is dynamic, so if you answer a question that requires follow up, a new question will appear. On the flip side, if questions don't apply to you, you won't see them. For example, there is a question asking if you believe you are eligible for in-state tuition. Answer yes, and residency questions appear. Answer no, and you move on without seeing residency questions.

The dynamic nature of the new Common App should mean less time spent navigating general, biographical questions, which will hopefully mean applicants have more time for thinking about the written portions of the application, which is where applicants often distinguish themselves.

Have you poked around in the new Common App yet? If so, what are your initial impressions?

Follow Me on Instragram!

I've been a bit quiet this month on the blog. I've been spending a lot of time working on our parts of the new Common App and also served as faculty at something called the Summer Institute. That's a conference for new admission professionals who want to interact with veteran admission officers. In New England, where I started my career in admission, it was called Rookie Camp. I was a little surprised when I was asked to join the faculty three years ago, but I guess after 13 years, I'm a veteran.

Anyway, I wanted to share a new way to get in touch with me and a way for you to get a peek at what life is like at UVa. I joined Instagram a few weeks ago and have been posting pictures from around Grounds. I'm not going to follow any students (but you should obviously be aware that when you use a hashtag, you're inviting a lot of viewers), but I'm happy to chat if you want to write a comment on my images.

My username there (and everywhere) is UVaDeanJ.

Oh, and a lot of people around Grounds are using the hashtag #UVaSummer on images that show you what things are like here over the summer. Be sure to check that out!

2013-2014 Application Essay Questions

Students love hearing about our favorite essays. After I rattle off a few examples or quotes, people inevitably want to know about how we come up with our essay questions.

Essay questions evolve as our students' reactions to them change. Our goal is to present prompts that serve as jumping off points for many types of students. There have been times when I've thought a question was amazing, but it hasn't inspired too many (like the "Dumbest Generation" question from 2010-2011) and times when I've thought that it was time to retire some questions just to have students passionately advocate for them to stay.


This year, the required essay that is on the Common Application is changing. The Common App prompts (PDF) cover some of the topics we had in our supplemental questions, so it made sense to wipe the slate almost completely clean and come up with some new prompts.

2013-2014 UVa Supplement Essay Questions for First Year Applicants

1.  We are looking for passionate students to join our diverse community of scholars, researchers, and artists.  Answer the question that corresponds to the school you selected.  Limit your answer to a half page or roughly 250 words.  

• College of Arts & Sciences:  What work of art, music, science, mathematics, or literature has surprised, unsettled, or challenged you, and in what way?

• Engineering:  If you were given funding for a small engineering project, what would you do? 

•  Architecture:  Students in the school of architecture study the physical design of the environment in which we live, including cities, landscapes, and buildings. That environment has a profound effect on the way that people and societies interact and develop. Describe how a particular physical place has influenced your growth as a person.

• Nursing:  Discuss experiences that led you to choose the School of Nursing.

•  Kinesiology: Discuss experiences that led you to choose the kinesiology major.

 

                                                                         

2.  Answer one of the following questions in a half page or roughly 250 words:

• What is your favorite word and why?

•  The Honor Code at U.Va. states that students will not lie, cheat, or steal. This strengthens our Community of Trust. What would you add to the Honor Code and why?

• In 2006, graduate student Robert Stilling discovered an unpublished poem by Robert Frost while doing research in U.Va.’s Small Collections Library. Where will your Stilling moment be in college?

•  We are a community with quirks, both in language (we’ll welcome you to Grounds, not campus) and in traditions. Describe one of your quirks and why it is part of who you are.

• To tweet or not to tweet?

 
Believe it or not, I have nothing to do with that last option.

What do you think?

The Class of 2017 is Full

This afternoon, we'll email first-year students on the waiting list to let them know that the Class of 2017 is now full. Their SIS pages will also update with the same message.

After considering the size of the first-year class and the spaces available in the student body, I regret to inform you that we will not be able to offer you admission this year. Our first-year class is full and I believe it would be unfair to keep your name on the waiting list any longer.

We sincerely appreciate your interest in the University of Virginia and wish you the best of luck in all of your future endeavors. If you are interested in pursuing the possibility of transferring to the University after one or two years in another college or university, please visit our transfer page to learn more about this process.

  

Sincerely,

Greg Roberts
Dean of Admission
University of Virginia

I know the wait has been hard. I hope that having a final decision from UVa helps you get excited for where you'll be headed in the fall.

Thank you again for being part of this blog! Best wishes for a fantastic end to your senior year and a wonderful summer.

Transfers, as always, keep an eye on the transfer blog for news about your process.

Working with Waiting Lists is Admission Candy Crush

As a relative showed me how to play Candy Crush the other day, I couldn't help but think that it is a good metaphor for working with waiting lists. While some may say that means it's time to take a few days off, I decided it meant it was time to write a blog post.

In Candy Crush, there is one overarching theme, but many different goals and objectives that get presented as you move candy pieces into various positions on your board. Sometimes, the program sends a surprise your way or one move sets off a chain reaction. While there isn't a stated time limit on making moves, there's a finite amount of movement allowed, so you have to be efficient.

I'm sure you can figure out some of the allusions I'm making, but I want to address the chain reaction scenario and how that relates to admission work.

As schools move to their waiting lists, the movement trickles down to affect many other schools. So, when a student on our waiting list gets an offer, they'll contact the school to which they originally deposited to let them know they aren't coming. With many schools making offers to students on the waiting list, some schools will see room in their class and make some waiting list offers of their own. Get it?

This is why things have quieted down, but there is still movement on the waiting list. We are close to being done, but we've come a long way from the beginning of May, when each admission officer was making offers on a daily basis.


Again, we're getting close to a full class. We'll release the waiting list soon, but there is still a little bit of movement.

It's Getting Quiet

The UVa Grounds have gotten quiet and our office is pretty quiet, too. We are still working with the waiting list, but things have slowed down a bit. We're almost there.

When we have our class finalized, I'll post a message here and we will also send emails out to the entire waiting list to let everyone know we are done making offers.

CavDog hates the waiting, too.

I'm still getting emails and comments from newly enrolled students asking questions about Orientation. I am more than happy to answer general questions about UVa and Charlottesville, but if you need help with registration or a date change, be sure to contact the Orientation folks.

In case you were curious...

I posted a picture from CavDog's family reunion at Chris Greene Lake (just north of town) earlier this week and promised to reveal identities after decisions were due. If you're curious, here's the run down of who is in the picture.

CavDog is on the far right, still drenched from spending two hours jumping into the lake to chase his favorite toy. The other dogs dried off a little bit before the picture, but CavDog had to be convinced to come out of the water for the line up.

Interestingly, his sister Lita has allegiance to our sister school that is about three hours south of Charlottesville. We believe the rest are Wahoos.

Have a wonderful weekend! We'll be done for the day in another hour or so and will pick up with the waiting list review on Monday.

An Update for the Waiting List

Here's what happens when admission officers find out it's time to work on waiting list offers:

There's a UVa reference there. Do you know it?

Making calls to offer students on the waiting list a spot in the class is probably the most exciting thing we get to do. It's the closest most of us come to witnessing a student's reaction to an offer (I was able to make an offer in person last year...such a fun moment!). We love this.

We are filling the four undergraduate schools/colleges (Arts & Sciences, Engineering, Architecture, Nursing) and the Kinesiology program. We also have to keep the ratio of Virginia residents and out-of-state residents in mind.

We're going to start making offers today.

Official offers are posted in SIS, but we're going to call students to give them a heads up that their status is going to change and explain what to do next. You'll have two days to think things over and submit a deposit.

We try to call the number on the application between the end of the school day and 5 PM, when our office closes. It could take several weeks for this to play out. We'll make a few offers, give those students a couple days to deposit, make a few more offers, give those students a few days, etc.

Obviously, some will turn us down on the spot and that's totally fine. We realize that students on the waiting list may have deposited elsewhere and gotten excited about another school in the last few weeks.  I hope those students have already removed themselves from the waiting list via SIS.

I hope this is happy news for those of you who are waiting!

Waiting...

Remember that feeling you had in early March when you were waiting for us to finish reading applications? That's how admission officers feel right now.

You see, the shoe is on the other foot now. We're anxiously waiting to see who will accept our offer of admission. We've sent you a few emails to make sure you know what's happening with us and we're hoping that you'll reach out to us if you need more information to make your final decision.

To get my mind off the waiting, I went to a family reunion of sorts. You see, CavDog was one of twelve puppies in a litter when he was born. His parents and many of his siblings live in the counties that surround Charlottesville. There was a small reunion once before, but we found more puppies and owners since then and decided to have another one.

If you want to guess which dog is CavDog, head over to the blog's Facebook page and submit a guess under the family portrait. I'll reveal the answer on May 1st.

Paying a Deposit and Next Steps

The National Candidates' Reply Date is around the corner! By May 1st, you should pay a deposit to join the Class of 2017 at one of the schools on your list. We obviously hope you are planning on joining us at UVa!

Paying a Deposit
When you go to pay your deposit, click the "accept" button under your admission decision letter. Be sure to turn your pop-up blocker off. The payment screen will launch in a new window. The deposit system is an e-check system. You'll enter the routing and account numbers from the bottom of a check to pay the deposit, much like people who e-file taxes do. The system will take a couple kinds of credit cards, but it's a check system first and foremost, so it doesn't work with every kind of credit card.

At this point, you become a matriculated student. It might not sound like a big deal, but due to the security built into SIS, I can't "see" what you do beyond the admission process. While I will always, always be happy to help you, you have to get used to talking to other offices when you need something as a matriculated student.

Aside from collecting your final transcript and testing (see the last section below about that), the Office of Admission doesn't handle you any more.


Next Steps
Bookmark the Summer Orientation website and get familiar with it. That website lists out everything you need to do to prepare for coming to UVa. After 72 hours, you can take UVa's responsible computing quiz, set up your email account, and register for orientation. Housing, dining, and health forms get taken care of after that.

The Office of New Student Programs will send out a welcome book to give you things to think about as you get ready to come to orientation. If you're curious about that, you can read last year's welcome book online. I think they normally ship those out sometime in May.

Summer orientation is required, but there are lots of sessions offered. There is programming for parents and guests running concurrently with the program for new students during orientation. Additional orientation programming will take place in the fall.

Registration, Housing, Dining, etc.
We are not a school that gives priority housing to students who deposit early or come to an early orientation session. Pick the session that works best for your summer schedule. As long as you have forms submitted by the deadlines on the Summer Orientation website, you will be just fine when it comes to housing.

As you start to poke around in the registration system, do not be alarmed by classes that look full. Seats in the classes that first-years typically take are set aside for each orientation session, so a class may look full at the end of Session A, but seats will be opened up for Session B.


Final Transcripts and Test Scores
You must have your school send a final transcript once the school year is over. You will also want to send official results from any tests (AP, SAT IIs, IB) when they are available so you can get credit for some of your scores come orientation time.

If we don't get a final transcript from you, you'll have a hold placed on your account. I don't want to scare you, but it's not easy to get this squared away when your high school is closed for summer break.

Questions?

Are you coming to Days on the Lawn #5 on Friday?

The fifth DOTL is tomorrow and we've been nervously watching the news in hopes of a sunny day. Right now, it looks like we might see thunderstorms coming into the area in the afternoon. For now, registration and the morning welcome talk will be on the Lawn in front of the Rotunda. If the rain comes early, we will move to Old Cabell Hall, which is on the opposite end of the Lawn from the Rotunda. It's not far. CavDog can run down the Lawn and back in under a minute.

We have emailed everyone twice with information about parking, but it seems like some students aren't sharing the email with their parents. So let me go over it here.

If you visited UVa in the past, you probably parked in the Central Grounds Parking garage and we validated your ticket for three hours to cover the time you'd be at the information session and on the tour. That garage isn't big enough to accommodate everyone coming for Days on the Lawn. So, we rent out the entire Emmet Garage, which is at the intersection of Emmet Street (which is Route 29 when you get out of the UVa area) and Ivy Road. The garage is behind the Cavalier Inn, which is diagonally across the street from the UVa tennis courts.

In our email, we said it could take you about 20 minutes to talk from the free garage to the Rotunda. That's might be a tad generous. I think 10 minutes is okay...but leave a little extra time in case there's rain.

Any questions about DOTL?

By the way, if it rains, CavDog stays home. Old Cabell Hall isn't pet friendly. :)

For Boston and Blacksburg

I had planned to post a short note of support for our friends at Virginia Tech yesterday, but it seemed like a day to let the blog be quiet in light of the horrible tragedy in Boston on Tuesday. You see, yesterday was the fifth anniversary of the shootings at Virginia Tech. I imagine there aren't many in the Commonwealth who don't remember where they were when they heard about what was happening.

Here at UVa, the welcome talks that start Days on the Lawn were underway when the news broke on April 16, 2007. Jack Blackburn, our dean who passed away in 2009, shared the news with the crowd and offered our office's phones to those who needed to call a loved one in Blacksburg. What was going to be a fun, upbeat day on Grounds became one full of fear and worry. The entire UVa community came together to support Virginia Tech in a variety of ways.

While some people insist that UVa and Tech are rivals, the fact is that we are more like siblings than rivals. Every UVa student who went to high school in the state probably has a former classmate at the other state universities. Faculty and administrators here know their counterparts at the other schools. We look forward to seeing each other while sitting on panels or attending conferences. There are many families who have "house divided" stickers and flags because one child goes to UVa and another goes to Tech.

We are Hoos, but we love our Hokie friends.

The longest lasting message ever painted on Beta Bridge, April 17-June 9, 2007

Beta Bridge, June 9, 2007

I can't publish this without adding a note about what happened at the Boston Marathon on Monday. As a former Bostonian, I always quipped that my favorite days of the year in Boston were July 4th and Marathon Monday. I love my old town and while devastated to hear about the victims of the tragedy there, I'm heartened to know that so many emerged to help however they could. I'm also relieved that the UVa students, faculty, and administrators who ran or went to support the runners are all okay.

What's Next for the Waiting List

This is going to be a bit long. It's 3 AM and I've been losing sleep over getting this post done for you all. There's a lot to include here. If you were offered a spot on the waiting list, there was a link to the Wait-list FAQs embedded in your letter. I'm going to share some of the same information here and add my own notes.


How many people are on the waiting list?
I think the biggest thing that students skim over is the part where we say that you have to accept or decline the offer of a spot on the waiting list. The waiting list doesn't really exist until people hit the "accept" buttons under their letters in SIS.

If you hit the "accept" button, you can always come back and pull yourself off the list. That is why the buttons remain after you accept a spot. If you decline the spot, the buttons disappear. 

On May 1, the waiting list will be big. There's no way around that. While we don't have a ranking, you can think of the list as having ten sections. The sections are for Virginia and non-Virginia residents for each for the five schools/programs that take first year students.

How many people will come off the waiting list?
No one will know this until May 1st. Even though I've been doing this for years, I can't predict this one. May 1st is when all of the admitted students need to have deposits submitted to reserve a place in the Class of 2017. The class is supposed to be 3,485 students. If we don't have that number of admitted students accepting a spot, we move to the waiting list.

There are no tends to cite here. One year, we might have room for in-state Nursing students and the next year, that group could be full on May 1. We're all waiting to see how this works out right now.   

How many people got offers to come off the waiting list in the past?
Here are numbers from the last few years:
2012 - 284
2011 - 117
2010 - 240
2009 - 288
2008 - 60
2007 - 159
2006 - 145
2005 - 83

How do I improve my chances of getting an offer?
There is a lot of conflicting information out there about this. Emailing a letter of interest is appropriate. Mailing a package is not. Updating us with significant news is okay. Bombarding us with an email each day is not.

By the way, showing up in Peabody Hall will have no affect. I can't tell you how many students drive here and then sit on the sofa and ask the questions covered in the FAQs. This is not a good use of your time (or gas money).

When/How do you make wait-list offers?
We start making waiting list offers as soon as we know we have space in the class. We want to move quickly. No one wants to drag this out. Last year, I think we were able to start pretty early, around May 3rd. We aim to have everything wrapped up by the end of June.

If you are going to get an offer, we'll call you at the number you put on your Common Application. The call is a heads up that your status is about to change in SIS. Of course, it's fine if you tell us "no thanks" and that's the end of it. We hope that people who are no longer interested in UVa use the "decline" button to remove their name from the list, but some people forget.

Anyway, the usual response is screaming or "OH MY GOSH!" When SIS updates, a new letter is viewable along with the buttons needed to accept the offer and pay a deposit. We'll give you a couple days to think about things.

What about aid?
If you applied for aid by the March 1st deadline and got all of your documentation in, Student Financial Services will put a financial aid package together. Once that's posted, you'll have a couple days to accept the over and pay your deposit.

 What now?
Look at your other options. Get excited about one of them and pay a deposit to guarantee yourself a spot in a freshman class somewhere. 


By the way, calling a student and telling them that they are getting an offer of admission is probably the most exciting thing admission officers experience. We can't wait to make them. Everyone has a story or two about favorite calls. I promise you that when it's time, we'll be working very quickly so we can deliver some happy news!

Days on the Lawn Arts Receptions

If you were admitted and indicated that you are interested in programs in the fine and performing arts at UVa, you probably got an email inviting you to the arts receptions at Days on the Lawn. I thought I'd remind those who have yet to visit that there are three more receptions left. Students and faculty from several disciplines are eager to meet you!  RSVP today!

Monday, April 15th

The Fralin Museum of Art

3 PM

Friday, April 19th

Fiske Kimball Fine Arts Library

3 PM

Saturday, April 20th

Creatures Festival - Nameless Field

3 PM 

Visit the Arts in Action website for more about the arts at UVa.

Two Weeks Unlike Any Others

I don't know how many visitors we've had on Grounds over the last two weeks, but I am confident that this has been the busiest two weeks of my tenure at UVa. We moved our information sessions into Old Cabell Hall for these last two weeks because our sessions couldn't be held in our usual spots (Newcomb Theater, the Rotunda). Tomorrow should be our last day of this, but we'll have a nice, big crowd back on Grounds for Days on the Lawn on Monday.

If you are coming to Days on the Lawn, you probably have the basic information already. Free parking is in the garage behind the Cavalier Inn, at the intersection of Emmet Street and Ivy Road. You can either take a shuttle bus or walk up to the Rotunda for the welcome session. 

There is a check in table on the Lawn and a light breakfast (banana bread, fruit) up by the Rotunda. CavDog and I usually hang out in front of the reception table to greet people. Around 9 AM, Dean Roberts will start the program. We usually have one speaker from the faculty and one from the student body.

CavDog listening to Dean Roberts

After the speakers are done, we'll sing you the Good Ol Song and you'll be off to explore. There are sessions to attend, a bunch of different tours to take, and classes to visit (students only in classes), but everything is optional. You decide how you want to spend the day.

  Belly rubs from students are CavDog's favorite things!

There are signs around Grounds to point you in the right direction, but you can always stop a student if you get lost. 

If you have any questions, come back to the Office of Admission in Peabody Hall. That's your "home base" for the day. There will be students and admission officers around the answer questions.

Dress comfortably! If you want to see a lot, you'll want to have walking shoes on. Dress is casual.

Any questions?

By the way, in the comments on past posts, people have asked if students on the waiting list can attend DOTL. 

These events are meant for admitted students.

FIRST Robotics DC Regional Starts Today!

I'll be away from the blog for most of the next few days. I'm headed to the FIRST Robotics DC Regional. FIRST stands for For the Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology and it's an incredible organization.

The DC Regional usually has some of the top robotics teams from our area and a few from other regions (some travel to have a better chance of making it to the nationals).

If you want to see what the picture below is all about, check out my post about last year's regional.

If your team is competing, come on by the UVa table to say hello!

Overnights with the Monroe Society

Note: This post is from 2013. The Monroe Society is no longer active. 

If you're an admitted student planning to visit us for Days on the Lawn, remember that you can always plan to stay overnight with a member of the Monroe Society. There's a good group of first year members who are eager to help you see what UVa is like beyond the tours and information sessions.

The Monroe Society hosts students all year long, but during March and April, they focus exclusively on admitted students. If you're interested in staying on Grounds the night before DOTL, submit a request at least a week in advance. 

Pack your bags!