<p>If you are waitlisted, do colleges request 3rd Quarter grades? or is it optional? Many schools' 2nd semester ends after June.</p>
<p>My guess only: they would assume your grades don’t plummet – but they probably wouldn’t require final grades be sent unless they actually extend an offer to you. Why go thru the bother when the vast majority of WL people never get an offer?</p>
<p>What about 3rd quarter grade?</p>
<p>Your first semester Senior year grades are evaluated. Your 3rd qtr or final grades are not. Your final grades are only considered if you’re actually offered a spot. No qtr grades are ever evaluated.</p>
<p>Waitlisted is fundamentally different from deferred.</p>
<p>When you apply early and you’re deferred, it means the admissions committee hasn’t made up its collective mind about you. That’s why they want mid-year grades. They hope that having more information will help them make a better decision.</p>
<p>When you’re waitlisted, the admissions committee has made a decision about you: they like you enough to have you, but they don’t have room. Since they already know they’d be happy to have you enroll, they don’t need additional information.</p>
<p>Some waitlisted students do in fact move off the list. This happens from time to time at some very selective colleges. There is no harm and some possible benefit to “guide” admissions to pick you as the waitlisted student who is in fact taken off the list when that “unlikely” opening arises. Exceptional third quarter (“interim” though they are) grades, awards, achievements, guidance counselor advocacy, etc. can make a difference. Yes, perhaps its a 1 in a thousand shot. But what not try? Send them. Get your guidance counselor to advocate for you. Or, of course, decide to move on.</p>
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That is the perception colleges like people to hold, but these days it doesn’t really seem to hold many places. It used to be adcoms would lament they received so many more apps from good students than they had room to admit, but they made the tough decisions. These days a lot of colleges put more students on the “waitlist” than they admit! That makes the waitlist a joke in terms of assessing one’s odds of getting in during the summer. I’d be willing to bet there are many kids on the “waitlist” they would never take, its just a smart move by the college to let the kid down softly and encourage their friends in future HS classes to apply (which lets them beef up their selectivity stats)</p>