I have been accepted to one safety school, and either waitlisted or rejected at all my matches and reaches.
My stats were never spectacular, but I didn’t realise I would be waitlisted nearly everywhere, particularly those places I’d been told were my matches.
I am now waiting on NYU and the Ivies, but I honestly don’t know what to do.
I’m an international, so I need to apply for a visa too, so this is all a big stress for me.
should I place my name on the waitlist or just go to my safety and perhaps consider transferring or something? 
Unless you can’t afford to lose the $500 deposit, there’s little harm in enrolling before May 1st while leaving your name on several waitlists. Don’t count on acceptances, but don’t discount the possibility either.
So for the next 8 hours while you wait for the Ivies to post you can: 1) rank order your waitlisted colleges in terms of how much you really want to go there; 2) go to Collegedata.com and look them up, going down your list; 3) Go to the “Admission” tab, and scroll down to "Profile of Fall Admission) and look for the numbers on the waitlist and how many were taken from the list and compare your stats to the incoming freshmen from that year.
note that many schools vary a LOT as to how many people they take from the wait list, so you can’t count on this year to be the same as last year! but at least it is a place to start
I’m not sure how to look up previous years, but if you can figure that out, looking up the last 3 years would give a better idea of how often they go to their waitlist.
For any schools that seem to go to their waitlist and for whom you are in the middle 50% stats-wise, write a letter saying that you are very keen.