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<p>I don’t buy it either. For a minute.</p>
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<p>There’s a step missing in there. How many students offered a wait list spot accepted it? (versus had another offer in hand and said no thanks) I’ve seen those stats listed elsewhere: Accepted, offered wait list, accepted place on wait list, was enrolled from wait list.</p>
<p>Would you rather be on a waitlist with 3000 other people, or rejected outright? I think the waitlist is better, as long as you’re realistic about it.</p>
<p>Here’s a suggestion: what if the schools didn’t reject anybody, and instead put everybody on the waitlist? What, in the real world, would that change?</p>
<p>I’d rather be rejected outright, personally. But this is my Myers-Briggs J talking.</p>
<p>The high cost of college education also contributes to more applications per student. Financial aid and merit scholarships also (appear to) have a lot of randomness. Not only does a student (and parent) have to worry about getting acceptances to top colleges, but also they want to have several acceptances so they can choose among FA packages.</p>
<p>Hunt - I agree with about 98% of your posts but not here.</p>
<p>I think it’s always better to know than to not know. Rejection is not the end of the world and allows the applicant to move in a forward direction, as opposed to walking the treadmill on a waitlist.
That said, I certainly hope the Duke waitlist letters fully informed each applicant that they were in plentiful company - 3,000.</p>
<p>Would I rather be rejected outright or waitlisted? That would depend on if I were truly someone the school was keeping waiting in the wings should a spot open up, or not. Four years ago when my son was waitlisted to 4 Ivies, I accepted the concept of a waitlist as a necesary evil for the school to manage its yield. But then I read an article which asserted that schools use the waitlist as a more polite way to reject a qualified candidate for whom they have no space. That said to me that probably only a small number of those on the wait list would actually be under consideration should a spot open up. Also, plenty of CCers seem to be of the opinion that being full pay or a legacy impacts whether a student is a true waitlister or a fake (courtesy) waitlister. My son was not a legacy and needed FA, so it felt cruelly misleading. A rejection would have been preferable.</p>
<p>S2 applied to two safeties (both wound up with acceptance rates in the lower 30s, which was not the case when he applied), and the rest were schools of varying reachiness. What he and his older brother did was to focus on 2-3 schools which they really wanted and worked like all-get-out on those apps. We called these the “target schools” in the sense that these were the places that offered the best intersection of acceptance, fit and affordability. These were schools that were at the high match/low reach range for them, where they were at/above the 75th percentile on test scores, and where each kid had something the school would find particularly attractive. There was some reasonable hope of acceptance, and the schools offered things that were very important to each. </p>
<p>They went 5-0 between the two of them on those “target” schools. Neither considered staying on a waitlist.</p>
<p>S1 applied to seven, S2 to eight. Neither had time, energy or inclination to do more apps, and my feeling is that beyond ten, there is a seriously diminishing rate of return (unless one is looking for $$$).</p>
<p>Someone else I helped with the admissions process this year got 7 acceptances, one waitlist and two rejections (4-1-1 on the “target” schools, including two Ivies). Of those, seven acceptances, only two came through with enough FA. Others offered top merit awards but not enough FA to make COA feasible.</p>
<p>Re: HurtLocker #58:</p>
<p>I don’t think there’s a chance in the world that Princeton had to contact over a thousand kids, much less “offer” them acceptance, to get 148 to come. Lots of schools do call up ahead of time to see whether a student is still interested, so they don’t waste time with waitlist acceptances that are rejected by the student. (Interestingly, though, in the past at least Harvard hasn’t bothered with that.) By the time an offer is made to someone on the waitlist, the enrollment yield is generally close to 100%.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, I think it’s clear that most colleges need a lot of people on the waitlist to provide a viable pool. Look at it this way: as soon as you get below the Ivy level, colleges’ enrollment yield from RD acceptances drops pretty quickly to around 25-30%. (Overall yield numbers are highly distorted by ED admits, where the yield is 100% – a much bigger distortion than waitlist acceptances.) If it waitlists students first, rather than accept them outright, and forgoes the systematic recruitment effort that happens right now, that yield has to be cut in half, conservatively. So a college like Amherst or Johns Hopkins needs 8-10 people on the waitlist to yield one actual student.</p>
<p>I’m sure, too, that they don’t have minority female oboists from Texas indexed precisely. But I’m just as sure that they have (a) specific minorities (and nonminorities), (b) gender, (c) geography, (d) legacy status, (e) athletic recruitment, and (f) focus of interest indexed in some way or another. Even when everyone counts in more than one category, it’s not hard to see how the target initial waitlist size gets big pretty fast.</p>
<p>CD, I like the idea of the target schools. I’ve been thinking what we’ll do differently with ds2. I felt like ds1’s 11 apps was a couple too many, but I do hesitate to cut down too much on the numbers for ds2. I like the idea of targeting the ones he REALLY wants and rounding out the list from there. Ds2 is only a freshman, but I think he already knows what his target schools would be!</p>
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<p>Simple. Because Duke DOES care and they make it clear that they do (as does EVERY college that offers Early Decision). Indeed, Duke even admits that unhooked apps using Early Decision have a xx% higher chance of admission. (The SoCal rep said it was a “ten percent advantage.”)</p>
<p>For us, the fact that D was waitlisted at two great schools was taken as a compliment and it was better than being rejected because she was admitted to other schools that she preferred. Obviously, it would be different if it had been one of her top choices (two rejected her), which would have made it difficult to move on as easily as she did.</p>
<p>As for blaming parents for letting their kids apply to too many schools–Blame the schools! They seem to be begging for applicants all through junior year with massive mailing campaigns, including Harvard, as they are as in as much competition as the kids are to maintain their status through selectivity rates. They are never going to discourage weaker applicants from applying. I theorize that this is one reason they will never let their 25th percentile figures rise too much…they want more kids to think they have a shot. That may also be some of the thinking in large waitlists, if kids see that others before them from their school came close, they may be more likely to apply.</p>
<p>The situation with college admissions has evolved over a long period of time for a variety of reasons and we now find ourselves with an overblown system that does not serve the student well, but is unlikely to be replaced by anything else because the factors that lead students to submit mountains of applications cannot be disengaged from each other.</p>
<p>If you multiply the application fee by the number of applications received you will soon understand that from the college’s perspective this search process is self funded and they have every reason to continue soliciting obscene numbers of applications because this is their best option to maintain/raise the profile of their admitted students. Riasing their stats results in more applications and application fees thus perpetuating the system in place. The colleges then up their game by refining their methods of selection, utilizing the waitlist, ED etc., to increase yield and retention from the applicants in hand and the “game” goes on.</p>
<p>Students will continue to increase the number of applications they submit because that is the only concrete tool available to them that might increase their odds of getting the very best school choice/FA result possible. To add to their stress an army of paid assistants have popped up to increase their test scores and polish their essays to improve the potential outcome. There are indeed fabulous students who are rejected by all but their safeties if they stick with the old 6 to 8 schools list. Ambitious students will continue to play by these rules simply because they know others will continue to do so and to cut back the number of applications submitted is, in their minds and not without a degree of truth, accepting defeat from the outset.</p>
<p>Add to this the increased cost of a college education and the need for many highly qualified students to receive a package that is decimal points beyond generous and you have a new incentive for students to keep as much control as they can by maximizing the number of applications - even though they risk loosing quality for quantity and are sacrificing their sleep and their peace of mind to do so.</p>
<p>The common application has surely accelerated this process but we would have gotten here anyway - it is the eventual negative side of a capitalist approach to education that treats students as a commodity.</p>
<p>The bottom line is that no matter the craziness of the system - we as parents cannot treat our children as a commodity and cannot allow them to be emotionally blackmailed into losing their sense of self in pursuit of prestige, or give undue importance to the relative merits of school X over school Y. Every school has relative merit to particular students totally divorced from the supply and demand equation created by rankings and fear of failure. Whatever college a student attends, the college can only do so much - the most important work is really up to the student. I don’t think the students who choose their financial safety schools but fully engage in the process and demand the best of themselves will, in the end, find that they have lost out on anything. This may be one of the few positive outcomes of a system that has priced itself beyond the means of the middle class.</p>
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sort of like what the service academies do. you submit a pre-application with your basic stats and ec’s and they tell you if you are qualified to submit a complete application.</p>
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<p>We originally hail from the same school district and I’m wondering if my kids know Ashley. Anyway, D was accepted to Duke – her dream school since forever ago as well – but it turns out she will not be attending. She will send them a note asking them to give Ashley her place. Doubt if it works, but I think it’s a nice gesture.</p>
<p>At a minimum, I would like for students offered spots on waitlists to be sent a postcard or letter that spells out the stats for the past, say, three years and the projected numbers for the students current year. Something like, “In the past we’ve have waitlists of X number of students with Y offered admission. For this year our projections for X and Y are …”</p>
<p>FLVADAD, I think that is a wonderful gesture. What a lovely young woman your daughter must be.</p>
<p>As I understand it, while colleges care about their “yield” (the percentage of student that they accept which in turn matriculate), their yield has nothing to do with rankings. There was a time when yield was used by USN&WR, but it hasn’t been for years. When it made a difference, some schools would accept few students and waitlist most. Then they would call the “waitlistees” to find out if they would accept if they were hypothetically extended an offer. Voila, instant improvement of your yield!</p>
<p>Because yield no longer matters, but acceptance rates do, it has been suggested that some ED (not EA) schools take the vast bulk of their class in the ED round (guaranteeing close of a 100% acceptance rate), a few from the RD round, and then an enormous WL from which to pick and chose likely acceptances. Now their acceptance rate goes down and their ranking goes up.</p>
<p>Personally, I have no problem with WL as it is generally used by colleges. If you look at the yield rates for the various colleges (which I submit make no difference to admissions) you will see a marked reduction from the top (Harvard/Yale @80%) to just a few rungs down where the rates drop to @60% and then only slightly further below even 40%. If you were on the admissions committee of some of these colleges all of your “admits” would be considered “reaches” in CC terms.</p>
<p>amen, bchan1!!! excellent comment!</p>
<p>pugmad/FLVA: Except there is no “place”. Duke probably accepts three people for every bed it has available in the RD round.</p>
<p>Bluebayou, I totally get that colleges give “bonus points” for expressing committed interest via ED. I was saying something different. Why should Duke cate that “someone has wanted to go there ever since she was little”? Why is that more compelling than the student who just discovered Duke last year? Really wanting a school is not a qualification for admission. </p>
<p>Besides, what kid “wants to go to a certain school” at 12 based off any knowledge? It’s based off hearsay or because they heard mom and dad say it was a good school.</p>