It is early December, and as such we are about two weeks removed from the Early Action decision releases. At this point in time, we are getting a wide range of questions from admitted freshmen, deferred EA applicants, Regular Decision applicants and potential transfer students. As such, this blog post will go into detail about the different questions that come up this time of year.
Freshman Applicants
- What do I do now that I am deferred from Early Action?
- The first thing is to be patient. The next step of the review, which is the holistic read process, takes a while and we need time to look at everything within the files of the students we will be reading. Review the deferred EA FAQ for more details about what a deferral means, and what you can then send us to help in the review. If by mid-late December you know your fall grades but your school will not release an official transcript until January or later, go ahead and put your fall grades into your Update form along with any new activities or leadership roles.
- When will deferred EA or RD applicants hear a final decision?
- We have three decision dates for freshman, with the first one being in November. The next decision date is in mid-late February, and this will be a very small group of students who are mostly RD applicants, and would have been admitted in November if they had applied Early Action. A small percentage of this group will be deferred EA applicants, with almost all of these being students who were initially incomplete for EA. The final decision date is in March, and these will be all remaining decisions.
- How can I demonstrate my interest in UGA so you know I will attend if admitted?
- You can’t. UGA does not use demonstrated interest in our review, so there is no need to let us know you like us. We assume by you applying to UGA that you like us.
- Can you tell me more about scholarships and the timeline for receiving scholarships from UGA?
- We made a number of initial scholarship offers paired with the EA admission offers in November, but this process is far from being complete. We will be reviewing files between now and early April for scholarships, and we will release these offers during different points of time between now and April depending on our review process. Just like admissions, where we offer a large number of students admission knowing that some of our applicants will choose to go elsewhere, we also offer a number of scholarships with that knowledge that not all scholarship recipients will accept our admission/scholarship offer. As such, when a student declines an admission or scholarship offer, we do not then turn around and offer it to another student, as we have built this possibility into our overall admission/scholarship offer process.
- When is the last SAT/ACT date I can use for admission (RD or deferred EA)?
- The last test dates UGA can use for admission are the December 2019 exams. When you take the exam, make sure to have these scores sent to UGA as soon as possible. We will be importing these scores in December and January, but we will cut out the importing of scores sometime in later January. You can track the sending of SAT scores through your College Board account, and then by going to the Score Sends tab (ACT does not have this as of yet). you can also see all of the scores UGA has received on your status page.
- As a Regular Decision applicant, when do I need to submit the application and the supporting materials?
- The deadline for RD applicants is midnight EST on January 1, and we suggest not waiting until the last second to hit submit. The deadline for supplemental materials (counselor and teacher recommendations and a HS transcript) to be sent is January 8. We suggest you go ahead and work with both your counselor and teacher(s) now to make sure the Secondary School Report and recommendations will be sent in on time. For test scores, we need for you to have both taken and have requested UGA as a score recipient by January 8 (this does not mean we need the scores in our file by 1/8, only that they have been taken and requested).
- When will I know about Honors Program admissions?
- The Honors Application opened up on December 1, and only the Honors Program can tell you more about admissions to their program.
- As a deferred EA applicant or RD applicant, what are my chances of admission now that the EA decisions have been released?
- I have no ability to predict a student’s chances of admission, whether it is in EA, deferred EA or RD. Every year is different from the next, and every applicant pool varies from year to year on size and academic/co-curricular strengths. Data on previous years are not an accurate predictor of current year admissions, so right now everyone (including me) just needs to wait and see what the overall applicant pool is like and then give us time to review the individual files. I expect that we will be admitting a similar number of freshmen overall (last year it was 13,000+ total freshman admitted), and so we have a large number of students still to admit since we admitted 7,000+ in EA.
Transfers
- When will the Transfer Application for Summer/Fall 2020 be open?
- The transfer application for next year will open up on January 22nd. We will begin reviewing transfer files in February, and decisions will go out every Friday beginning in March and going through early May. We cannot guess when a specific transfer decision will go out, as it depends on a number of variables.
- Can an exception be made for the March 1 application and transcript(s) deadline for transfers, or is there a possibility of conditional admission if I do not have 30 completed transfer hours on a transcript by March 1?
- We do not make exceptions for the transfer deadline, and we do not offer conditional admission to students. Transfer applicants must have 30 or more completed hours of work showing on an official transcript by March 1 in order to be considered for transfer admission.
- Are AP credits and DE work used in transfer decisions?
- Yes, we can use coursework from another college that is credit for AP work and/or DE work taken in HS as a part of our transfer review, but the work MUST be on an official transcript from another college, and the work must be shown as actual coursework from that other college (so for example ENGL 1101, 3 hours.) If it is not on an official college transcript or if it is not an actual course with credit hours from that college, we cannot use it in our review.