<p>There are a lot of people in this section of the forum that have said they got waitlisted at a lot of schools. Does this mean they have to wait until the summer before committing anywhere? Aren't the depositis and decisions deadlines in April? If you got into a good school, but waitlisted at a better school and you wanted to wait it out, does this mean you lose option of attending the first school? Are you then forced to take a gap year based on this decision to wait it out (then get rejected)?
Just wondering out of curiosity</p>
<p>You matriculate to a school that admitted you. If admitted from the wait list of some other school, you have the option of switching to the new school, losing your deposit at the school you matriculated to before.</p>
<p>In general, do not be optimistic about admission from the wait list, particularly if the school puts thousands on the wait list while admitting only a small percentage of them when it does use the wait list (and it will only use the wait list if the yield is lower than predicted).</p>
<p>The most selective schools (Stanford and the like) rarely take people off their wait lists. You’re better off counting a wait list from that type of school as a future rejection list, then put your deposit down at a school that accepted you and never look back. For less selective schools that do have a history of admitting people off the wait list, it’s okay to hope, but you should still put a deposit somewhere and prepare yourself to go there.</p>
<p>I was just wondering because it seemed odd since Id always assumed that the first deposit is like 10-20% of owed tuition.</p>