The Language of Admissions

• Binding:
  While there are many “Early” terms (early decision, early
  action, early notification, early admission, and EA II), the key term is
  for all of these is whether the offer is binding, meaning that X college
  is considered an applicants top choice, and if admitted, they will attend
  (thus a binding offer). A number of colleges such as UGA have a
  non-binding Early Action option (see Early Action below).

• Blind/Neutral :
  For many colleges, there will be information that the university as a
  whole will need to ask for some specific reason (gender for housing,
  family finances for financial aid) which are not used in the admission
  process. If a school is need blind, for instance, this means that the
  admissions office does not use (or even see, thus the word blind) the
  financial data of an applicant when making an admission decision (such as
  UGA). Other times, there are questions on the admission application that
  need to be asked for purposes other than admission (alumni information for
  the alumni office, gender and ethnicity for federal reporting), but are
  treated as a neutral non factor in the admission process. At UGA, these
  three factors-alumni, gender and ethnicity, have to be asked (along with a
  few others), but we do not use them in our admission review process.

• Common/Coalition Application: There are two applications which are used by a
  number of colleges and allow for a student to enter in a majority of their
  personal information (biographic data, co-curricular info, etc.) for all
  colleges to use and then complete a smaller amount of institution specific
  questions needed by each college. UGA uses both the Coalition application
  and our own application.

• Dawg:
  Also known as a bulldog, it is the most fierce and wonderful mascot in the
  known world. This is not an admission term, but one that you should know
  nonetheless.

• Defer/Deferral:
  A deferral decision is generally associated with an Early decision of some
  kind, and the college is not able to make a decision due to wanting more
  information about the applicant and the overall pool of applicants and
  more time to review the files. This is neither a denial or an offer of
  admission (or a wait list offer), but simply a need by the college for
  more time and information before making a decision on the student. The
  student will then be placed within the other applicants waiting for a
  decision, and they will be treated the same as these other applicants.

• Double Deposit:
  This is when a student sends in a deposit to two colleges (without a wait
  list offer being involved) to hold a place in the freshman class instead
  of just one. This is really looked down upon by colleges, and I compare it
  to a person being engaged to two people at one time. At times, this could
  cause a student to have an offer of admission be rescinded, as a student
  should only deposit at one institution.

• Early Action (EA):
  This decision plan is a non-binding review of a student’s application
  during the early part of the admission process, and it takes place in the
  fall of the student’s senior year. At UGA, the focus is on the overall
  academic standing of both the applicant and the Early Action applicant
  pool, and the deadline is earlier than for Regular Decision applicants (at
  UGA the EA deadline is 10/15). The decisions can be either Admit, Deny, or
  Defer, and a denial decision is final. 

• FAFSA:
  The Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) is a federal
  government form that students and parents complete in January/February of
  their senior year to apply for need based federal assistance. This form
  helps to determine the student’s eligibility for federal aid, including
  grants, loans and student work-study aid.

• Holistic Review:
  This is when an admissions office will do a detailed review of everything
  within an applicant’s file, and look at things such as academics, academic
  trends, essays, activities, leadership, recommendations (if required),
  supplemental materials, the rigor of a student’s coursework, etc. The
  readers of the file will try to get a sense of the overall applicant, and
  how the different areas of the file interconnect. This process has nothing
  to do with crystals, wheat germ, or any other uses of the word
  “holistic”.

• Interest/Demonstrated Interest: Some colleges (UGA is not included) take into account
  the amount of interest a prospective student has shown towards the college
  when making an admissions decision. If a student attends X college’s
  program at their high school, visits the college either on special
  prospective student days or for a tour and information session, or keeps
  in contact with the admissions counselor for their area, it can show that
  a student is seriously interested in X college. On the flip side, there
  are some students who are unable to visit X college, have limited
  resources, or finds out about X college late in the senior year, and
  cannot show as much “interest”. Again, some colleges use this in
  their process, while others (like UGA) do not.
  

• Melt:
  After admitted freshman send in a deposit to a college, they at times will
  change their mind about attending said college. Most admissions offices
  know that if they receive X deposits, about 3-5% of these students will
  ultimately not enroll, as they could have issues with finances, be
  admitted of a wait list at another college, have academic issues, decide
  to delay college, double deposit (see above), etc. At times, this is also
  called “summer melt”, as this occurs generally between May 1 and
  mid-August. Most colleges, such as UGA, will build this into their
  projections for their freshman classes.

• Prospect/Prospective Applicant: When a student contacts a college to request more
  information, sends an SAT/ACT score to admissions, or indicates gives a
  college their contact information at a college fair, they go into the
  college’s recruitment system as a prospective applicant so that the
  college can begin communicating with them. In addition, if you take the
  PSAT/PLAN or the SAT/ACT, you can ask to be a part of the student search
  process, and this will allow colleges to access your information from the
  testing agency to start communicating with you about the college search
  process.

• Rigor/Rigor of Curriculum: Colleges look at what options a student has with
  their course options in high school, and what courses they actually then
  take over their four years. In an admission review, the context of a
  student’s academic course load, and it will be come a part of both the
  academic and overall review of an application. Colleges look at what
  Honors, Advanced, Accelerated, Advanced Placement (AP), International
  Baccalaureate (IB), Dual Enrollment, and other types of courses in a
  review of a student’s rigor.

• School Report/Counselor Recommendation: A majority of colleges that have competitive
  admission processes will ask for a letter of recommendation and/or a form
  from a student’s high school counselor. This gives the college some
  detailed information about the school, the individual student, and the
  counselor’s insights into what the student has done academically and
  personally.

• Superscoring SAT/ACT’s: A number of colleges (including UGA) will use the
  strongest subscores of standardized test (either the SAT or ACT) to make
  the strongest overall score within that specific test type. So if your
  first SAT exam had results of SAT EBRW 600 and SAT M 700 and your second
  SAT exam had results of SAT EBRW 700 and SAT M 650, your overall
  superscore would be EBRW 700 + M 700 = 1400. The same goes for the
  subscores of the ACT making a superscored ACT Composite. UGA does not
  combine SAT and ACT scores though (we do not add an SAT EBRW of 700 to an
  ACT M of 34, etc.)

• Wait List:
  Many colleges (such as UGA) have a limited number of freshman that they
  can enroll each year, and thus must try to come as close to possible in
  predicting how many admitted students will actually choose to enroll at
  their college. If the admissions office’s prediction is low, they will go
  to a group of students they have not admitted or denied, called the wait
  list, where if there is enough room in the freshman class, they will then
  consider for admission. Wait List students are told to move forward with a
  plan B college, as colleges will not know if they can go to a wait list
  until mid-May at the earliest, and wait list students are given the option
  if they would like to stay on the list or not. 

• Yield:
  Colleges know that not all students they admit will choose to enroll, and
  the percentage of students who do decide to enroll is called the Yield
  percentage. There is a wide range of yield percentages at colleges, with
  UGA averaging slightly over 50% over the past several years.