<p>wjb: That seems to have varied within the admission office. Some admissions officers seem to have called candidates in advance to get a read, but lots of people on CC reported getting a call or e-mail saying that they were being offered admission without any advance check, and that happened to someone I know in the real world, too.</p>
<p>As for xiggi’s illustration, it is right on, but has absolutely nothing to do with the practices of the Harvard admissions office. And given the uncertainties everyone anywhere near the top of the food chain faced this year, because of the changes at Harvard, Princeton, and UVa, and the changes in financial aid, I don’t blink at all at a substantial number of waitlist acceptances. People would really have had trouble predicting their yield this year, and the only way to avoid possibly crippling over-enrollment was to be very conservative and to plan on using the waitlist. That’s what it’s for.</p>
<p>I’m not saying that no one every does what xiggi suggests. Far from it – it’s inherent in the whole ED structure. But I don’t think Harvard or Duke were doing that this year at all. And look at Chicago: it accepted 200 fewer students than last year, offered many more students waitlist places, said publicly that it thought it would probably wind up taking a significant number of students from the waitlist, and so far they have made single-digit spot-need offers, because basically they are overenrolled again.</p>
<p>Edit: Cross-posted with xiggi. I note that Penn did not use its wait list at all last year.</p>