If you got accepted off the waitlist are you treated worse than regular students like you get less financial aid ? Does it matter if you’re from the waitlist or not after you’ve enrolled in the college? Is it in your transcript or recorded anywhere? Does it mean most other students are smarter? Whats the main differences? Anybody else off a waitlist?
<p>There is no social/academic stigma about being off the waitlist. In the extremely competitive colleges, being put on the waitlist just meant that you were as good as anyone else, but they just didn't have space. Some colleges are putting more people on the waitlist than they accept. This is because the adcoms find it difficult to deny someone two minutes after they just accepted someone practically identical. Coming off the waitlist does affect your financial aid since it is at the end of the process. You should try to negotiate as much as possible.</p>
<p>Yup. I was waitlisted at Stanford and they said that full FinAid would've been given if I was taken off the waitlist. Unfortunately, less than a dozen got off the 800 person waitlist.</p>
<p>It doesn't mean that others are smarters because if that were the case schools would only be filled with students that have perfect grades and perfect scores. However colleges build classes which are consistent with the insitutional mission that they are trying to achieve that year as the mission does change and what they need to fill in the gap is different year over year (Think about the classic oboe player concept; if the school need an oboe player this year and is snatched up RD, then you are put on "reserve" (waitlist) if the oboe player decides at the last minute not to come, then you are called from the reserves ).</p>
<p>It depends upon the school and how much money they have. Schools with deep pockets will give you pretty much the same aid package whether you are accepted ED, RD or from the waitlist. </p>
<p>At other schools (especially those that offer merit $$) by the time a student is admitted off of the waitlist a vast majority of the $$ has already been allocated to other students.</p>
<p>Does being off the waitlist affect your financial aid for just your first year or every year? Do the college keep a record of who was from the waitlist? Will your employers know you were from the waitlist after you graduated because its in the records and transcripts?</p>
<p>
[quote]
Does being off the waitlist affect your financial aid for just your first year or every year?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Only your first year. In subsequent years as long as you turn in your financial aid paperwork on time you will get an aid package based on your financial situation. Keep in mind the following:</p>
<p>[list]
The aid package that you currently have just may be the school's fa, regardless of what round you have been admitted. </p>
<p>Your Aid package will definitely change in subsequent years as your student contribution and the amount of $ that you can borrow loans increases.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Do the college keep a record of who was from the waitlist?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>On for their institutional records and only to the point of the number of people who took a place on the waitlist and the number of people admitted from the wait list. The information is no person specific and you will never be branded as *"joe blogg who got admitted off the waitlist"</p>
<p>
[quote]
Will your employers know you were from the waitlist after you graduated because its in the records and transcripts?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>No, the stuatus of how you were admitted, ED, RD, waitlist, Legacy, athlete, developmental admit, urm, etc is not indicated on your transcript. However if you are a transfer student it will be indicated on your transcript because there are college credits involved.</p>
<p>You seem to have a bit of inferiority complex about being waitlisted. There is no need to. The people on the waitlist go onto the waitlist simply because they are just as qualified as anybody who was directly accepted. They just don't have space for everybody. When they make final decisions on such small trivial things such as what your parents do for a living, it is luck (among the final few extremely qualified) as to who is accepted and who is waitlisted or even denied. That is why the number of people waitlisted can exceed the number of people accepted.</p>
<p>Right, no stigma, but financial aid could well be effected at all but the richest schjools.</p>
<p>That probably explain why the financial aid package was poor. Do colleges usually give out merit-based awards to non-waitlisted applicants?</p>
<p>The vast majority of FA is need based.</p>
<p>But they are first-come first-serve. Most aid will be given out to regular applicants.</p>
<p>It is unknown when you accept a college whether the FA package that they offered to you freshman year is going to be continued for soph, junior and senior years. To their credit, colleges do tend to keep it up for all four years, but the FA package does depend on changes in income/savings of yourself and your parents over the four years.</p>
<p>The fact that you came off of the waitlist could very well have affected their FA offer. As sybbie pointed out, the FA package given to you this year is only for one year. Unfortunately, you have no way of knowing what they will do next year. It would be normal for you to contact the college's finan aid office and try to negotiate for this year, and get some feel for what may happen next year.</p>
<p>How do you negotiate?</p>
<p>You contact the FA office at the school. However, since most schools at this juncture have exhausted their FA budgets for the year don't expect anything.</p>
<p>What should you say when you contact the FA office? How exactly do you negotiate?</p>
<p>Merit Based aid is unlikely for a waitlisted applicant as it is typically only available for the top 10%-25% of a class depending on the school. If you were in that category you wouldn't have been waitlisted.</p>