Showing posts with label Holistic Review. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Holistic Review. Show all posts

Friday, April 2, 2010

Admissions, it's personal

By Jonathan Schramm
Assistant Director
Undergraduate Admissions

Here at Virginia Tech we're proud to say we review applications in a holistic manner, which means we consider the entire student: both their academic and personal qualities. I've discussed academics in my last three posts, so now I'd like to highlight the more personal side of admissions.

On the Freshman Application, there are a number of opportunities for applicants to get themselves across on paper. We consider:
  • Diversity, in its many forms: ethnic, racial, diversity of thought, diversity of religion, geographic diversity, socioeconomic diversity if you happen to be the first in your family to go to college, etc.
  • Interest in the Corps of Cadets: we see this as an indicator of leadership.
  • Legacy: if you happen to be the son or daughter of a Virginia Tech graduate.
  • Activities: we like to see quality vs. quantity.
  • Community Service: as long as it's not court ordered. (just joking!)
  • Optional Personal Statement/Essay: 7 different options to choose from.
  • Letters of Recommendation are not solicited, but you can send them in (just make sure they are sent by your high school with your transcript).
So you can see, even though we receive over 20,000 applications we take everything into consideration.

As always, let us know if you have any questions. It's always nice to know we have readers.

Anyway, tune in next time when we talk about a rare disease high school seniors seem to catch this time of year, called S1N1.

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Friday, February 12, 2010

Application Review Process: Yep, you guessed it! We care about test scores too!

By Jonathan Schramm
Assistant Director
Undergraduate Admissions

So far, in my blog series on the application review process, I've discussed two important factors that can affect the outcome of admissions decisions at Virginia Tech: curriculum and grades. There is a third, and that is standardized test scores.

If you think of academic qualities like a tripod, all three legs have to be there for the application to stand up to scrutiny. In the case of selective admissions, the three legs are curriculum, grades and test scores.

The last is pretty straightforward. You either have competitive test scores or you don't. It may seem unfair. It's three hours of your life for goodness sake, usually on a Saturday morning, when you haven't had a wink of sleep and are stressed out of your mind. You go in, reading glasses askew, hair unkempt, and you come out with a number attached to your name.

But there is a reason they're so important, and there's a reason they're called s-t-a-n-d-a-r-d-i-z-e-d test scores. High schools are so different from district to district that it's not always advisable for colleges and universities to make decisions based solely on an applicant's grades and curriculum. So the standardized tests are one way we can tell applicants apart.

At Virginia Tech, we do all we can to insure your best score comes through in the review process. For instance, we'll accept both the ACT and the SAT. We also "super score," meaning we'll take the best score from all your exams and put them together so you have the best possible chance for admission. Right now we're just looking at the Critical Reading (SAT)/English (ACT) and the Math portions of the tests, but will use the Writing for placement
purposes. The average SAT last year was a 1250 and the average ACT was a 26.

I hope that helps clear some things up. Tune in next time when we talk about personal qualities, the softer side of the review process.

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Thursday, February 4, 2010

Application Review Process: We Care About Grades Too!

By Jonathan Schramm
Assistant Director
Undergraduate Admissions

In my last post, Application Review Process: We Care About Curriculum, I discussed how an applicant's strength of curriculum is viewed in the application review process, and also left you with a bit of a teaser regarding the next most important factor ~ Grades, not to be confused with GPA.

Now, what I mean by that is, we're not so much looking at the overall grade point average, as we are the course-by-course performance (just so you know, to be a competitive applicant at Virginia Tech, we like to see a strong A/B average).

When we're perusing your transcript, we're mentally (and sometimes physically) marking out:
  • AP Weightlifting,
  • Advanced Show Choir, and
  • Honors Underwater Basket Weaving.
And we turn our attention to specific marks in core courses, like:
  • Math,
  • Science,
  • English,
  • Social Sciences, etc.

When it comes to your GPA, we all but discount the grades you received in your electives, and instead look at how well you did in your tougher, more academically focused courses.

Now, we do take some other factors into consideration when determining your in-class performance, not just the letter grade. Grading scales are one. We know at some schools a 90 to 100 is an A, when at others it's 94 to 100. That's where our policy of reviewing applicants within the context of their schools comes in. When we do this, it doesn't matter what your grading scale is, because you're not competing against applicants from other schools, but against your peers. Therefore, it's not about an average GPA, but more about how an applicant performed within their academic environment.

Trends in grades is another factor we consider. If an applicant started off a little slow in their freshman and sophomore years, then started improving their grades during their junior and senior years that can help. Likewise, if a student did well throughout their academic career, but then their first marking period grades during their senior year drop dramatically, that may raise a few eyebrows.

Again, your school profile tells us a lot about grade distribution, and the rigor of the course work, etc., so be sure to check that out if you haven't already.

Hopefully you're beginning to see that there's a lot that goes into reviewing applications at Virginia Tech. Check back next time, when I discuss the role SATs and ACTs have to play in the process.

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Thursday, January 14, 2010

Application Review Process: We Care About Curriculum

By Jonathan Schramm
Assistant Director
Undergraduate Admissions

As promised in my earlier post, Holistic Review, we're going to talk a little bit about curriculum choice and how it is viewed in the application
review process.

Whenever I'm giving an information session, whether on campus or at a high school, I always ask students what they think the most important thing is we consider in the review process academically. Inevitably I get a "GPA!" or "SAT!" shout-out well before I get one for "Curriculum!" In reality, course
selection is the one of the most important things we consider. Why? Because the better you do in tough courses during high school the better prepared you are for college.

Essentially, we want to see that you've challenged yourselves by taking the most difficult courses available to you as a student. At the same time,we're not going to penalize you for attending a school that doesn't offer as many Advanced Placement, Dual Enrollment, Honors, or International Baccalaureate courses as another. Remember, we evaluate students within the
contexts of their high schools.

How do we know how many advanced courses your school offers? It's on the school profile, which your guidance counselors attach to each application. If you haven't seen it yet, you should run down to the guidance office as soon as you can. On second thought, you better walk. We don't want you getting a detention now do we? The school profile not only tells us how many
tough courses your school offers, but it also shows us the grading scale, the average GPA, average SAT/ACT and tons of other stuff.

Thanks for your detention -- I mean attention. Tune in next time when we discuss grades -- not GPA! To find out the difference you'll have to check back.

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Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Holistic Review

By Jonathan Schramm
Assistant Director
Undergraduate Admissions

discussed the application process – what is needed to have a completed
application at Virginia Tech. Now let's talk a little about how we review
applications once we receive them.

One word that comes to mind is holistic. Holistic Review means that we take all
aspects of a student's application into consideration: both their academic
qualities and personal qualities. You can rest assured that we review every
application, sometimes multiple times. Even though we receive upwards of
21,000 applications, we do not run them through a machine and say here's the
highest SAT, here's the highest GPA and that's our class. No, definitely not.

Additionally, we evaluate students within the context of their high schools,
meaning we do not rank high schools – no matter what US News and World
Report would have us do – across the board. We discern course offerings,
grading scales, weighting scales and the like, to gain the clearest picture
of how a student has performed within their respective academic environments.

There's a lot more that goes into the review process, which I will share
with you over the next month or so. Each topic – 1) Curriculum 2) Grades 3)
Standardized Test Scores 4) Personal Qualities – merits its own blog entry.
So check back in a few weeks to learn more.

And remember, the deadline for applications is a only days away!
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