<p>Hi,</p>
<p>I was deferred EA and I want to take a gap year. This might sound a little weird or something...but basically if I am wait listed after the regular decisions come out..will I be able to let them know I am interested in taking a gap year? Will they even consider me for the Z-List?</p>
<p>Thank you.</p>
<p>do you know if we can request to be placed on the z-list?</p>
<p>Wait till decisions first! Don’t get excited yet. Not to make you feel bad, but chances are that you’ll be rejected. And you’re not too likely to be waitlisted, either. But yes, I’m sure you can let them know you’re interested in taking a gap year if you do happen to be waitlisted, and if you’re accepted, you can defer your matriculation by a year. For now though, focus on other parts of your life and try to move on from thinking about college decisions too much for the next few weeks :)</p>
<p>Harvard doesn’t publish the number of kids they put on a waitlist, but last year Yale and Princeton put about 1,000 students on their waitlist, so Harvard probably does about the same. Given those numbers, if you are waitilsted, I do not think telling Admissions that you want to take a gap year will increase your chances in any way whatsever.</p>
<p>FWIW: [Z-Listed</a> Students Experience Year Off | The Harvard Crimson](<a href=“http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2010/3/30/students-year-harvard-zlist/]Z-Listed”>Z-Listed Students Experience Year Off | News | The Harvard Crimson)</p>
<p>“Wait list” and “gap year” really don’t go together (except in the context of Z-listing, but the number of Z-list students is so small as to be almost negligible).</p>
<p>The purpose of a wait list is to fill an empty bed in the entering class. If you take a gap year, you’re not doing that.</p>
<p>Although there’s no law against asking to be Z-listed–so in that sense, you can ask–I think that if you ask, you should expect the answer to be no.</p>
<p>Kid I know asked H if canceling his gap year plans would help his app - he was wait listed- (his HS has many kids who take the year) and they said they would TAKE him if indeed he committed to the gap year!! (bout 3 yrs ago)</p>
<p>The trouble, however, with any plan to get into a highly selective college through the back door is that it can’t work more than a few times. If it does, so many people will try this back door that it will become useless.</p>
<p>So I am still where I was before. Could asking to be Z-listed work? I suppose almost anything is possible. Would I expect it to work? I would not.</p>
<p>Sent from my DROIDX using CC</p>
<p>or you could go to a just as good college as harvard but not harvard for a year and transfer in?</p>
<p>^ so go to Yale, Princeton or Stanford and transfer to Harvard after a year? Not a great plan , IMO.</p>
<p>Not least because gaining admission to Harvard College as a transfer is well known to be way more difficult than gaining freshman admission.</p>
<p>Sent from my DROIDX using CC</p>
<p>@danstearns, why not? if he wants to go to harvard he should stress every option out there. yes transferring in is hard but not unheard of.</p>
<p>^ well, it’s like this - Y,P and S have acceptance rates only marginally higher than H (7-8% vs 6%) Then, the transfer rate into H is about 1% (15 out of 1500 in 2011)…i’d put the odds of both of those things happening at less than 1 in a thousand.</p>
<p>^ I see! it makes sense now that I think about it. Also almost everyone that attends those schools decide to stay. Maybe the gap year would be the best optional.</p>