How Do Colleges Accept Students

Special Consideration Of Nc Cooperative Innovative High School Applicants

Applicants from North Carolina Cooperative Innovative High Schools receive special consideration in admission to UNC system universities based on North Carolina law. According to House Bill 97 Section 11.16., any student who graduated from a cooperative innovative high school program with an associate degree and who applies for admission to the constituent institution has the option of being considered for admission as a freshman or as a transfer student.

At NC State, we want to consider your application in the way that most benefits you in your final admissions decision.

• We encourage you to apply as a first-year applicant and to send in your high school and college transcripts so we can take both into consideration. This allows us to weigh both your high school and college work before we make a decision.
• We are test-optional for 2022 applicants, so you have the option of whether or not test scores are considered in your application review.
• We encourage you to review how we review both first-year applications and transfer applications to help you make the best decision for you.

Every College Gets To Choose Their Own Recommendation Requirements You Can Find More Details On Each College’s College Information Page

Inviting and Assigning Recommenders

In general, each college has their own recommendation requirements. For example, one college may need two teacher recommendations. Some colleges may not want any teacher recommendations. Colleges can also determine what kinds of other recommenders they want. Some may allow for any recommender type, whereas others only allow an employer recommendation.

Advising A College That You Will Not Be Attending

If you decide not to attend a school to which you have been accepted, we strongly recommend that you let them know that you are declining their offer. There are potentially other students on that schools waitlist who are patiently waiting for students to not accept their acceptance. Letting the school know you wont be attending allows them to move students from the waitlist to the acceptance pool.

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How To Accept An Acceptance Letter From A College

Congratulations! If you are reading this, chances are that you have already been accepted to the college that you want to attend. Your hard work has paid off. But, now what? How do you accept the schools offer of admission? Just like each school notifies students of their acceptance differently, so too does each school have their own acceptance of admission process. Below we highlight the different ways you may be required to accept your offer of admission.

Is It Cheaper To Go To College Out Of State

Due to this lack of state funding, private colleges and universities charge one tuition rate for all of their students, regardless of whether they reside in the same state that the institution is in. Many times, even attending an out-of-state school will be cheaper than attending a private college or university.

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Reason #: Colleges Are Judged By Their Sat/act Score Ranges

Yes, the SAT/ACT is important to schools because they use it to judge your readiness for college. However, it’s also important to schools because if you’re admitted, your SAT/ACT score will be incorporated into their yearly SAT/ACT statistics.

Every year, colleges publish their freshman admissions profile . In this profile, colleges provide the data on their admitted students. This data includes either the 25th/75th percentile SAT/ACT scores or the average SAT/ACT scores of admitted students. The 25th percentile score means that 25% of admitted students scored at or below that score . The 75th percentile score means that 75% of admitted students scored at or below that score . The average score is just what it sounds like, an average of all the admitted students scores.

The general public looks at this data to perceive the selectivity of the school . When you think of top-tier schools such as Dartmouth, Brown, or Columbia, you likely think, “Wow those are good schools!”

But why do you think they are good schools? You might think of their alumni or campuses. However, many lower ranked schools such as Denison have beautiful campuses with famous alumni like billionaire Michael Eisner. You might think of their low admissions rates, but there are other colleges with comparable admissions rates to the Ivies, and their rates dont necessarily reflect the academic excellence of students they admit.

Officially Accept Or Decline Your Waitlist Invitation

If you’ve been offered a spot on the waitlist, know that you won’t be automatically added to ityou need toofficially accept the invitation in order to confirm your spot. This usually needs to be done by a certain deadline, typically in mid-April or by May 1. Check with the school or look at your waitlist notification letter to figure out when the deadline is.

If you fail to confirm your placement by this deadline, you will not be placed on the waitlist and will have indirectly declined your spot on it. If you’ve decided to not be put on the college waitlist and would rather decline your spot, be sure tonotify the college of your decision by the deadline, ideally as soon as possible.

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Sat Scores And Minority Students

It may come as a surprise, but most schools consider how you did academically in school to be more important than SAT scores. And most colleges don’t have a cutoff SAT score. The way SAT scores are perceived has changed somewhat since, several years ago, colleges began to report scores differently.

For example, many colleges now report the middle 50 percent of admits. An easy way to think of it is like this: If your SAT scores are in the bottom 25 percent of what the school reports, you have to be better than most other students the school admits in other areas to make up for that. If you’re in the middle of the 50 percent, it doesn’t matter much where your scores fall. “There’s a very fine distinction between a score of 1460 and a score of 1410,” Guttentag says. “Going back to our baseball analogy, it doesn’t matter if you got your double by hitting a 300-foot shot to the back wall or whether you took what should have been a single and hustled extra hard and made it to second base. A double is a double, no matter how you get there.”

Bear in mind, however, that it’s all relative. If your SAT score is under 1000 and you’re trying to get into a highly selective school that admits less than one-third of its applicants, you’ll have to do some pretty fast talking to qualify!

Back to basics — when do you actually start applying to these schools you’ve chosen?

Sometimes Writings Essays Can Feel Like The Biggest Part Of Your Application With A Little Bit Of Planning Organizing And Drafting We Can Help You Make This Task More Manageable

As you work on your applications you can find essays or short answer questions in three sections:

Colleges can either make the personal essay optional or required. In the writing section of your Common App tab, you will see a table that lists each college’s requirements.

Many colleges include short answer questions or essay prompts within this section. You can find specific information about each college’s individual writing prompts here.

Some colleges use a separate writing supplement. Not all colleges have a writing supplement. Some colleges only request this supplement based on how you answer other questions. You can find more information about writing supplements on the Dashboard or your My Colleges tab.

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What Do Colleges Look For In Applicants

When colleges look at applicants, they’re hoping to find students who will succeed in college and beyond. Most universities are looking for students who will excel in their classes, but will also contribute to the on-campus community in their own unique ways.

So how do colleges identify these amazing students? Colleges use your scores as well as your extracurriculars, application essays, and letters of recommendation to judge your readiness to attend their school. They want to know that you’ll be a good student, but they also want to ensure you’ll add to their college community both now and as an alumni.

Write A Letter Of Interest

One of the best things you can do during this time is to write a letter to the school you’ve been waitlisted at emphasizing your continued interest and how the school is your top choice.

Remember that colleges want to admit applicants who are very likely to attend . And by confirming that you’ll 100% attend the school if admitted, you are effectively increasing your odds of getting off the waitlist.

Your letter of interest can be an email to your admissions officer or regional dean, or even a note on your college’s waitlist response form .

Below is what the Tufts undergraduate admissions blog writes about how waitlisted applicants can express their interest in the school :

“Make sure you confirm your continued interest in Tufts. Maybe check in one more time with your area’s admissions counselor … closer to May 1st, just toreiterate thatif a spot is available you would take it .”

Meanwhile, Wake Forest University’s admissions website directly implores waitlisted applicants to send a letter of interest and an update to their regional dean :

“Email your regional admissions dean. … This is your chance to convey your interest in attending Wake Forest while also describing how the final months of your senior year are progressing. In particular, we are interested in knowing more about recent academic success in the classroom.”

For example, here’s what Stony Brook University says applicants can do if they’ve been waitlisted :

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Keep Tabs On Your Email And Application Status

As you wait for college decisions to come out, it’s important that you routinely check your email and application status on the school’s website.

Some schools will only announce their decisions online through their application portals, some will email their decisions directly, and others will mail their decisions before sending out emails .

Even if you’re not expecting to get a college decision anytime soon, try to keep tabs on your inbox and application status. This will help ensure you’re not missing any application materials and that the college isn’t trying to contact you about any last-minute problems with your application.

What Is Academic Dismissal

Colleges want students to succeed in their studies. If youre struggling to achieve passing grades, you may end up on the road to academic dismissal.

Academic dismissal is when the school tells you that you will not be able to continue your studies there. Your standing as a student will be revoked, and you wont be allowed to enroll in any more courses.

Getting dismissed from college doesnt usually happen after failing just one course or having one rough semester. Its typically the result of a repeated pattern of poor grades for one semester after another.

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Before reaching academic dismissal, you may go through a series of disciplinary stages meant to help you turn things around. These may include:

Each college sets its own process for academic discipline, so yours may not follow these steps exactly. The GPA thresholds for each step also vary among schools and may depend on how long youve been enrolled.

For specifics on your schools academic policies, you may consult your student handbook or ask your academic advisor.

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What Do Colleges Look For In Students

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It may seem top secret, but colleges are perfectly willing to reveal their most important admission factors. You just need to know where to look.

Colleges typically consider grades in tough courses most important in admissions. But what else do colleges look for? According to the National Association for College Admission Counseling , colleges list the following admission factors as the most important.

Help Your Students Understand What Really Matters To Colleges

There’s no magic formula when it comes to college admission decisions. So how do you advise students on admission factors when they vary so widely from one college to the next?

Students can use College Search to find profiles for colleges of interest. College Search provides information on the college’s first-year students, including the admitted students’ SAT® and ACT score ranges and the percentage of students in the top of their class.

A college’s statistics should never be taken as rules for admission, though.Students should know that manyfactors influence admission

• Courses taken
• Interviews

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How To Get Colleges To Accept Transferring Students’ Credits

Part of being an American parent seems to be worrying about how to put children, or oneself, through college.

But what if you or your loved ones have to transfer colleges? More than one-third of college students transfer.

Bad news: 40% of transferring college students get no credits zero accepted by their new college. Credits dont transfer generally.

Students re-taking the same courses is a multi-billion dollar revenue generator for colleges. But its a time and money burden for students, not to mention for the taxpayers who finance them.

The popular answer is that the federal government should somehow force colleges to do something, like accept certain credits. Several states are headed in this direction. Ive extensively on why coercive solutions like these will just make things worse for students, for colleges, and for taxpayers.

But how should this problem be fixed? Answer: the federal government should reward colleges for teaching courses whose credits are more broadly accepted by other colleges, and penalize for teaching those whose arent.

The federal government should reward colleges for making sure that a reasonable number of their course credits that should be accepted at other institutions, are actually accepted. Reward colleges whose credits should be transferrable if they are, penalize them if theyre not. This is simply rewarding quality and student value.

Deserves Got Nothing To Do With It

The truth is, at least half the incoming class at one elite college is utterly interchangeable with half the class at colleges ranked several slots above and below.

Its never really clear which candidates are more qualified. Even less clear is who deserves a spot in the class, and how anyone could comfortably determine such a thing. The bulk of those credentialed enough for serious consideration are in that position because of circumstance and wealth. As William Munny said to Little Bill Daggett in Unforgiven, deserves got nothing to do with it.

I spoke to Doron Taussig, a visiting assistant professor of media and communication studies at Ursinus College, who is writing a book about perceptions of meritocracy. He said, Our cultural standards for what it means to earn or deserve something are extremely subjective and flexible, probably necessarily so. This means that when people tell stories about how they got to where they are and what merit had to do with it, most of us can conclude whatever we want.

As a society, weve created a system of credentials that keeps the wealthy in place. The wealthy define deserve to ensure their self-interest is disguised as the greater good. The wealthy teach the middle class the checklist for college admissions success and who to blame if things dont go their way, engendering a suspicion that their birthright is being curtailed by an undeserving other.

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Make A Decision About The Waitlist

Do you want to stay on the college waitlist in the hopes you’ll get admitted, or would you rather decline the invitation and just go with a different college?

After you’ve gotten a waitlist invitation, take time to consider whether you truly want to be on the waitlist for this school. Ask yourself the following questions:

• Is this your dream school?

• Are you comfortable with not hearing back from the school right away and feeling stuck in a sort of limbo state throughout the summer?

• Are you okay with potentially losing money on a non-refundable deposit to a different school if you do end up getting admitted off the waitlist?

Once you’ve made your decision about whether to stay on the college waitlist, it’s time to move on to Step 2.

Recommendations From Counselors And Teachers

At selective colleges, strong school support in the form of recommendations from counselors and faculty members has become more important than ever. These recommendations should be highly specific, describing not just each student’s love of learning, but the ways in which the students have demonstrated that they can

• Add to the classroom experience.
• Challenge themselves.
• Attempt original projects.

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