<p>Hey all, I could use some of your experience. I was just reading on a Rice forum about someone just getting off the waitlist yesterday. If decisions are due May 1, shouldnt this student have committed to another school already??? I am confused about how these waitlists work. DD will be applying this fall.</p>
<p>You are allowed and encouraged to apply to a school before the May 1st deadline. All schools will understand if you decide to choose a waitlist school , but you may (not always) lose your enrollment fee for the school you originally enrolled to.</p>
<p>You will see all schools that send a letter saying you are waitlisted suggest that you make other plans and apply elsewhere.</p>
<p>To clear it up even further in layman’s terms, you are basically obligated (for most colleges anyway) to turn in an enrollment deposit by May 1st. You may, however, get in off the waitlist after this deadline and, if you want to go to the school which just took you off the waitlist, you can retract the deposit you initially made (in some cases you lost it though, as the poster above me sharply pointed out) and enroll in the other school. Hopefully this made sense, I was finding it hard to find the sentence structure which would make it as simple as possible.</p>
<p>Thanks you guys. Now it makes sense. I didnt realize you could back out of a college you committed to to accept a waitlist. Good info.</p>
<p>Colleges basically don’t admit anybody off of the waitlist before commitments are due, because they never know how many people will commit until the commitment deadline has passed, and the whole reason for having a waitlist is to fill up the class if less people commit than they wanted.</p>