I felt that few thought of either as safeties. More as targets but almost every kid applied to multiple T20s and T10 SLAC in DD’s class.
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I feel like that happens every year and they account for that in their offers with expected yield.
Well, looks like Cornell Arts and Science waitlist moved!
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Vanderbilt waitlist just moved as well. But only for QB finalists?
Sounds like NYU is offering some Spring 2023 spots.
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Based on threads here and reddit, lots of schools have WL movement in the last week or so through today, including Ucla, Vandy, Duke, Cornell, Northwestern, WashU, VaTech and some isolated admits to UVA and Barnard. So far, this seems similar to last year, where there was a small surge just before and after May 1…then last year it all sort of dried up. We shall see what the next 4-6 weeks hold! Hopefully closer to a normal year, with activity well into June and beyond.
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Haverford closed their WL already. I know that they are very very small, but it’s not a great indicator.
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Adding UCSB, Wesleyan, Clemson to the running list
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Reddit and youbemom have posts indicating Yale WL movement.
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Pitt has been taking kids off waitlist this week according to some threads.
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This is what I found re: NEU - they want to fill 2400/2500 or so this fall. Much smaller than normal as they are coping with the bulge from last year. Current infrastructure means that they have to cut class size this year. If this is the case across the board, then there will be 2 years affected by the unprecendented WL movement of 2020. Because classes ended up near capacity in 2020, the class of 2022 had to be cut by 10%.
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A post was split to a new thread: Which commuter college?
Is it because kids who took gap years are still filling the class this upcoming year, or something else?
No, it’s not the gap years filling the class but because the class above is too big from the 2020 gap year kids. In one situation, it’s like this (made up numbers but close enough to one IRL).
2019 - class size 3000
2020 - class size 3000 (but what you’re not seeing is that they let 500 kids take gap years so waitlists moved a lot). This is borne out by common dataset showing large WL movements (I saw this at Georgetown, Michigan for example).
2021 - class size 4000 (they let the kids come back from gap year + slightly higher yield)
2022 - class size 2000 (they can’t go back to 3000 because if they did they would not be able to house/teach class of 2021).
The crux here is that they (maybe revenue reasons) took in the same or close enough to it in 2020 and they didn’t make the hard decision to cut intake last year and/or they tried but yields went up.
So 2023 should be normal-ish?
@utah_csp pulled some real data for another explanation (his/her explanation is that they are expecting the yields to be on the higher side like last year). I don’t know where Cornell puts its gap year data (in the admits?)
2025:
admits: 5852. enroll: 3765. Yield: 64%
2026:
admits: 4908. enroll: TBD. Yield: x%.
If x = 64, then, enroll would be: 3141.
Cornell class size data:
2021: 3765
2020: 3249
2019: 3189
2018: 3295
2017: 3349
2016: 3315.
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This is so helpful to understand! I agree, it stands to reason that the numbers will go back to “normal” next year at this point. Although the test optional and increase in applications will still keep the admissions rates low.
With your Cornell example, it looks like they can fill their class with at least 200 people, unless they released the class size they are aiming for?
I can confirm that personally.
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Another viewpoint: a colleague of mine who’s an ex-AO and knows several other AOs says that a lot of colleges were conservative with sending out acceptances this year after last year’s over enrollment. So, fewer acceptances and more applicants on the WLs this year. The spike in number of applications has made their yield prediction models less reliable.
If yields are again higher than historical numbers, then they are covered. If not, then there will be much more WL movement than last year.
Let’s see.
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agree, I have heard the same thing from well-informed college advisors. schools over enrolled last year, so they cut freshman class sizes AND under accepted in the RD round but intend to use the WL to fill in the gaps. The yield modeling is much less reliable than in the past.
The good news is that, so far, it appears that many schools are going to their waitlists last week and this week for sure.
The reason I am monitoring the waitlists is not because I think that they’ll move so much more. What scares me is the one reddit story of the kid finding their “soft” WL invite in Spam and barely having enough time to click yes. My child has moved on, committed, etc. but of course, we would like to have the option if it were offered and what if it is buried in spam or call goes to vm?
Yes, the fact that several schools have already gone to their WLs further supports the theory that schools sent out fewer acceptances and have gaps to fill.
Of course, this is going to vary widely by school and major (and at public schools, if they need additional OOS and Intl to meet revenue targets).
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