And the Decision is...

As Greg has said, he's "99% sure" he's going to Georgia Tech. We've paid our deposit, submitted a prioritized list of dorms and notified UVA and U of Illinois that Greg won't be attending. The final 1%, and only remaining uncertainty, is his waitlist status at Stanford. I don't think any of us are expecting him to be accepted there given the long odds, but there's still a chance (and a few crossed fingers).

Greg made is final decision about a week before the May 1 deadline. He'd decided on GT preliminarily and intuitively by mid-April and was living with the decision. Since this is such an important step in his life I encouraged Greg to validate his gut feeling with a few more hours of research and a 'plusses and minuses' analysis.

GT was still the clear winner over UVA after this process. The big factors that swung in Tech's direction were the strength/reputation of GT's engineering program and its proximity to home. Early in the process Greg was more interested in getting out of Georgia, but apparently this feeling changed as the decision loomed. Greg was also interested in a strong liberal arts curriculum to pair with his engineering focus. UVA won on this point, but in the end Greg weighted this as less important than the engineeing curriculum.

Georgia Tech is a great school and I'm very proud of Greg's acceptance and his decision to attend. I know he'll have continued success and great college experience there.

April Fools: You're Waitlisted at Stanford

No, it's not as mean as the title suggests. Apparently Stanford and a bunch of other major universities (according to Greg) announced that they would publish application decisions on April 1st, and then sent them out a day early as an April fools prank. So yesterday Greg received this:

March 31, 2009

Gregory Matthew Cobb

Dear Greg,

We have just completed our review of applications for admission to Stanford for fall2009, and I am writing to offer you a place on our waitlist. Although we cannot offer you admission at this time, I want to assure you that any student we place on our waitlist is someone who has shown great promise, whom we would like to admit if space becomes available...

This is a good accomplishment for Greg and I'm very proud of him. Stanford put 5% of their applicant pool into the waitlist so this means Greg was in the top 12% -13% -- a nice accomplishment. We're both realistic about the chances of eventually being admitted there (slim), but that doesn't take away from the the positive recognition that this represents.

Unfortunately the same day as Greg was accepted at UVA, he was not accepted at Duke. This brings the final scorecard to 3 admits (Georgia Tech, University of Illinois, UVA), 1 waitlist (Stanford) and 1 'sorry/no' (Duke).

Admissions Notifications Going Online

We're getting close to when admissions decisions are announced (roughly the start of April). MIT recently announced that they'd be publishing their decisions a couple of weeks early this year (for a very clever reason) and "exclusively on-line". Clearly this is the way all schools will communicate decisions in the future.

Greg heard from University of Illinois Urbana/Champaign several weeks ago. That acceptance was posted online, followed a week later by the 'big envelope'. Just today Georgia Tech rolled out their online notification system for the first time. Fortunately Greg was accepted there as well. He's now into both of his 'safety' schools. I wonder how we'll hear from the other three?

Update: I checked their admissions sites and here's how "the other three" seem to notify applicants:

• Stanford: will send an email to applicants after 5pm PT on April 1
• UVA: Traditional letters and status available on your personal application status page on their site.
• Duke: It seems like they email you with instructions for how to check online

Update II: ...and here's more detail from the UVA Admissions blog on when and how to see your decision.