McKinney Ag said:
My son applied 8/1 and had a complete file by 8/9.
Goes to a very competitive school and despite loading up on AP, advanced, honors and dual credit classes and only making a single "B" in his career, is "only" top 23%. 3.93 UW 30 ACT / 1390 SAT. Applied Mays first choice and Econ second….like everyone else. No decision. :/
He did get in to UGA and is excited about that one as a backup option. Also Auburn, Alabama, Arkansas and KU.
I hope your son gets good news but that definitely puts him on the bubble for Regular Admit, esp for Mays. I wish Mays would go ahead and move to the same model as Engineering and do a separate evaluation instead of "first come" until they fill up as well. As time goes by unfortunately the amount of slots for Mays are filling up so he is more likely to get Econ or to get Blinn with a pathway to Mays. IMO the Blinn Team with Mays is the best path as it is cheaper with smaller classes and they still get to do everything a regular student does. The waiting sucks.
UGA is a great B School program and overall school environment for a kid that wants the big college experience. Athens is a pure college town like CS and it's close to Atlanta similar to CS is to Houston. It's not a STEM heavy school like A&M but is a really solid all around school. It's particularly great if your son is wanting to stay in the Southeast networking wise.
I also wish A&M would move to a more normal admissions cycle instead of the utter chaos that it has with Rolling. Georgia Tech has the best system imo. Early Action deadline for In State is Oct 15, OOS is Nov 1. In State Decisions released Early December, OOS in January. Then they have a Regular Decision round. In State kids get preferential treatment and are evaluated all together at the same time. Then OOS is the same and compete with other OOS. That's a fair system that gives preference to In State folks that pay taxes and there is a clear timeline. If you don't get in the early round you can also be deferred to regular but the odds don't look good and kids know they likely should be looking elsewhere.
My eldest and youngest sons both applied about the same time around Sept 1. My eldest didn't hear anything until mid March and got a System Admit but he had already been accepted and decided to go to Galveston at that point. Those months of waiting really wore on him as this slow trickle of hearing about different friends being accepted happened like 1000 paper cuts. In the end it was a blessing as he is doing MART at Galveston and is crushing it but it was really hard not to feel negatively towards A&M with that process. My youngest was accepted within a few weeks as an auto admit and Engineering a month or so later. So you end up with one kid who has half a year of anxiety and not knowing and the other kid who gets the admit long before he hears from other schools and had to feel like he was rushing to do his A&M App months before all of the others (while still waiting on some relevant information at the beginning of Senior year to add to his app) or else worry about housing and other issues. It just makes no sense to me.
Either way I hope for the best for your son and he's already got a great option. It's all about what you make of it in the end and it sounds like your son is very bright and driven and is set up to succeed. I know the success level for kids like your son (Top 25% from large and competitive Texas HS's) is very high. Virtually all of my elder son's friends are 3.5 and above at the schools they went to and none were Top 10%.
"The most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and I'm here to help."
Ronald Reagan
