Letter addressed to Executive Director James A. Bacon from an alumnus, Comm School Class of ’98, name withheld by request.
James, the UVA community is fortunate for people like yourself that speak up. For calling out madness when it is happening when so many just grumble and shake their heads.
My son just applied to UVA. With a 4.1 GPA in the toughest course load, 1550 SAT, and plenty of extracurricular activities he was not accepted.
My wife and I live out of state, but we both graduated from UVA.
I don’t think I’ve ever not donated to the school each year since I graduated or gone a week without wearing a piece of Virginia clothing.
I did ask my alumni donation representative for an explanation about the medical school student’s expulsion for questioning the administration a couple of years ago. Besides writing checks and attending games, that is all the school knew about me.
This is how they get me to stop caring about the school. They fire the alumni. Whether it is having signs on lawn rooms slandering the school, removing Mr. Jefferson’s legacy, or just removing legacies it has the same effect.
I was hopeful with the Governor’s election and Ellis’ appointment. Keep up the fight, but I’m done. That was the last straw for me.
I know plenty of fellow Hoos who went through similar with stellar students …leaves bitterness. Wondering if UVA think the Woke will be endowing it?
Thinks…for some reason the edit function did not work
I had a similar situation with my in-state daughter, though with slightly lower scores. I’m UVa undergrad and law; my wife’s UVa law. I was upset for a year but didn’t sit around and pout; didn’t request an Admissions appointment like some to appeal. I’ve completed my most recent $100K endowment in the name of my mentor, having completed a prior pledge for an Edgar Shannon Chair in the English Dept. I feel much better than sitting around with sour grapes. And my daughter who graduated with a liberal arts degree from a lower ranked school now makes more in NYC than either of her lawyer parents. Some things work out for the best. She’ll still join me for UVa basketball in NYC tournaments.
The only positive in this situation is that the UVA that the applicant’s parents attended and graduated from is not the same school he applied to. Maybe it’s for the best that he won’t be attending. However if he is set on attending, he should do well where he ends up and consider applying as a transfer student as. Second year. He may have better success.
I am in the same boat. While my son was accepted, he decided in the end to go with his first choice when he received a late acceptance from it. It is definitely not the same school as when we attended. The culture, the honor system, and in many ways its history, all have diminished. Weak and misguided management is to blame beginning with the former president who failed to defend the University from the slanderous and false Rolling Stone article to the riots on the Lawn. Indeed, defacing the Lawn is now accepted. The University needs to raise its standards rather than dilute them or follow some rather misguided notions of DEI.
All you will hear President Ryan speak about as proof of UVA’s success is under his misguided stewardship is the record amount of applications” UVA has received the past few years. Small wonder. He had done away with SAT’s as a prerequisite. The Admissions department touts the increasing international, racial/ethnic, and first generational mix of the entering classes while outstanding legacy applicants like this man’s son are rejected.
You can optimize the percentages of the BOV approved 2020 Racial Equity Task Force if you remove SAT’s. They are the only dispassionate, objective criterion to distinguish among the academic results students from wildly divergent high schools attain. For example, an A from one of the Baltimore City high schools where literally no senior met the minimum mandated Federal math requirement is not equivalent to an A from Thomas Jefferson high school in NVA.
President Ryan and his hand picked administrative czars are committed social warriors. They believe America and UVA are truly elitist, historically fundamentally racist institutions. Therefore, punishing the potential legacy applicants of a predominantly white alumni base is perceived as righteous cultural payback. This makes UVA both “great and good.” Good because it’s an “in your face” to alumni families whom he sees as products of a rigged society predicated on white supremacy.
President Ryan needs to listen to the alumni who a decade ago were blindly loyal to UVA but now like the alumnus above are dead it. We are NOT averse to a more diverse student body. We welcome it. Having kids from other countries, ethnic, racial, and cultural backgrounds is a very good thing.
There is one major caveat. The admissions decisions need to be based on MERIT, not the optimal multi-cultural academic cocktail mix the sociologists dreamt up in the 2020 Racial Equity Task Force report. That mandates a racial mix equivalent to the Commonwealth of Virginia’s ethnic and racial percentages. DNA not achievement are the primary qualifications.
Few have read this report. Alumni need to them demand it be thrown out. UVA needs to be a meritocracy not a Petri dish social experiment.
I wonder if you realize that if MERIT is the only criteria, UVa will just end up accepting more Asian-Americans with no alum ties to UVa. When UC Berkeley dropped race/diversity as a consideration in admission, ethnic Asian representation soared & the rest (including Whites) suffered decline in acceptance rate. Are you willing to see 60-70% Asian campus?
Here is the 2020 Racial Equity Task Force. Take the time to read it. No one did and now President is implementing its conclusions.
https://dei.virginia.edu/racial-equity
Perhaps there is some solace that UNC and University of Texas just banned DEI. This has to be the first priority of the BOV once the new guard is installed.