Did anyone get accepted off the waitlist yet? Also, did everyone who chose to remain on the waitlist get an e-mail regarding the waitlist from Hamilton about a week ago?
Yeah, I do believe everyone got the email. Also, no news as of yet. I suggest calling the school or having multiple different call to corroborate what people say. Good luck to all!
Does anyone know if Hamilton will indeed be accepting anyone from the wait-list or if they have started accepting students from the wait-list?
The waitlist serves as such an important buffer against over-enrollment that it’s almost certain that at least a few applicants will be accepted off of it.
Good luck.
@merc81, while I have only viewed the threads of the 15+/- schools that my DD’s applied to, I am seeing am incredible number that are realizing their highest yield ever, as well as those that are potentially over-enrolled. Any thoughts as to the occurrence of both this year given they don’t necessarily have a correlation?
Sometimes over-enrolled is related to the number of upperclassmen who choose to study abroad. If less do so, then they have less housing for freshman and are ‘over-enrolled’ at a lower number. Are fewer kids potentially choosing to study abroad because of all the craziness going on in the world right now? Another consideration is that some schools have a greater propensity to triple up rooms. Not all schools can or want to do this.
@Chembiodad : In principle, the colleges themselves would be experts with respect to predicting along these lines. If they have made significantly poor assessments, then further information may be needed as to why certain trends may be manifesting in this particular year. However, some preliminary research indicates that coastal students have been reluctant to attend colleges in states and areas that don’t align with their political beliefs:
http://kenyoncollegian.com/2017/04/13/political-divide-impacts-class-of-2021-admissions/
If so, then colleges in areas less affected by this divide would receive greater than expected interest.
@merc81, that’s a great point, given Gen Z overwhelmingly supported Bernie. My DD’s did apply and were accepted at several of these great Midwest LAC’s, but once the blue / red divide became clearer they sheltered in the NE LAC’s - may be a missed opportunity for debate as a blue student in a red state.
It’s always hard to gauge WL activity from CC. Most schools offer wl spots to a number of kids that is literally a multiple of the incoming class. We see that here. Usually, a significant number accept a spot. Again, we see that here. Then something like 5-35 end up enrolling, suggesting that a few more than that got a call. Sometimes, those people, or ones who know them, are CC posters, but just as often, they are not. I have been surprised when I look at CDS numbers how much CC activity (or perception of it) around the WL varies even when the underlying data does not.
We’ll only know when CDS data is released how different this year really was. Which, of course, is no help to those waiting now. The one thing that is always true is that the odds are against you if you are on a WL, and it’s generally best to start getting excited about the school where you deposited.
@Chembiodad and @merc81 - I’ll give you a theory if there are indeed several schools that have over-yielded…
Admissions folks use history to guide their totals. In the past our yield has been 30%, so let’s apply 30%. To keep it simple, lets assume our target is 300 new students. 1,000 accepted students equals 300 enrolled freshman.
This year, we accepted 50% of our class ED (up from a 30% average over the period used for yield rates). Now we only need 150 RD students, so we accept 150 ED and 500 RD. That’s awesome for the ranking folks…look how selective we are!
The problem is that the yield history includes the likes of kids you not only accept in ED rounds, but more importantly the ones you lose from the RD pool to other schools ED rounds. The students who were most likely to say no have already left the pool, making the pool more likely to say yes.
It would seem counter-intuitive, because you would assume those likely to say yes have have already ED’d and your yield should go down (or at least remain at historic levels)…but the losses outweigh the gains, increasing your yield rates in RD because the pool tends to be more positive than prior groups to accepting a place at your school.
Or not…just a theory…
If this is getting harder for the parents and students to figure out, there is no reason to believe anyone in admissions has it nailed. Dean of Admissions has to be infinitely more difficult than it was 10 or 20 years ago.
EDIT: Since it’s such a mystery to the admissions folks…they bulk up the wait list just in case. They prioritize those who reiterate their love for the school, and call the very few they know will accept.
@merc81 Interesting article - thanks for posting that.
Kenyon is not known for being conservative, so it makes the hypothesis all the more interesting. In fact, Kenyon is much more liberal than many of the blue state MA schools.
The Oberlin drop could also possibly be attributed to some of the bad press they got last year from some of the activism happening on campus. U Chicago, may not have been able to sustain its massive marketing efforts to court applicants, especially those who had no chance of acceptance!
@EyeVeee , there is probably some truth in that theory and I SO agree with you about how hard it must be for everyone. The landscape continues to evolve. FA probably also plays into this – that’s pushing applicants to RD, especially as costs continue to rise. I suspect that as frustrating as this is for applicants and parents, it’s also really tough for the colleges. For them, “yield” is all about enrolling the students that they want for the institution, and the dynamic nature of this – more competition leads to more applications leads to more competition --, doesn’t make it easy. It’s probably hard for them to know whether increased applications represent that their institution has become more attractive or simply that applicants felt they needed to hedge their bets.
With that said, colleges have been missing on yields for decades. (There was a period of time in the late 1970s when Tufts had to rent a hotel in Harvard Square because it had a class that was over-enrolled by 25% and had no more housing on or near campus!) I seem to recall that Dickinson had a major miss on the class of 2019 because of over-enrollment.
I suspect that part of the issue with these smaller schools is simply that they are small. If a 100% residential school that has a class of 500 and enrolls 60% through RD and expects a 35% yield suddenly finds itself with a 40% yield, it is looking at housing 15 more students. Then if 10 fewer accepted students decide to take a gap year, and 15 juniors decide to take spring semester abroad (rather than fall or the year), suddenly, that school is looking to find housing for 40 more students. When the numbers are small, it doesn’t take a lot to move the needle. I could even imagine that if two schools that had a lot of cross applicants experienced dramatically different weather on their re-visit days that it could swing a dozen students or so to the one that had the sunny, blue sky day!
At this point, it seems that most of the WL action is in the “melt” phase – a kid gets accepted to Princeton so gives up a space at Tufts, which creates a spot at Vassar, etc. There do seem to be a few schools that feel like they’ll be at a desirable enrollment level regardless and are probably looking forward to a little of that attrition. It feels like several schools closed down their WL earlier this year than last year, although maybe not earlier than in years before that.
I, for one, am interested in seeing the CDS info for this year when it comes out. Here on CC, it seems to have been a tougher year than last. Oddly though, at the school DS attended, the opposite seems to have been the case. But looking at this anecdotally is rarely productive or accurate.
@gardenstategal, unless the school is suddenly offering merit aid or satisfying a FA need, I can’t imagine a student pivoting in late July - or at least can’t imagine my twin DD’s having the intestinal fortitude to be able to do that…
@Chembiodad , I know a kid who got off Stanford 's WL in August. And went! @Lindagaf 's DD took a WL spot in early July.
But I am with you – every day it gets a little harder to imagine a different future and a little easier to commit to the one you know. Especially in a case like yours where the current option is a great one. I would find it really hard to switch plans after I had picked classes, chosen orientation activities, corresponded with a roommate…
DS had one friend in particular that had baffling results and who could have pivoted easily to any of his WL schools up until the moment he left to move in. But his was an unusual situation, I think.
@gardenstategal, agree, we are really happy with their choice. And then with having to pick classes in July and a mid-August orientation at their school, it’s hard to imagine packing up the car and then making a last minute right hand turn on the way there. That said, I have one DD patiently awaiting two WL’s for a little while longer ^:)^ .
I contacted Hamilton and according to them, they are still in the process of evaluating the class. I think their class of 2021 is fully enrolled at this moment and they are waiting to see if anyone gets accepted from the waitlist of another college and chooses to attend that college instead.
That wouldn’t be surprising as they mentioned at Accepted Students Day that it was the largest group ever, and since then on CC I have only seen respondents picking Hamilton over another school.
@bdcollegehopeful, while Hamilton hasn’t issued any communication yet, Trinity recently announced that they had experienced a 25% increase in yield, from 22% to 30%, and weren’t going to the waitlist beyond summer melt and we know that Colby amongst others announced the same a week ago, so I think everyone should prepare for very little movement at Hamilton and embrace the great school you have been admitted to.
Anyone hearing whether Hamilton has gone to the waitlist?
Hey! I contacted someone and they said some kids were taken off the list 
they will email students if they are accepted. Best of luck to all!