<p>Top</a> Colleges Have Bigger Waiting Lists - NYTimes.com</p>
<p>" Ashley Koski, ranked third in the senior class at Thomas Dale High School in Chester, Va., has wanted to attend Duke University since she was 12.</p>
<p>Late last month, she learned that Duke had neither accepted nor rejected her. It had offered her a spot on the waiting list — along with 3,382 other applicants. That is almost twice the size of the incoming freshman class…</p>
<p>Duke, which had a record 27,000 freshman applicants, has placed 856 more on its waiting list than a year ago. The reasons include the uncertain economy, which makes it hard for Duke to estimate how many of the 4,000 it has accepted will say yes.</p>
<p>If Duke’s best guess holds, no more than 60 will be admitted through the narrow gate of what is essentially a giant holding pen…</p>
<p>M.I.T., which had a 6 percent increase in applicants, increased its waiting list by more than half, to 722. Last year, it accepted fewer than 80 from that list. Yale, which had a slight dip in applications this year yet still admitted fewer than 8 percent of applicants, placed nearly 1,000 others on its waiting list, an increase of more than 150. Dartmouth increased its list by about 80, to 1,740."</p>
<p>did anyone catch the line referring to “running out of time reading apps”…so they waitlisted the kids they didn’t have time to read??? imo, that’s just ridiculous…they aren’t the only ones who had an April 1st deadline…which begs the question, did all these schools “run out of time?”</p>
<p>I find the whole system deeply flawed.</p>
<p>Syracuse still has not responded to a ton of kids, yes, no or maybe. We’re tempted to ask for our money back.</p>
<p>fyi, Jacques Steinberg is on the Today Show talking about all of this…</p>
<p>frugola: honestly, that is just unacceptable…what are they saying???</p>
<p>Since son has some really nice choices, we’ve just written them off (although we did pay $50 to have them consider him). On the Syracuse forum i see that kids are writing and calling admissions and apparently getting snippy answers, and vague timelines like “in the next few weeks.” I don’t fault the frontline admissions people, I fault whoever is in charge and has dropped the ball.</p>
<p>It boggles my mind. I would like to hear from someone on the <em>inside</em> the logic behind all of this.</p>
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This is bs. For each person accepted they need another body waiting in the wings? I don’t think so.</p>
<p>Well, you do hear the logic in the article. They keep that many kids on the waitlist because they want to replace the kids who do not choose thier school with other kids bringing a similar profile…So, they want to replace the theater kid with a theater kid or the engineering kid with an engineering kid…and if someone plays the violin, they want to replace them with a violin player and not a dancer.</p>
<p>So, they basically waitlist understudies for every role on campus. My D did not choose to stay on the one waitlist she was offered last year, but I really feel for the kids who do it.</p>
<p>I agree with Queensmom “I find the system deeply flawed.” For the students.</p>
<p>For the schools it’s a perfect system, though.</p>
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<p>For anyone reading who is representing the Class of 2011 and beyond, if THIS isn’t incentive to get your app in before the final countdown to the deadline, I don’t know what it.</p>
<p>Pathetic. If you thought it was a “good thing” to be waitlisted, think again. </p>
<p>This process should follow what they do for med school graduates as they seek residency placement: there’s a clearing house, students list their top choices and then the clearing house tries to “match”. (I think it’s similar to the college application process in England.) It doesn’t always work out, but this year’s college application process was just crazy.</p>
<p>I don’t think it’s perfect for the schools either. I am sure they would prefer a system where the great majority who are accepted actually matriculate to the school. Now their yield must be really tiny. The system only works for the HYPs of the world.</p>
<p>This system is ridiculous. A wait list that long is meaningless.</p>
<p>Personally, I’m wondering if the CommonApp was intended to be a good thing (no sense filling out certain data 10 times!) that has turned out to be a bad thing insofar as that it’s now easier to apply to X number of schools.</p>
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<p>Sounds like a candidate for ED.</p>
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<p>Yep. Same thing I said many years ago. Thanks for agreeing with me. 
:)</p>
<p>Here’s a better idea…you submit your standardized test scores and transcript and the schools base their decisions on that and forget all the other ********.</p>
<p>Strong argument for applying to EA schools in October and broadening your search beyond the top schools. This is geting completely out of control.</p>
<p>Post 16:
wrong. That would still produce wait lists of equally (statistically) qualified applicants. </p>
<p>And college in this country is academy +. It’s college life, which includes social factors and extracurriculars, as well as academics. College Life depends partly on breadth on a variety of measures, and that is not achieved by a list of stats.</p>
<p>Post 18:</p>
<p>You couldn’t be more wrong. The schools make the process into a circus and then screw around with people’s heads by waitlisting enormous numbers of kids who have essentially no chance to get in just to protect themselves for some statistical comparison.</p>
<p>The social factors will take care of themselves through the normal variation of interests and talents among the group of students whose test scores and transcripts qualify them to attend the school.</p>
<h1>19:</h1>
<p>No. They want a diversity geographically as well. They will not get that by choosing only statistically. Not going to happen. Nor will the other variations “just happen.”</p>
<p>But by allowing for a match system within and among consortia, + EDI + EDII, they will eliminate the mega-lottery purchasers and require applicants to make honest decisions about where their real preferences lie.</p>