Fall 2014 Transfer Update - UGA Undergraduate Admissions

Fall 2014 Transfer Update - UGA Undergraduate Admissions Fall 2014 Transfer Update Starting today, we are now reviewing Fall 2014 transfer applications for admission.While we would have preferred to start this process earlier in the year, we had to rebuild the entire transfer articulation process from the ground up in our new system. In the past, we have been able to review about 30 files a day, but we do not know how many we will be able to do in our new system until we have had a few weeks of actually doing transfer decisions. We are not able to tell individual students when they will have a transfer decision, as it depends on many factors. In general, we try to process transfer files based on the order in which they were completed, so a person that applied and had all items in to us in February should hear a decision before a person who applied and had all materials in to our office in March. To have a complete application, we must have transcripts from every college attended, including dual enrollment work done while in HS. As well, we need to have the most up to date transcript, so for instance if you sent us a transcript without fall 2013 completed, we need an updated transcript with fall courses and grades in order to make a decision. At times though, we are not able to make decisions based on the date order of completion due to a transfer application being complex. A few examples are the following; The first would be from a college we have rarely or never worked with before, thus causing us to review courses in detail from another university. The second would be a student with a large number of hours (90 plus) where we have never reviewed upper level courses. Third, an applicant with 3 plus colleges with rarely seen classes. Last, colleges with unusual grading scales (or no grades), unusual courses that do not match UGA in any way (I have seen a Tarot card design class), etc. There are probably more examples, but these are the most common. Decisions (both admits and denials) are made daily, and decisions will then show up on the myStatus page the following business day. Again, we cannot guess when a specific student will hear a decision, so please do not ask, as I can only say I do not know. We will post additional updates as we are able to, and thanks for your patience. Go Dawgs! Fall 2014 Transfer Update - UGA Undergraduate Admissions Fall 2014 Transfer Update There have been a number of changes in admissions for Fall 2014 transfer applicants, so I will try to cover this information as best as possible. The Fall transfer applicants will be the first group of students with transfer work in our new system. While we normally begin the Fall transfer review process in March, I expect we will begin the process this year in the first week of April. The reason for the delay is due to the fact that we are having to convert all of the transfer articulation/equivalency information from our old system to our new system, and a large part of that has to be done by hand. This is not a quick process, and our evaluation team is working on this as I type this post. We hope to have good percentage of the most common transfer colleges data in shortly, which will then allow us to start the process. With the new system in place, we are now able to use plus/minus grades from other colleges in our transfer GPA calculation, and they will translate to UGAs plus/minus grades. This only impacts students attending a college with a plus/minus grading system, but it is a change from the past, so we want you to know about it. Starting in Fall 2014, admitted transfer students who want to attend UGA will be required to submit a non-refundable commitment deposit to hold a space in the fall class. This will be a $100 deposit, and it will used to pay for orientation. We do not have a deadline yet for the deposit this year, as we are working on a later time frame than normal. Transfer decisions are made on a daily basis (M-F), and decisions will be mailed out and will be available on the myStatus page the work day after a decision is made. We ask for your patience as we implement this new system, as it takes a while to get everything up and running for a new system. There were slight delays with certain things in September for freshman applicants, so I expect there might be a few things to iron out as we start the fall transfer process. Go Dawgs! Fall 2014 Transfer Update - UGA Undergraduate Admissions Fall 2014 Transfer Update We are continuing to work as quickly as possible to review the 2014 Fall transfer applications. At this time, we have made roughly 550 decisions of the 2400 applications (2000 or so who are complete) we received this year. Based on this weeks numbers, we are averaging about 65-70 decisions being made per day, which is an increase over both last year and over the first weeks of reviewing files in our new system. As such, I expect for a large volume of decisions to go out in the next 2 weeks. In looking at past years, while we are behind our normal timeline, I do not project we will be too far off historically by mid-May. At some point in time, though, this will slow down a little bit due when we get deeper into the tougher transfer applications. Please remember we cannot tell you when you will have a decision as this depends on many factors. Applications are generally processed in the order in which the file was completed, but this is not always the case, as some files are more challenging, are from colleges where we are having to build a catalog in the new system, or are just complex. As well, I am not able to look at each individual file to see why someone did nor did not receive a decision based on X date. I have taken a crash course in Transfer Articulation over the past 5 weeks, and am now one of the people reviewing transfer files, thus each issue I have to look at takes away from time spent reviewing transfer files. Most applications completed by the end of February or earlier have been reviewed with some exceptions, and we are working on a number of files completed in the first week of March. If you are transferring from an out-of-state college or a college we have not had many students apply from, your application may take a bit longer to review and thus the timeline would not be correct for your situation. Transfer decisions are updated daily on the status check, and the myStatus page is updated at about 6 am every morning. If you have been admitted and want to see how your courses transferred, you can use the transfer equivalency chart off the admissions website. If you have submitted a deposit (fall transfer and beyond requirement), you can log on toDegreeWorks. Visit the Orientation site as well to learn about your next stepsand to register for a session. I hope this helps, and I will try to keep everyone updated. Fall 2014 Transfer Update - UGA Undergraduate Admissions Fall 2014 Transfer Update At this time, we have made decisions on roughly 80% of the Fall transfer applications that are complete and ready for review. This leaves us with about 400 or so files to still review for admissions, along with the checking of incomplete files for any missing documents/unusual circumstances. Starting today, we will be taking a slightly different approach to the remaining transfer applications that are fairly complex and time consuming, generally with multiple college transcripts and/or from colleges that we do not see very often. Usually, if we admit a student, the next step would be to enter their work into our articulation form in our student system, and we would then post the equivalent coursework into the system as well. As you can guess, this is the complex and time consuming part of the process. For these remaining applications, we will postpone this time consuming step, and make a decision without posting the credit. The student will generally be able to see what transfers into UGA and how it transfers through our transfer equivalency system, and this will mean that we will be able to make a vast majority of these decisions over the next few days. While we will still have a few applications where we are not able to make a decision yet, due to either an academic office at UGA wanting to review the file as well or some oddity with the file, we should be able get through almost all files within 2-3 days this week. In addition, we will continue to work on entering in work for articulation purposes, both for these applicants and for any updated spring courses for our admitted Summer and Fall applicants. We will also be tracking these applications daily, and if any of the accepted students with non-articulated work submit a deposit, we will then articulate the work ASAP. While this is not a perfect solution, we hope that this will move things forward for almost all transfer applicants who are still waiting on a decision.