I don’t agree with the huge wait lists, but that is up to the schools and those asking to be on the waitlist.
However, I do think there should be a cut off June 1, July 1 but some point when the waitlist is released. If schools still have spots open after that, they can fill them. They know who was on the waitlist and can reach out to just those few students. No one waiting for a call but thrilled if it comes. Take a transfer student or someone who knows someone who knows someone.
I’m working with a guy on waitlists. It is hard for me to watch how he’s putting his life on hold hoping for that last minute call to a school a few spots higher ranked than the one he’ll go to if all the waitlists fall through. He’s in a position to accept at the last minute (finances not an issue) but really, the schools he’s accepted to are fine.
At UM, the percentage in 2020 wasn’t too far out of line with a few other recent years. For the five most recent years, the percentages admitted off the waitlist were <1%, 13%, 2%, 7%, and 11%. That seems like quite a bit of variation to me, and in three of the years the odds of getting off the list were better than the odds of getting into some top schools.
I assume that one thing going on with these waitlists is that, like with the rest of admissions it is not as simple as ranking the students in numerical order then accepting off the top of the list until the spots are filled.
Schools are likely still concerned with creating a well-rounded class and making sure there institutional needs are met (filling majors/schools, balancing genders, meeting financial and diversity goals, etc.) and they are probably trying to stock the waitlist to cover all contingencies. Whether that means they need to be as large as they are, I’m not sure, but I’m also not sure that the schools with large lists are all playing games or acting unethically.
Many schools reduce the WL over time so that the “extended list” for summer is shorter.
The person on hold waiting to climb a few rungs on the list is precisely the type I referred to above who needs to understand how this works. Someone shared a letter from a school (Brown?) to its WL students telling them that they should be getting excited about the school where they had deposited. Nobody should put their life on hold because they are on a WL.
Again, I disagree and that wasn’t even the intent of my OP. My OP was that Michigan keeps an enormous WL and offers relatively few acceptances. Not about WL variability.
So, what I see is that 7 out of the last 10 years, WL acceptance was right around 2%-ish. And one year (2020, the highest %) was certainly an anomaly.
And considering the significant increases in the number of apps over the past 10 years, roughly doubling, I think it’s been pretty “steady eddy.” But that’s just my opinion.
FWIW, I think Cornell’s WL is ridiculous, along with the guaranteed transfer options. For a school with almost a 60% yield, it’s totally unnecessary to offer that many WLs. That said, all the information about size and #s that are offered admission is available on the common data set. IMO, every student should do a deep dive of the CDS for every school on their list.
Alternatively, Michigan may have recognized that in recent years things have become much more volatile and is adjusting accordingly. And given that three of the last five years it has had to accept 7%, 11%, and 13%, there might be something to its approach.
Like @gardenstategal, I think the last few years have somewhat validated the practice, and I assume that the cautious approach will be around for a while.
One year (2020) you completely toss out as an anomaly, the other two could be explained, if I had the desire to research it, but I don’t.
And this cycle, 2022-2023, will HIGHLY likely be another 1-2% or less cycle. So far, only two admittances were reported from Reddit at the Nursing school. No one has been admitted yet, here on CC, from LSA or CoE. Being those are the two largest schools and the 5/1 deadline has passed, that’s unusual.
So, needing 5,000-10,000 more or less on a WL is not needed at all, when in WHOLE numbers, every year Michigan admits less than 500 from the WL.
1,248 is the “anomaly” year of 2020. Such a large anomaly that Michigan had to offer 21,000 a place on the WL and 10,000 accepted? Sorry, disagree with that line of thinking.
I gotta move on. We’re arguing at this point and that’s not in the rules here.
Not entirely true - some schools post all of that data, some schools post some of that data and some schools post none of that data. Also, some schools have only posted data through 2020-21, and some have posted through 2021-22. I don’t know that pre 2020-21 data is going to be meaningful anymore and 2020-21 data is definitely not meaningful. Realistically though, the only data that is meaningful is the current year’s data, especially given this year, last year and the year before. So, I think it would be very nice and easy for schools to tell applicants for example - we accepted 1532 applicants, we waitlisted 2047 applicants, we rejected 53,785 applicants. Yale puts that info right on the portal in a link below your acceptance or rejection. It would be even nicer if after the deadline to accept the spot on the waitlist they updated it to say 879 accepted a spot on the waitlist. (these are made up numbers by the way, and do no represent any school). Given this information (transparency), applicants would know what they were really up against and would focus more on the school they committed too and less on the school that they have a miniscule chance with. But like i said many posts earlier, I don’t think it is unethical, I just think people would like a better picture, for a fuller understanding of the situation.
Which, short of a very niche skill, suggests you won’t get in? That was definitely my impression this year (with few exceptions like GT). If you weren’t strong enough to make the cut the first time it is unlikely that we will in the (supposedly) more competitive second round.
There are likely some ED or EA applicants who are actually on the borderline as the college sees it during the ED or EA round. Such applicants may be retained for later review in RD (though any first stage application reading and scoring has already been done and presumably not repeated). The college may want to know whether the RD applicants in the deferred ED or EA applicant’s bucket (intended major, demographics, ECs of interest) are stronger or weaker, and thus could move the borderline above or below the deferred ED or EA applicant.
However, some colleges apparently do many ED or EA deferrals as “polite rejections”, so deferred ED or EA applicants at those colleges cannot assume that they are borderline applicants (with a reasonable chance of RD admission) or “polite reject” applicants (who have no chance of RD admission) who may be the majority of deferred ED or EA applicants. At a college like Stanford, which rejects most and defers few non-admitted EA applicants, being deferred is much more likely to indicate being a borderline applicant.
It is likely that something similar occurs in waitlisting. At colleges with huge waitlists, it is likely that most are “polite rejections”, and only a smaller subset of waitlisted applicants have any chance of admission if the yield in their bucket is too low.
Not always. I’ve known kids who got in after an ED deferral. Maybe some accomplishments in the interim strengthened the app, or maybe they really were “best of class” in whatever bucket they were in. Or even top of class but very likely to yield.
I also know kids who were rejected in the ED round.
We know LOTs of kids that were rejected ED this year, which seemed kinder, allowing the kids could move on. And very, very few that got in RD after deferral.
Not sure is it’s a COVID effect or just the colleges in our world. UVA of course was the most absurd, 4000+ deferrals that yielded 83 acceptances….
I always thought large waitlists exist because they are too lazy to narrow the “soft no” group further. They have all these applications that meet the high standards for admission and they had to spend so much time choosing the small “yes” group from that huge list. That is hard enough.
I think the larger waitlists are now more the norm because of the look at demographics and to create a diverse student class so now they will have more options to fill in the spaces.
