<p>If I get waitlisted to Andover, that will be my 6th waitlist notif… 
Debating whether I should keep my hopes up or not…</p>
<p>@aspirant214 while a waitlist is hard to get off of, six waitlists probably increase your chances xD I’ve also been waitlisted. I made alternative plans and if at the last second I’m accepted, I’ll go. Otherwise I still have plan</p>
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<p>Sorry, but that’s unfortunately not the way it works.</p>
<p>Each waitlist is separate and unique, and your chances for coming off each waitlist are different.</p>
<p>Think of it this way - if you buy 6 lottery tickets, it doesn’t mean that you have a six-times better chance of winning the lottery. If the odds are 150 million to 1, EACH TICKET has a 150 million to 1 chance of winning.</p>
<p>@mountainhiker Here’s what I meant:</p>
<p>Say each ticket had 1/100 chance of being picked (fictional numbers). If a person had 6 tickets, what is the chance that at least ONE of the tickets will be picked?</p>
<p>Oops just realized I didn’t post the answer. </p>
<p>The equation to figure out at least one winning ticket is 1-.99^6 or 0.058519851. Round that to .06 of a 6% probability that at least one out of your six tickets will win. 6%> 1% (1/100) so technically. Being on six wait lists increases your chances of getting accepted somewhere.</p>
<p>The example above depends on “random selection” - but a waitlist is not remotely random. Waitlists are created for the benefit of the schools, not the benefit of the students. The schools have collected many years of admission data, and can generally predict with fairly good accuracy their “yield” - which is the number of students admitted that actually matriculate. Let’s say a school is accepting 100 new 9th graders - most likely the split will be about 50% boys/50% girls. If their yield is very high - say 85% - they would most likely offer admission to 118 students (59 girls and 59 boys). They can expect that many of their students will have been offered admission at more than one school, and 15% of the students they have admitted will decline, and go somewhere else.</p>
<p>If that scenario plays out as predicted, a school may not go to their waitlist AT ALL - they have filled their available slots, even though 18 people have declined their spots. Sometimes a school realizes a HIGHER yield than expected, and then they are “overenrolled” - more students accepted than beds available, in the case of boarders.</p>
<p>If their yield is LOWER than they predicted, and more students decline than they expect, then they will be “underenrolled,” and will go to their wait list. But the schools are very, very good at this, and usually are not “off” by much, if at all. If their actual yield was 80% versus their predicted yield of 85%, that would only open up an additional six slots. But they will be looking for very specific students to fill those slots - they want to balance the class in so many ways: gender, race, geographic region, sports skills, arts skills, ECs, day student vs. boarder, etc. </p>
<p>The point I’m trying to make with this explanation is that getting off a waitlist can be very, very difficult. Yes, there are people who come off the waitlist. But it is not something you should count on - the odds are not in your favor.</p>
<p>The kids seem to understand that getting in from a waitlist is an unlikely event. I think Px’s point was merely that the more waitlists you’re on, the greater the chance of getting in somewhere…Even though that chance is still very small.</p>
<p>Well said mountainhiker. And thank you honoraryamom. My point was just it is slightly slightly easier if you’re on a greater amount of waitlists. The criteria, as mountainhiker stated, is strict and very specific. But just by being on more than one waitlist, the chances are higher that you fit in somewhere.</p>
<p>I’m rapidly losing hope too. You guys are all amazing students and will at least be wait listed! I however am not getting my hopes up.</p>
<p>I disagree with PxAlaska’s analogy, as well. What really matters is being on the right waitlist . . . the 10 others you’re on are irrelevant. And, no, you can’t really predict which is the right one.</p>