<p>Hey.. I got in to Oberlin. And as for now, I am going there. However, I am confused. I have 5 wait-lists ! And those too from places like Williams, Middlebury and Vassar. So although I have secured my place with the deposit, I am quite uncertain. And I dont know what to do about my wait-lists: whether to stay or not, what additional documents/information to send.</p>
<p>Any help/advise/suggestion would be really helpful!</p>
<p>Thanks,</p>
<p>Sohaib</p>
<p>well, u can stay on all of them if u wish lol:)</p>
<p>coz it wouldnt do u any harm. i mean, if u can get accepted, u go there! if u dont, u hvnt paid anything anyway!!</p>
<p>stay on for the ones u wanna go</p>
<p>u r lucky already man, coz im on the wait list of oberlin!!</p>
<p>First, consider the waitlist statistics. These are available from past years on each school's Common Data Set. The colleges may be willing to tell you how many were offered spots on this year's waitlist, but it is too early for them to know how many will accept a spot and how many will be admitted. For the schools that you mentioned:</p>
<p>Middlebury (2005-2006) - offered waitlist to 950, 579 stayed on it, 38 eventually admitted
Williams (2005-2006) - offered waitlist to 1123, 744 stayed on it, 23 eventually admitted
Vassar- could not find their CDS online but did find a reference to US News and World Report that said they admitted no students at all from their waitlist in 2004.</p>
<p>So it would appear, at least at these schools, that the chance of being accepted from the waitlist is rather small.</p>
<p>Another consideration is your financial aid award (if any). Oberlin is fairly generous with financial aid and tends to give more money in grants and scholarships than in loans. How much financial aid money will be left over for those admitted from the waitlist at the other schools? (I don't know the answer, but it is something that you may want to find out before deciding whether to stay on the waitlist at the other schools.)</p>
<p>I do not know how the schools in question run their waitlists, but I did attend a presentation by an admissions officer at another school concerning their waitlist procedures a couple of years ago. She said that one thing they kept track of was the number of times a student contacted them with questions, new information, etc... They gave bonus points to the applicants who were persistent in asking good questions and providing relevant new information, but did not appreciate the ones who would call with silly questions or send in a copy of every new homework assignment just to get their number of contacts up. You should certainly send stuff like end of marking period grades, end of semester grades, test scores from AP, IB or SAT II that they may not yet have, improvements in GPA or class rank and that sort of thing. You should certainly call with questions that cannot easily be answered elsewhere, such as asking how many are currently on the waitlist, whether they have an estimate of how many they will accept from the waitlist (ask this after May 1 when all the RD decisions are due), the availability of financial aid for students accepted from the waitlist and so forth...</p>
<p>Finally, think about why you applied to each school. Some of the ones you mentioned are quite a bit different from Oberlin. Try to decide which of your waitlist schools would really be preferable to Oberlin and eliminate any that are not. If possible, visit any that you have not already seen first-hand. Good luck.</p>
<p>I have a question... How does Oberlin go about keeping track of how many times a student contacts them? I called last Friday on my cell phone (which I recently got so they don't have it in their records), and I asked a couple of questions about the waitlist. I did not reveal my name or anything... I did send them a letter days ago expressing my interest and my cell phone number just in case they wanted to contact me. I was a bit bummed out... if I call next time, should I somehow reveal who I am?</p>
<p>The number of times you contact them won't make the slightest bit of difference. Make sure they know you're interested if a place opens up, and then for god's sake <em>don't bother them</em> further. You should only contact them if you have some genuinely significant new information to add to your record. Don't make a nuisance of yourself.</p>
<p>Thanks for clearing that up, dave72.</p>
<p>Take your name off the waitlists of schools you don't want to go to, it's fair to those who really want to go there (a lot of people got waitlisted pretty much everywhere...)</p>
<p>Hello everyone.. Thank you for your help. I really appreciate it !</p>
<p>Sohaib</p>
<p>Oh it's you! Hi, it's Kriti :)</p>
<p>Did Oberlin send out decisions to transfer applicants already? It says May 1st but I haven't gotten squat. You guys regular applicants?</p>
<p>Yeah, we're all regular.</p>
<p>I know its you Kriti !... Thank you again!</p>
<p>Williams sent out 20 acceptances to waitlist students. Middlebury has no places. Vassar is sending their out next week. Hope this helps.</p>
<p>I was surprised to see that you had written that Oberlin was more generous than others. We were disappointed in their assessment but decided to take on the financial load and urged our daughter to accept anyway. Perhaps we expected too much from financial aid in general. Although she is planning to attend Oberlin we are still wondering if Vassar will call next week when they get back to waitlisters. Do you happen to know whether Vassar is considered to be generous or not?</p>
<p>You might post something on the Vassar thread to get a better idea -- also about whether waitlist admittees get the same sort of aid as regular admittees.</p>
<p>I doubt you can say much as a blanket matter.</p>
<p>There seems to be a lot of variation in financial aid awards that are difficult for laymen to account for.</p>
<p>For example,there have been posters on this board with seemingly similar stats to my daughter who received huge merit awards, whereas she got relatively little. And she got thousands of dollars more from another school.</p>
<p>With the same profile, D2 got more need-based aid from her college-to-be than D1 is getting from Oberlin.</p>
<p>We too decided to shoulder the burden because we felt it was the best place for our daughter, all things considered.</p>
<p>D also considered Vassar but preferred Oberlin.</p>
<p>I don't think Vassar is all that generous. According to respective viewbooks, Vassar awards $24 million in fin aid, and Oberlin award $39 million. Also, Vassar rejected me, and when I emailed them after the rejection, they said "financial circumstances made your case even more challenging."</p>