<p>These last 5 days have been very tough on me. I thought I'd do a lot better with admissions than I did. Anyway, here are some quick stats.</p>
<p>-White male from Wisconsin
ACT = 33
GPA = 4.0 unweighted
*School offers no APs
-Always took most rigorous classes available
-Volunteered at a hospital operating room for over 150 hours
-Baseball - 3 year letter winner...pitching ace
-Basketball - 3 year letter winner...captain
-Cross country - 4 year letter winner...captain...helped team reach state this year
-Recs were awesome
-Essays were really good</p>
<p>That is just some quick info. I got rejected at Duke, Johns Hopkins, and Yale. Waitlisted at Vanderbilt, Notre Dame, Northwestern, Brown, and Penn. Accepted at Wake Forest and Madison. I'd love to go to Brown or Penn. Should I accept their waitlist offers? Should I also accept Northwestern's since it's my third rated school? What are my chances of getting off any of those waitlists?</p>
<p>About 15% of the students who accept a spot on Brown’s waiting list receive an offer. At Penn, the number is usually very low. If you’re really in love with Brown, I’d definitely consider accepting a spot on the waiting list and then make it known to them in no uncertain terms that Brown is your first choice. If you’re not familiar with “working the waitlist,” I suggest you do a search for the term in Google. There are a number of good articles there, one of which was just published the other day and is linked to somewhere on this board.</p>
<p>As for Northwestern, they tend to have a far better record on waitlists, admitting between 35-40% of students accepting spots on their waitlist. If you’re keen on Northwestern and want a decent chance of acceptance, you could also consider doing the whole “working the waitlist” routine with Northwestern.</p>
<p>Thanks for the advice. I’m going to work as hard as I can to get into Brown. Do you think writing an essay about how going to a small school - ~38 in my class - “screwed” me over (rewording it to sound a lot better though of course) would be something I should send in to them? I’d spend my time on Northwestern except their financial aid sucks so my dad isn’t very high on it.</p>
<p>If you submit a supplemental essay (which isn’t a bad idea), I would do one on how the small school experience somehow enriched your life even though it put you at a disadvantage in the admissions process. No one likes a whiner, even if they phrase their complaint nicely. Somehow pulling all of this off in a narrative format with sharp dialogue and an absolutely great opening line would be even better. Sounds easy, huh? Whatever you do, remember that if your essay doesn’t have the admissions officer who reads it really curious to get to the end, then it probably won’t be read very carefully. Without the personal interest element, it doesn’t matter how well written the essay is.</p>
<p>I’d also consider doing some sort of humorous YouTube video on the small school experience that you put on a CD and send in with your essay. If you could have your friends watch and rate (hopefully positive) the video, that wouldn’t hurt either.</p>