Tulane is NOT Northwestern. Tulane practices aggressive yield protection, putting higher stats students who apply EA on the waitlist, and then campaigns to get applicants to commit EDII. NU does not admit lower stats kids and place higher stats kids on the waitlist to yield protect. NU can’t take every high stats applicant as it doesn’t have enough spots for all of them. To say or imply that applicants who got admitted were less deserving than the high stats applicants who were waitlisted is not true. Furthermore, NU is just as prestigious and even higher ranked than some of the ivies, so I don’t think every applicant who gets into “an ivy” would turn down NU. As others have pointed out, this is a strange application year and fewer spots were available for this class because of all the 2024s who took a gap year. My daughter goes to a competitive independent school that sends 18-20 kids to UPenn every year (15% of the class), and by ED about 14 are usually in. This year 4 students were accepted ED. Sure, 3 kids were accepted to MIT, 3 to Princeton, etc, etc, but overall the Ivy and other T10 schools admissions so far are significantly down from past years.
Excuse me, but I never compared Tulane to NU nor did I say or imply that applicants who were admitted were less deserving than any student that was waitlisted. You really need to re-read the thread!!! What I did say is that NU cannot take every deserving applicant and if anyone read the interview given by the President recently, he said that for every 1 applicant taken, 10-15 they don’t take were just as good. That is NOT saying anyone admitted is any less deserving than someone put on a waitlist at all.
Additionally, I also NEVER said NU is less or more prestigious than an Ivy. To be frank, I didn’t say either. Many turn down an Ivy for NU and many turn NU down for an Ivy. In fact, many turn down NU for public schools too and vice versa. It’s all about fit.
I know all about this year’s application process. I have a Senior as well he has some great options but he also has 5 waitlists which is clearly not normal if this were a normal year, it has just become a running joke between us, I also have a kid at an Ivy so I know how it works. But seriously, read the thread and make sure you’re responding to the right person because you are not accurate in what you think I said. Many of these schools are practicing yield protection. They have to. They can’t take every kid with a perfect GPA, perfect test score, great EC’s. No one knows what is going to happen. But in a few weeks it is all going to shake out possibly like no one has every seen because some students are holding admissions to 10 or more schools and since they haven’t released admissions yet, since many are likely letters, they can’t even turn down the spots and quite frankly, many holding waitlist spots and get offers won’t be able to afford the schools and won’t get FA so will have to pull out. Or, everyone could be wrong just as the mass of most college counselors were wrong this year about everyone getting into all their reaches, etc. You also have kids holding onto spots just to hold them “because they can”. I have heard that comment many times which is ridiculous. My son turns down an acceptance every time he gets a new one that is more preferable to him. He doesn’t need to hold more than a few at any one time. It is easy to eliminate schools as time goes on. Anyway, I get it, but they are still practicing yield protection and holding back on accepting some kids they want to accept until they know who’s left after Ivy Day and who pulls out. Some kids afterall dream of Stanford or Princeton or Harvard way over Northwestern. Or some kids like my kid, just don’t want to go to college 20 mins from their house. There are a myriad of reasons why someone prefers another school above another. One person was upset they got into U-Chicago but not Northwestern, yet many would kill to attend UC over NU. Again, personal preference.
Good luck to your daughter at NU! Sounds like that was a coup after her Tulane experience!
literally me im mad rn i got into uchicago but not northwestern it hurts like alot
I forgot to mention that I applied to totally different schools this year, and didn’t just change details, instead I was never fixated on the same ECs and added new ones I never thought would be important to my app last year.
Really sorry to hear that. There are still schools that have open applications on a rolling basis so you may want to look at some of those and try to apply to get in somewhere for the fall.
S21 was waitlisted on Friday. He is our eldest, so we’re new to this whole admissions thing. Can someone please explain the process of writing a LOCI? Should it be sent through the portal or emailed to admissions? Include new achievements or just reiterate his interest? TIA.
We agree, as I already stated, that NU (and many other schools) cannot take every highly qualified applicant as there are not enough spaces. However, your insistence that NU is practicing “yield protection” implies that the school takes lower stats applicants and waitlists/rejects higher stats ones because that is the definition of “yield protection.” I don’t believe NU uses its waitlist for yield protection. You also say that NU is “holding off accepting some kids they want to accept until …. after Ivy Day.” However, NU is not known for/nor does it take many applicants from the WL (except for last year with COVID and maybe this year). The fact that NU is asking WL candidates to confirm spot on WL after Ivy day is not necessarily, by itself, evidence of yield protection tactic. It doesn’t mean that NU had strategy to place HYPSM highly qualified candidates on the WL. Sure, many students on WL are HYPSM-qualified candidates, but so are many other applicants to NU, accepted or not. Yes, most students on NU’s WL who get into an HYPSM school are likely to happily withdraw from NU’s WL. However, again, that doesn’t mean that NU is doing yield protection. I don’t think T10 schools do or need to practice yield protection, except, perhaps, when they see a highly qualified applicant who is a legacy to an HYPSM school.
And, yes, it’s a difficult year with admissions and I agree with you that holding on to spots just for the sake of it has a negative impact so many qualified applicants who are being waitlisted/rejected.
I am sorry your smart and deserving son has been waitlisted and affected by this particularly brutal and uncertain application year and really wish him and you the best. Please keep me posted in what I hope will be a great outcome for him in the next couple of weeks. Yes, we know we are very lucky my D got into NU in ED round and feel blessed and grateful. I don’t know if I would necessarily refer to it as a “coup.” She is highly qualified and accomplished, as are many other applicants who unfortunately weren’t as lucky. (Lesson learnt to be careful what I say on these boards… “After our Tulane experience”? Really? Needed to bring that up like it was a big deal to us?)
Many schools are not accepting the same number of students that they normally do during the admission cycle. Ga Tech is a good example. They stated how many kids they were accepting and seats they have for next year and then they accepted substantially left. They were very transparent on the numbers on their waitlist and why etc. Totally practicing yield protection with their plan to then take a bunch of the kids off the waitlist. This year will most likely be like last year.
The appeal to NU here is not the same as it is to people outside of Chicago. I have 4 kids and all said too close to here and none would apply. 
Of course, they think I would come visit all the time but no way, not to mention I hate Evanston, lol. Great for college kids, not great for parents when you can never find parking downtown, etc. But my BFF lives there and loves it and NU on the lakefront is gorgeous when it’s nice out. Your daughter will love it! This one at the end said what the hell it’s a nothing essay. The odd thing this year is a lot of kids from our school were waitlisted, we don’t think any were rejected and have not yet heard of any accepted, or if they were they did not commit other than the ED ones. Most kids that stay in state here want to go to Illinois, but for certain programs Illinois is much better than Engineering but Illinois is also huge.
It will be interesting to see if they post their statistics now and how many they spots they offered. Including how many they put on the waitlist. I suspect they like many other schools have acknowledged they are keeping huge waitlists. Problem really is no one has been through a year like this so no one, including the colleges knows what is going on.
The big issue with these schools is that they don’t want all cookie cutter students obviously, but also they can’t accept everyone and if they do take everyone who has the perfect GPA or perfect score, these are most likely the kids applying to other elite schools so they do need to make sure they have a good turnover and get a good mix of students. I do know a few from CA that were accepted RD, have heard of a lot of OOS rejected, and many waitlist.
I haven’t said one way or the other if my son was smart or deserving or not. I also don’t feel as if anyone was more or less deserving of a spot as him. Unlike others, I am not bitter, annoyed or upset that he is on a waitlist. Well, actually it’s more comical than not as he has no rejections, just a bunch of acceptances and a bunch of waitlists so we just keep laughing that it is not normal. I expect the rejections to come shortly, lol so he better be ready. Just happy he has other options. It’s rough for a lot of kids this year, and I can see from other forums that many kids didn’t have safeties and only applied to huge reaches. That makes me sad for them as it is rough to see a kid go through that.
I understand that’s not actually how we got the name, but hard disagree. Extremely windy.
Today, definitely! 
Thanks for your compassion. Hope i’ll find my way into some good places.
I would call it yield management rather than yield protection. Yield protection implies rejecting applicants who are unlikely to matriculate (some call them “overqualified”) to artificially keep the yield high and admission rate low (the two are interrelated). NU is not known to dip heavily into its WL in the past and there’s even less reason to now that the yield is no longer a factor in USN selectivity ranking. The selectivity ranking now depends on test scores and class rank only. Colleges have the incentive to admit students with the highest standardized test scores and class rank if they want to play the USN ranking game aggressively (U-Chicago is one prime example though at the same time, it still wants the highest yield it can get with EA, ED I and ED II).
The matriculation models that schools have used in the past may become very unreliable for this admission cycle. To manage the risk, I think NU is keeping an unusually large WL just in case the model is way off. No school knows what’s going to happen as you wrote. But I don’t think NU is “holding back on accepting some kids it wants to accept until it knows who’s left after Ivy Day and who pulls out”. I think NU has accepted all the kids it wants to accept. But it keeps a large WL just in case the model is way off and it has to take many off the WL, instead of none or just a few like in the past.
When will unc mail officia acceptance packages
When will northwestern mail our official packages
Quick question; is anyone else unable to log into their Northwestern Caesar portal?
I was able to but it was a very long process with tons of steps :’)
Anyone else waiting to hear on MMSS?
What time the ISP is going to release today?
Hey guys, congrats to all who got in!
I was waitlisted and just reread my letter. In it, they explicitly state that they do not encourage the submission of additional materials, but welcome academic updates. Does this mean they don’t want me to send in a LOCI? Thank you!
Hi! Does anyone know about the process for switching between schools at Northwestern? I applied and was accepted to the Medill School of Journalism, but now I am thinking that I may want to switch into the College of Arts and Sciences (Weinberg). I noticed that there is a form to do this on the portal where seemingly you just check a few boxes to “Request a school change,” so would this be something I could do before even arriving on campus? Or, would I have to wait until after the first quarter and then submit an application/meet with my adviser (which seems quite involved) to be able to transfer between schools?
For some background: I love journalism and I thought attending a journalism school would be a unique opportunity, but now I’m not sure if that is really what I want to major in. When applying, I knew that I could always transfer between schools, so I wasn’t too concerned about applying directly to Medill (I also didn’t think I would get in at all, so I guess I didn’t think about it too much). Now that I am making my decision about where I will attend in the fall, this is something that I would really like to look into before committing. I would really appreciate if anyone could provide some insight into this!