<p>So I'm trying to figure out how waitlisting works. Let's a college has X number of available seats. Based on the statistics, college knows how many percentage will actually join the college, so I'm assuming they offer admission to X + Y% applicants. Is this true or they only offer admission to X students, keep Z number of students on waitlist and after May 1st when they know how many are actually joining, they lift few applicants from Z. </p>
<p>Colleges like Penn admit more students than they need to fill out their freshman classes based on the regular decision yield in prior years (e.g., Penn typically has a regular decision yield of 45-50%), and then wait to see how many of the accepted applicants accept their admission offers by May 1st. Once that’s been determined, and accounting for so-called “summer melt” (when some incoming students withdraw from the incoming class based on acceptance off a wait list at another school or some other reason), they figure out how many, if any, students they need to accept from the wait list. They then will select the particular students to admit based on the profile of the incoming class (e.g., do they need another violinist for the orchestra? are they light on chemistry majors? etc.).</p>
<p>For Penn I don’t think that selecting (what amounts to a few handfuls) of students off the waiting list is as analytical as 45 Percenter suggests. My sense is those lucky few are picked partly by geographical consideration through the advocacy of the regional admissions reps, partly by their passion to attend Penn and to accept an offer and partly (perhaps mostly) because these students have excelled in the 6+ months since they submitted their apps. Students afflicted with senioritise are unlikely to make the cut.</p>
<p>^ Still, when whittling down the waiting list from the 1,000-2,000 applicants who choose to remain on it, to the, e.g., 40 or so who were accepted from it last year, I think there’s a bit more analysis that goes into it. At least that’s what I’ve heard over the many years I’ve been following this stuff. ;)</p>