Is it possible to be rejected from a wait list? UChicago

College Search & Selection
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<p>Hi, all! I was wondering—as the title of this post says—if it's possible to be rejected from a college's wait list? Someone posted on a UChicago blog saying they were "rejected" from the wait list. How could this be? I thought wait listers just wait indefinitely until/unless offered a spot. I'm on their wait list and am extremely curious...Here's the link to the FYUChicago post: <a href="http://fyuchicago.tumblr.com/post/85956560692/i-just-got-rejected-from-uchicagos-waitlist-i"&gt;http://fyuchicago.tumblr.com/post/85956560692/i-just-got-rejected-from-uchicagos-waitlist-i&lt;/a>
The person may just be indicating that not being called off soon after May 1 is pretty much rejection statistically speaking?</p>

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<p>Yes.</p>

<p><a href=“UChicago Waitlist Thread - #196 by meghamind - University of Chicago - College Confidential Forums”>http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/university-chicago/1625621-uchicago-waitlist-thread-p14.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>Yes, as the accepted students commit to attend, the college will generally cut down the wait list. They don’t keep you hanging forever!</p>

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<p>Thanks @skieurope‌ and @VSGPeanut101‌ ! Good to know there might still be a chance (an extremely slim one, but I’ll take it lol) </p>

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<p>They also maintain Extended Waitlists (not sure about UChicago’s policy) to deal with the loss of students during the summer.</p>

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<p>@dividerofzero‌ what’s an extended waitlist? I tried searching for it on google but couldn’t find a good explanation</p>

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<p>@ocflav‌ It’s when they retain a small portion of students from the regular waitlist- so say there’s 2000 kids waitlisted at UChicago and their yield is a little bit lower than expected on May 1. Over the course of the next month, they accept 75 kids off that waitlist and 50 decide to enroll- now they have just the class size they were looking for.</p>

<p>But some kids currently in the incoming class will end up leaving because:</p>

<p>a) they placed a deposit and enrolled at multiple schools even though they shouldn’t have and only now let UChicago know they aren’t interested</p>

<p>b) they get rescinded</p>

<p>c) they end up deciding to take a gap year</p>

<p>d) unusual circumstances arise and they can’t attend</p>

<p>e) they get off someone else’s waitlist</p>

<p>Most of this becomes known to UChicago during the summer- and it’s called the “summer melt.” They still don’t want their class size to get too small, so when they close the waitlist on May 31st/June 1st, they formally “release” (or reject) 1900 kids and keep 25 just to be safe over the summer.</p>

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<p>@dividerofzero‌ thanks, got it! Do they really keep around 25 or so? That’s so small compared to the original wait list pool, but I guess it makes sense for their purposes</p>

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<p>Nah. I don’t know the numbers but they vary every year too.</p>

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<p>Gotcha</p>