<p>It mostly comes into play late in the admissions cycle. Early on, they expect they’ll get a certain number of applications for Engineering, a certain number for Arts & Sciences, etc. But by the end, they might find they’ve gotten an unusually large number for A&S, and a third less than expected for Architecture, or whatever. They don’t just have to admit an entering class for the entire university, they also have to match the number of incoming students in each college to the available seats.</p>
<p>This is also the reason the waitlists (at larger schools) are not ranked. If they have seats for only 50 incoming nursing students, and it looks like they can expect 60 admission offers to be accepted and matriculate, there’s no way they’ll take another application to study nursing, regardless of whether the applicant is objective “better” than others on the waitlist. The various colleges will tell admissions what seats they still have to fill after the regular decision offers have been accepted, and admissions will go to the waitlist to find the best candidates they can for those particular seats.</p>
<p>They also like to put together diverse, well rounded classes. For example, an east coast school might already have a few students from the Dakotas; adding another won’t add any diversity, but adding a Pacific Islander when they don’t have any yet, will. They generally like ALL KINDS of diversity: gender, racial, geographic, economic, religious, political, etc. Putting together a diverse incoming class is really an art.</p>
<p>This is why you should explore schools that don’t get many applications from people “like you.” Whatever it is that would make you stand out in the student body at a particular school, that would differentiate you from the majority of other applicants there, is helpful. You can use that to your advantage if you target the right schools.</p>