My daughter was waitlisted at several schools, including Carnegie Mellon and U Michigan. She wrote a letter and sent an updated resume to a general e-mail. Any advice on how to find out the admissions officer assigned to our region for these schools? Some schools tell you but not these two. Also any advice on what else to do to show interest.
TBH she’s already shown interest by sending in the LOCI. At this point it’s stats and how many people turn down admission offers.
Really there is nothing else she can do. At this point your D would be best off focusing her attention on choosing from among the schools she has been accepted to.
NPR did a story today about wait lists and how hard they are on students. It specifically mentions Michigan and how few kids got off the wait list last year (470 our of 4124)
470 out of 4,124 seems pretty high for waitlist admission. Did Michigan have a fairly severe underyield situation last year?
For most cases, waitlist should be treated as rejection, or seen as converting the school to a super-reach, and the student should concentrate on choosing among those schools which have admitted him/her.
Michigan originally wait listed more than 11,000! 4124 students accepted the wait list.
I’ve seen higher numbers… Brandeis a couple years ago accepted more than 20% off their wait list.
But I agree, it’s best to treat it as rejection. In that NPR interview, the woman said that getting off the wait list can be a mixed blessing, since by then, much of the school’s FA money has been allocated, and those admitted may receive far less (or nothing) compared to those accepted in the regular round.
Totally agree about moving emotions to one of the acceptances. I don’t even understand the purpose of sending a letter of intent to more than one waitlist college. And even then only if accepted, the student would attend at any cost. Many colleges put more kids on a waitlist than there are in the incoming accepted class. It is time to focus on acceptances.
I think Michigan was cautious with the huge influx of check box OSS applications and held back to make sure they didn’t over enroll. They can easily fill any empty slots with instate kids and full pay OSS kids if they need to. Personally I think they waitlist too many but common app broke the system in some ways and it is occurring in small colleges too.
Last year, the wait list admission at UMich was like 10x more than average of the past years. Since the near 5% over enrollment in 2014 due to a 2% jump in yield rate, they have been trying to admit less than their original target and make use of the waitlist more. It turned out the yield rate got higher every year that they still did not need to use the waitlist much. Finally, they increased the freshmen class size significantly last year and needed to admit more students from the wait list. But don’t count on it that they will admit hundreds from the wait list this year. It still largely depends on the unpredictable yield rate which has been going up year after year. It may return to the 20-50 level as before.
What you can do now is discreet stalking. You want to call when they are about to go to the WL. By calling you may move to the top of list. By the time they go to the WL, the adcoms are about running out of steam. They probably just want to admit students who would accept and be done with it. I found out my kid’s top choice went to WL on CC and had the GC call right away. Within hours the GC got a call back.
Not all schools have regional admissions officers. Good luck.
UMich does have regional admission officer and you can find it out from their website. However, your best bet would be through your HS GC to contact them.
https://admissions.umich.edu/contact-us see the tab on the bottom.
I agree with @oldfort . A couple of years ago, my daughter got off the waitlist for her current school. She made sure they were reminded of her presence by contacting them at timely intervals. If I recall, the first was a general email after initial notifications, saying it was her top choice and she would attend if accepted. She then updated about three weeks later with most recent grades and a more specific email to her rep and, I think, the AO she had originally interviewed with. Then, on May 1st, she emailed again with another LOCI detailing specifics of which classes she wanted to take and how she would be active on campus.
She wasn’t called off waitlist until the very end of June, but I suspect she must have been in a short pile of people they were very sure would attend, and who didn’t need FA. She did also make that clear in her emails, so I suggest adding that info if it is applicable. We were aware that that was a factor.
Unfortunately, wait lists at many colleges have been growing, and can give students an unrealistic expectation of their chances.