As we’ve gotten two waitlists so far (along with 3 acceptances) I was wondering if that is par for the course. From my reading here it seems like a lot of kids are getting waitlisted - and from a wide range of schools - so I was curious if it was more than normal this year, or is it just a figment of my imagination? I guess I was expecting more straight up yes/no decisions so I’m a bit surprised by the waitlists.
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With the surge in application numbers these past two years, and the cautionary tales of those schools with much larger than expected freshman classes, it seems to me that the metrics colleges have developed to predict yield need tweaking, and the waitlists are to protect the colleges from potential overenrollment.
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Anecdotal but last year a family member ended up on more than what I would have considered a normal number of waitlists. Two things worry me: (1) I’ve heard on CC that waitlist is a soft rejection (backed up by the statistics) but I don’t feel like the general applicant pool (and families) are aware of this. (2) as colleges try to respond to the unhappiness of ever-more-active parents (we are definitely more “involved” as a group than the prior generations, for good and bad reasons), they might lean further into using the waitlist as a soft rejection, thereby having WL lose all meaning. And the process of getting into a school from a waitlist is the one most open to shenanigans…
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except that they do move! it’s maddening tho
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D’s LAC typically enrolls around 750 students per class. Last year (Class of 2025) saw a 104% increase in the number of applicants and ended up enrolling 913!!! It is a small, rural school and D says everything is crowded and resources are stretched very thin. There is no way they can have that many students again for 2026 but they got another record number of applications (up another 21% over last year, up 146% from her class). They don’t want to reject potential students but are definitely trying to admit a more reasonable number.
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Wow, that’s a lot! My sense is that a few New England LACs saw greater than anticipated yield last year (coupled with a big upswing in applicants).
This is my first rodeo, but I think you’re right. My D has 4 waitlist offers along with 9 acceptances and 0 rejections. Two of the waitlist offers I thought would be outright rejections and one I thought for sure would be an acceptance. My D is not viewing her waitlists as soft rejections, even though I’m well aware that they probably are. But she has several good options in her acceptance pile and is not dwelling on her many waitlists. Still waiting on three more schools too…
Last year it was normal to apply to more than 20-25colleges, my son only applied to 12 schools with so many rejections. This year my second son applied to four colleges. He applied ED and was accepted. I heard that the trend is to apply EDs. There are so many ED applicants and colleges defer a lot of students. It must be true that colleges waitlist so many students as well. I only applied to three schools 35years ago.
My oldest 6 years ago had more waitlists than rejections. Didn’t seem uncommon then. My understanding is these schools have massive waitlists for which the odds of getting off them are sometimes statistically lower than the original odds of getting accepted in the first place. (That said, he did get an offer from one of them, but he was the exception among his immediate peers.)
Not exactly on point, but the most agonizing thread here on CC last cycle was JHU’s waitlist. JHU kept those poor kids on the hook until move in day or so, when they finally told them no one else would be admitted off the WL. Brutal and heartbreaking.
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I think anyone on the waitlist (at any college) should 100% think of it as a firm and absolute no, and then on the extremely low chance they get a call it’s a great surprise. Get excited about another school, accept, buy branded SWAG, make plans. Forget about the dangling “what if” off the waitlist(s) unless/until you get the call.
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Lots of waitlists for the high school class of 2021 last year and not a lot of movement off of them. It’s better to fall in love with a school that you have been accepted too or it just prolongs the stress. Record number of applications last couple of years is really changing the landscape.
Anecdotally the 2020 high school kids got off tons of waitlists.
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Yes, true
One of my friend’s son was added to NYU’s mile deep waitlist, and got off of it in July. He’s a sophomore there now.
Not many kids (or their families) wanted to be in Covid hotspots like NYC.
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Yep. So many of daughter’s friends from that class got off dream school waitlists. Lots of happy kids that year as far as that goes .
Son has been waitlisted to 2 schools I thought he had a really good chance at acceptance… I know application number are way up this year due to the number of students that put off going away to school due to the pandemic. My thinking is that their hedging their bets in terms of yield (number of accepted students to actually enroll) because they haven’t been in this situation before.
I think this varies by school. WL at some have always been 150% of the entire class. In 2016, DS had one rejection, 6 WL, 8 acceptances.
He elected to stay on 2 WL - his 1st and 2nd choice schools. Was admitted to both (which we all found astonishing.) Within the first 3 days of May - so clearly both had underenrolled boys. Attended 1.
You need to decide where to matriculate based on where you have acceptances. Pay the deposit. Read the course catalog. Get invested!
If there are schools where you are on the WL and where you can say with certainty that you would happily enroll if given the chance, accept your WL spot and send a LOCI highlighting any new accomplishments. Then put these schools out of your mind. You may be told at some future date that the WL has closed. (Others may not hear this. But it could be they are full with your gender, for example. ) You may be asked if you’d like to stay on through the summer (so after you’ve picked courses, met your toommate, etc at the school where you have enrolled.) Or you may get a call asking if you are prepared to say yes if they send you a formal acceptance - generally within 3 days. It’s impossible to know what will happen.
Do NOT accept a WL position to see what might happen. Or to decide later. This achieves nothing.
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My son definitely won’t stay on one waitlist and probably won’t stay on the other. I was just curious about the whole phenomenon since this is my first time through. Back in the day waitlists were small and kids came off regularly. Seems very different today (with 2020 as an outlier).
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COlgate?
Looking back, high school class of 2020 saw much more waitlist movement than usual, in large part due to uncertainty over covid policies and gap years. Class of 2021 was the opposite, back to normal or worse, no movement, with many colleges full or even overenrolled. My take is that test optional messed with yield management.
I haven’t been paying close attention this year, though presumably colleges are tweaking their yield formulas, and this year is another experiment. Hard to predict. I would take a waitlist spot, but assume not getting off.
Fields for waitlist data are included in the Common Data Set at section C2. Look up the school’s CDS and compare several years’ numbers, 2021 vs 2020 vs some average of years prior to that. Most schools, but not all, have posted their CDS 2021-2022, which includes admission data for high school class of 2021.
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Our GC said they are hearing from colleges that, as a whole, they are being conservative in acceptances as to avoid the over enrollment that happened this year. This makes sense so probably true. And while I agree that you cannot and should not count on the WL, they will likely move.
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