The end of April is finally here and there are some schools started taking off students from the waitlist. Do we have any movements in CMU waitlists yet? Many thanks!!!
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I don’t think there would be any movements before May 1, as stated on their website.
My D received an email from CMU that she is active on priority waitlist and the school plans to contact the applicants from May 3 to May 5. Did everyone receive that email?
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My D received it as well.
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none so far
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Maybe check your spam. This is an email that lays out the process. I believe that every student who chose priority list will receive it.
Did you check your spam?
Hi Yes we received it last night. Thank you all who cared to reply. This is such an amazing resource
They’re quite consistent on the “first week of May” estimate they provide to waitlisted students.
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I agree. On the other hand, they ask students to check emails frequently from now. Just want to point it out.
They want to contact waitlisted students from May 3 to May 5 - Wed to Fri. Very short period of time. I speculate they already have an idea whom they will contact first. I also speculate they have an idea how many spots would become available at each college as most students would have enrolled by now.
Should be. They give themselves only one day - May 2 - to figure out who is off waitlist, which means they have done homework before then. By this point they should have had an idea how many spots they would have, based on historical records. However, I would think that students who have choices would wait to deposit until the last minute, a small proportion of students, though. But, in terms of how many spot available for waitlisted students, they are crucial.
I am thinking there should be more WL movements this year than the last two years at CMU. CMU needs to drop the admit rate further and keep the yield rate high at least as high as the last year’s. I presume this year their target admit rate is at or around 10%. With less admitted kids, they have to maintain the last year’s 45% yield rate.
For those schools that are not in Top 10-15, under-admitting students a little bit during RD and accessing the WL is the best strategy to have both - lower admit rate and high yield rate.
Some schools admit more from ED to do this, however, CMU’s ED admit has been less than 600 students per year, so it is lower than other schools in terms of percentage.
One issue with ED for schools not in Top 10-15 is they can not get the students that have the highest stats. If a student has almost perfect SAT/ACT score and a very high GPA, he/she typically tries out Top 10-15 schools instead of committing to a Top 20-30 school in ED.
I speculate this year CMU will admit more than 80 possibly more than 100 kids from WL to meet their admit rate and yield rate goals.
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Agree! Heck, even schools in the top10 do this! I wonder if it will become an increasingly common strategy.
I think so. While every year is different, my anecdotal evidences suggest we may have more WL movements this year than the last few years as colleges trying to adjust their admission strategy coming out of pandemic.
We are living in a society that college rankings are extremely important. I do not like the rankings in general, but it is crucial for schools to maintain and move up in rankings.
When peer institutions’ admit rates are dropping, CMU’s must drop as well, otherwise they are becoming more selective than CMU which plays such a significant role in rankings.
This year, Boston University (BU)'s admit rate is merely 10.7% which is the lowest in school history.
BU is not CMU’s peer institution, but it shows the overall trend in college admission so strongly. CMU’s admit rate must drop and I believe it would be somewhere around 10% this year.
10% is very low, and for everyone’s awareness, Cornell, which is one of highly selective institutions, had slightly above 10% admit rate pre-Covid. This is how much Covid changed in college admission.
In addition to the admit rate, schools must have high yield. Some schools want to use ED to get the commitment, CMU does this too, but not as much as other schools.
This is why WL may play a stronger role at CMU, at least, this year.
If I were CMU, I would reduce admits to the target admit rate and put many highly qualified kids on the WL. I am sending out less admits knowing that I would have more room for WL. I am going to do this to ensure that I can hit my target yield rate.
I hope they have somewhat less spectacular RD yield so that they have to go deeper in WL as my D is waitlisted.
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Thanks for sharing.
My understanding, at least with US News, is that they no longer use acceptance rate in their rankings.
I expect we’ll see more waitlist movement this year. I think schools were careful after a couple years where many accidentally overenrolled and then had housing issues. Hope so anyway for those waiting for a spot!
How did they “accidentally” overenroll?
Yes, USNWR may not but it does use yield, and more importantly, people see admit rate as an indication of selectivity, desirability, and prestige. When Georgetown’s admit rate drops and CMU’s goes up, it creates an image that people desire Georgetown more. You do not want to be in a situation that can hurt your image and brand value. We live in a world that college rankings are so important, colleges want to go up in rankings albeit they may not admit that on the surface.
CMU enrolled 1676 in 2017 which was an over-enrollment at that time. In that year, only 4 got off the WL. More admits and incorrect yield prediction were the culprit.
Freshman school size has been gradually increasing so we do not know what their target is this year, however, it is known that 2020 was also the year that they had very high admits (4524 - almost the same number as in 2017), albeit 1632 only enrolled with 288 from WL.
After 2020, they reduced the admit size intentionally to prepare those coming from the gap year. Freshman enrollment was the highest 2021 at 1896 and only 35 got off the WL in that year. Last year (2022) only 3873 were admitted and 1716 enrolled with 43 from the WL. For the last two years (2022, 2021), number of admits dropped almost 700 to 3873 from the 2020 peak of 4524. This was done intentionally not to over-enroll (yield went up as well) and to reduce the admit rate.
So come this year, what is their enrollment goal?
Assuming this year’s goal is ~1700 enrollment which is similar to the last year’s, with ~35000 applied which is a slight increase to the last year’s, and with the expected ~10% admit rate, the number of admits would stand at ~3500 which is the lowest in the last 7 years. Assuming the yield increased by 2% to ~47% from the last year’s yield of ~45%, they can get ~1645 total enrollment which is ~55 short from the goal.
I speculate we should see more WL movements this year - 43 kids got off the WL last year. I tried to be conservative with my estimates, so it could be higher than ~55 such as more than ~80 this year.
Note that this is CMU-wide number and the success rate of getting off the WL will be different at each school/college.
We should know by next week.