My son is wait listed at many places. He did not apply for financial aid, since he will not qualify for any need based financial aid. Is there any advantage to being full pay?
Yes- ranging from a huge advantage at some schools to only a modest advantage at others.
Your son’s GC needs to reach out to his top choice and remind them that he is full pay, AND will accept on the spot if offered (but only if both of these things are true).
Is he waitlisted at need blind schools?
I don’t have an answer but I do have a similar question. If I had to guess (only a guess) i would say that they slot in a person for a person. So say that a girl from the Midwest drops out…they try to replace her with another girl from the Midwest. And i’m thinking the same might be true with finances. That is, an FA candidate is replaced by another FA candidate…a full-pay slots in for another full-pay.
hey @blossom can you speak a bit more about the “accept on the spot” part of the waitlist? Are kids expected to decide very quickly? My kid is waitlisted at 3 schools…had received somewhat encouraging signs from 2 of them…but if he gets an offer, we really going to need a few minutes to think it over…in an ideal world, we’d even jump on a cheap flight & walk the campus one more time before the decision. But am I right in thinking that it’s a “take it or leave it” moment?
YMMV as they say.
There are some schools that are need blind in the RD round…but not for the waitlist. A full pay kid MIGHT have some advantage. MIGHT.
@SouthernHope your scenerios are a HUGE maybe and do not apply uniformly to schools,accepting students off the wait list. I know folks who work in admissions. They have ONE waitlist…not a waitlist for Midwest girls, and a waitlist for southern boys, etc.
It depends on the waitlist (not all waitlists are created equal). If your kid is waitlisted at a college which took 15 kids off the waitlist last year and 18 the year before, you are NOT going to get a three week window to make a decision. The waitlists are used very sparingly and judiciously as an enrollment management tool, typically for colleges with a very low admissions rate/high win rate among peer institutions. So be prepared to accept if not on the spot- than at least quickly.
Conversely, there are colleges with massive wait lists- part PR (particularly for legacy kids- they don’t get rejected they get waitlisted as a soft turndown), part marketing (signaling to the HS and guidance counselors that they want a continued flow of kids from their school even if this PARTICULAR kid was a no) and part enrollment management. And these schools often have two waves of waitlist acceptances- the first after May 1 when they do a nose count and can admit more kids once they see their numbers, and the second over the summer as the “melt” of kids who accepted and then declined (either they got off another waitlist, or decided to take a gap year and defer,) hits their enrollment numbers.
Your GC is going to know what you are dealing with on your waitlists… and can pick up the phone and call the regional adcom to get clarification.
And the “midwest girl for midwest girl” is erroneous. There is one waitlist. It is true that signaling some accomplishment that wasn’t obvious during application season can help (winning some international award for music composition in April for example). But that makes you a more desirable admit-- doesn’t leapfrog you only over the other “music kids” in the pile.
@SouthernHope Most colleges want to protect their “yield”…that is, the number of students that accept admission from those who were offered it. At this point, the colleges can decide to increase the yield number by only accepting people off the waitlist that would attend. After May 1, there is no point to offer admission without you wanting to attend anyway! Colleges that would do this would also let you know what merit aid they would give before they offer you acceptance.
When it comes to waitlists, the ball is in the court of the college so you do not get a chance to get all possible acceptances and then compare…they want to finish up completing their class asap…not let you wait even longer until you have all possible acceptances (that could go into the summer!)
Students should at this point have a safety that they would like to attend and that is affordable… and should only have colleges that they would attend if the finances are right still in waitlist mode.
@SouthernHope - You usually have some time to decide but I’ve heard it could be as little as 48 hours.
@calicash All the 4 where he is wait listed are need blind. Only one (CMU) says it is not need blind for wait list admissions.
CMU, I believe is not need blind in the RD round either. And isn’t this the school meets full need in the ED round for all, but not the RD round?
If a school doesn’t guarantee to meet full need for waitlisted students…you can guess that they expect those accepted students to pay…but again…YMMV.
At some schools it can help. Certainly won’t hurt.
I’ve heard lots of theories on how they decide to take kids off the waitlist…here’s an article from CC:
http://www.collegeconfidential.com/doing-the-waitlist-limbo/
“When colleges take a student off the waitlist, it’s never random. Most selections are carefully made to fill “institutional needs.” For instance, once May 1st has passed and the college officials realize that their entering class is lacking in females from the Southwest U.S. or males from the Northeast, or if they’re short on soccer goalies, swimmers or science majors, then the first candidates plucked from the waitlist are likely to be those who will help balance out such “deficits.” Other factors that may help pull one student–and not another–off of the waitlist might include finances (full-pay students can help when the financial aid budget is already overextended), SAT scores (if test averages are looking low, a C-student with high test scores may be attractive), racial/ethnic background (colleges are always conscious of those numbers), etc.”
Schools vary greatly in how they use their wait lists.
Some use it only to fill vacancies as they arise (if any).
Others intentionally plan on using it extensively to fill a meaningful number of their seats (like maybe 10%). That is one of the ways a school can manage its reported admit rate down and its reported yield rate up.
Few schools have their wait lists ranked. It is more of a wait pool from which they pick the kind of kids that want/need (male music majors from the northeast; female engineers from the southwest, or whatever).
Being full pay in that process is never going to be a disadvantage. Knowing that the spot will be accepted if offered is never going to be a disadvantage either.
Even if need blind schools’ websites or waitlist letters don’t mention being aid sensitive on wait lists, they may be. I would call or email those other schools. I checked with two schools where my son considered accepting a waitlist spot and one said they were need-aware for waitlist, while the other said they were need-blind. Both were need blind for RD.
Following @blossom’s advice is a great idea if he has a clear #1. If you have reason to believe that your child’s GC will either not make such a call or be ineffectual at it, then maybe you and your kid could make the call yourselves.
Of course it helps if you say you will come regardless and money is not an issue! Even the no loans need blind type of schools become not need blind when it comes to the waitlist. And I believe (data set: one school, two unrelated students waitlisted in different years) that lobbying the regional admissions person by the student via email (judiciously without becoming a pest) helps too. If you really want to go, you don’t just sit, you mount a full court press. If you haven’t visited the campus yet, you go and visit! If historially very few students are taken off the wait list, it may not be worth it, so check the numbers via the Common Data Sets.
D1 was WL at two schools few years ago. I emailed both schools to let them know we did not need FA. At one school we asked the GC to let the adcom know if D1 was admitted off the WL she would absolutely attend. I found out on CC when those schools were going to their WL and informed D1’s GC. When the GC called one of those schools the adcom denied they were going to their WL, but on the same day they called GC back to offer a spot to D1. They only gave D1 24 hours to decide. The other school also called her GC to offer D1 a spot few days later. Both schools said they wouldn’t send out the acceptance letter until they got a commitment from D1. My sense was they were just going down their list until they filled up the class.
D1 did send in additional packet to those WL schools, and her GC was very proactive in calling those adcoms. I think the GC got all of her kids off their WL. Schools like Hamilton said they would only take kids who didn’t need FA. Second week of May is a good time to call about whether the school is going to its WL.
FYI - I had a friend whose kid’s GC wouldn’t make the call or do anything to help her kid. Her kid followed the same advice D1’s GC gave and my friend called the adcom herself. The kid got off NU, Duke and Cornell’s WL that year.
My son got off the waitlist at Vanderbilt on May 3. They called him personally. I think they (as in Vanderbilt – don’t know about other schools) go to it right away after May 1. I was reluctant to make any calls myself. It seemed more appropriate for my son to handle the communication with the admissions counselor. I can’t remember what his school guidance counselor did or did not do. I vaguely remember her saying she had to be fair to all students, so if 2 or more were on the waitlist for a particular school, she could only ask general questions of the admissions counseler. She would not lobby for any kid in particular. (Public school.)
@SouthernHope , DS got 2 WL calls last year. Both wanted an answer in 48 hours. Both smaller schools (about 500 freshmen ). At both, the incoming class was remarkably balanced in terms of gender, etc. which suggests the WL was used to fill in what was still needed after May 1. With that said, both schools have had enormous variability around how many students they have taken from the WL in the past 3 years. I would guess that FP is, in general, helpful when dealing with the WL - on both sides.