<p>I've just been waitlisted at four selective institutions consecutively, and was going through the Common Data Sets for each. I just don't get why colleges would waitlist 3000 kids when in the past ten years, they haven't admitted more than 60. Even with 1000 students accepting a place, that's still 1000 for 60 seats, and sometimes it can be a lot higher. </p>
<p>I just don't get why they wouldn't waitlist 200 kids and just pick from those, if the know they don't need more than 50. Why the bizzare buffer of over a 1000 kids? Can anyone explain the reasoning behind these numbers?</p>
<p>Since waitlisted students need to actually accept a place on the waitlist, the institutions need an extra buffer for the students that chose to go to a different college and don’t go on the list.
That’s where my line of thought goes, anyway.</p>
<p>Even then the numbers are a little odd. For example one of the colleges I’m referring to offered 3000 kids a waitlist spot, 1500 accepted a place on the waitlist, and then they admitted 37. </p>
<p>The same goes for deferrals. Harvard deferred over half of its early applicants (including me). Ultimately, only 3% will be accepted. The amount of deferrals appears a bit excessive.</p>
<p>The rationale is that the school wants all of their options open to build the class that they want. Say they have a better than expected yield and only have one spot open for a WLed student. They take a look at all the kids that have committed and compare them to what they tried to achieve. If they did not get as many south Asians as they targeted, well good for you asig15 since you are one of the five kids from India that accepted a spot on the WL. They then prioritize those five and go down that short list until one commits. If, on the other hand, they determine that they are short an oboe player for their orchestra then they go down the list of the five oboe players on the WL. Multiply this by all of the goals that they have to achieve in building their class and it quickly becomes a very long WL. Good luck, it does happen for some.</p>
<p>Because why not? What do they lose from having a huge waitlist pool? Just makes it more likely that people accepted from the waitlist will enroll. Also, colleges do it to not scare off future applicants. If a senior says (I got waitlisted at X school) the junior might go “hey, if he got waitlisted, I might have a chance!”.</p>
<p>I pretty much believe what colleges say about their waitlists: that the waitlisted applicants are students that the colleges and universities would be perfectly happy to have, but they don’t have room for. </p>
<p>I also believe what schlaag says: it costs virtually nothing to put students on the waitlist. If you admit these students, then you need to have enough dorm rooms and foodservice and professors and classroom space and library space for all of them, and all that stuff costs money. But if you waitlist these students, all you need is enough memory to keep their names on a computerized list, and 0’s and 1’s are cheap and plentiful. </p>
<p>Some of the students who are waitlisted will be less disappointed, and have their feelings less hurt, than if they’d been outright rejected. If it costs basically nothing to have some of the students you won’t be accepting be a little less ticked off at your university, why not waitlist them?</p>
I’ve long maintained that this is the fundamental reason. A few colleges have a realistic sized waitlist, but most play the game. </p>
<p>Its not really about you, BTW, its about future applicants. Many parents and students treat waitlisting as almost an admit – “Suzie is on the waitlist at X & Y” as if she made the cut and they are just waiting for a space to open up. Colleges know this is bull, virtually none of the waitlisted will actually be offered admission. But for the current HS juniors, many often figure that since their stats are similar to Suzie then they have a pretty good shot of being admitted; all they need is a bit more luck. Contrast this to a college where almost everyone who applied was rejected; this doesn’t encourage any but the strongest to give them a try. So colleges with big waitlists get the best of both worlds; the ability to be very picky but a continuing stream of applicants.</p>
<p>The waitlist is just to provide a buffer in case the college’s yield is lower than predicted. If the yield is high enough, then the college won’t use the waitlist at all that year.</p>
<p>I wonder what percentage of the waitlist are the children of alums with less than compelling stats? 1%? 10%? It could be a way to soften the blow and still hope to keep the alumni cash flow.</p>
<p>I know this is terribly cynical, and usually that’s not my MO, but let’s not forget the waitlist for legacies. The gentle or soft deny when they really, really don’t want to peeve an alumni. Yes, statistics will tell us that at many schools legacies get very little preference. That doesn’t mean they don’t try to soften the blow when jr isn’t accepted.</p>