A Bunch of Waitlists

Soooooo I know we are all loving this process and nothing makes me more happy than all my friends coming together and just agreeing that college admissions sucks. I applied to seven school and I will share more information on that in a second, but my issue seems to be with how waitlists work. I understand that I should put down my deposit at once school, and I might hear from the others, yet the explanation of many people is “ohhh you have 4 waitlists?? You definitely have to get into one of them”. When all of my research seems to show most of these waitlists take very few applicants off of them :{ So I was wondering if anybody had more information on these waitlists and if had any tips on what to write to these colleges to increase my chances.

Accepted: (If i didn’t make it clear my plan is to put my deposit down at MSU)
Michigan State University

Waitlisted:
University of Michigan
University of Chicago
George Washington University
William and Mary

Rejected:
UC Berkeley
Northwestern

So just some fun facts act me:
3.7, 4.1 gpa
32 act
IB Diploma candidate
Honestly I can’t even tell you what major I’ve applied to at most colleges, mathematics at some, specifically recently sent UMich a LOCI where I expressed interest in their data science and organizational studies programs. Any and all thoughts would be helpful. And don’t worry I understand my scores aren’t that great. I’ve put a surprisingly small amount of effort in school and admissions during my battle with mental health.

Also: 4 year debater, forensics, NHS, male dancer, 3 years of music at the top level

Some schools report the wait list information on their common data set. It’s in the C2 section.

Michigan:

Waitlisted: 11,127
Accepted spot on the waitlist: 4,124
Admitted from waitlist: 470

GWU
Waitlisted: 5629
Accepted spot on the waitlist: 2082
Admitted from waitlist: 27

WM:
Waitlisted: 4133
Accepted spot on the waitlist: 2172
Admitted from waitlist: 94

U of Chicago:
Doesn’t seem to submit their info

Congrats on MSU. Bloom where you are planted!

@momofsenior1 haha thank you for the info, good enough for me, looks like I’m gonna be a spartan!

If any of these schools are your #1, tell them so! You never know if they have miscalculated their yield.

That said, move forward with your plans for MSU. You’ve got a solid team to root for in the tournament too!

Also if for any reason, Michigan State is not what you expected, you can try to transfer to U of Michigan, for sophomore year, they take quite a few transfer students. If you earn mostly As or all As, in your freshman year, you may look very good to U of Michigan in a year. Getting on the Waitlist this year means, based on your high school record, you can do the work at U of Michigan. A year of proving yourself at Michigan State, may be the trick to transfer there.

However Michigan State is a fine school!