Odds of Getting Off of the Waitlist at 6 Elite Schools? How to Maximize Chances?

Chance Me / Match Me!
1

Hey everybody!
Today was the last day of decisions for me in the stressful and long college application process. I am truly honored to say that I got into 5 great schools, but was rejected by 5 schools and waitlisted at SIX(!), I REPEAT SIX SCHOOLS! The six schools I got waitlisted at are amazing, so I was wondering what are the odds I could atleast get accepted at one of them? I am happy I got into Cornell, however, tbh I don’t really appreciate the lack of respect it has among its ivy brethren and the fact that my mother went there for grad school gives off the impression that I only got in because of whatever small boost legacy has during regular decision. I know this is completely off-base with reality, but I also like many of the schools I was waitlisted at based on school visits and stories from current undergrads. I know Cornell is a great school, but based on my admissions results and stats, I feel as though I could’ve maybe done a little bit better. No offense to Cornell!!

School Tally:
Accepted- Cornell (probably going there if not admitted anywhere off waitlist), Berkeley, UCLA, UVA, GA Tech
Waitlisted - Princeton, Columbia, Penn, Brown, Carnegie Mellon (School of Comp Sci), UChicago
Rejected - ofc Harvard, Yale, Stanford (probably), MIT, Duke

Stats:
(Program/Major: Computer Science)
Objective:
SAT I (breakdown): Old SAT, Superscore - 2300 (770 Math, 750 Critical Reading, 780 Writing)
ACT (breakdown): N/A
SAT II: Math II - 800, Chemistry - 760, US History – 740
Unweighted GPA: ~3.9
Weighted GPA: 4.42 (after 1st semester senior year)
Rank (percentile if rank is unavailable): School doesn’t rank
AP (place score in parenthesis): AP Computer Science (5), AP Chemistry (5), AP Lang (5), APUSH (5), AP BC Calc (5, AB subscore 5), AP World History (5), AP Physics 1 (4)
IB (place score in parenthesis): N/A
Senior Year Course Load: Multivar Calc/Matrix Algebra, AP Physics C, AP Stat, AP Gov, AP Lit, AP French, STEM Engineering
Major Awards (USAMO, Intel etc.): Nothing too big. I won some global robotics awards, spoke at a conference in Portugal, got National Merit Semifinalist, AP Scholar with Distinction, admitted to STEM Gov School, National Honor Society, English Honor Society, Math Honor Society, CS Honor Society, All A Honor Roll, etc.

Subjective:
Extracurriculars (place leadership in parenthesis): Football (Freshman, JV, Varsity; Most Improved 9th grade; JV Captain 10th grade; Scholar Athlete 9th-12th), CS Research (published 2 papers), Robotics (won regional, global competitions), CS Honor Society President, Science Olympiad (Primary School Team), Some small Guitar/Piano Awards
Job/Work Experience: Local pool snack bar employee
Volunteer/Community service: Taught basic CS to impoverished children at a local community center, Room to Read club executive board, mentor to freshman at school, tutored for various honor societies
Summer Activities: Stanford Pre-Collegiate Summer Institute: Computer Simulations and Interactive Media (2014), Research at George Mason (2015), internship at NIST - National Institute of Standards and Technology(2016)
Essays: Common App - 8/10. Unique topic; Nothing mind-blowing, however.
Teacher Recommendation 1: 9/10. Computer Science teacher that I had for 3 years. He wrote the recs for all the programs and internships I’ve done over the past few years, so it should have been very good.
Teacher Recommendation 2: 8/10. Didn’t know him as well, but he really loved me and thought I was a genius for some reason lol. Also known for writing extremely good recommendations.
Counselor Rec: 8/10. Definitely know her better than vast majority of her students. Don’t know how good of a writer she is though.
Additional Rec: N/A
Interview: N/A
Supplementary Material (portfolio, etc.): Supplementary Rec from NIST mentor/supervisor.

Other
Applied for Financial Aid?: Yes
State (if domestic applicant): Virginia
Country (if international applicant): 'Merica
School Type: Public
Ethnicity: Asian Indian
Gender: Male
Income Bracket: Sorta high
Hooks (URM, first generation college, etc.): N/A

Please keep me in touch with reality by being as realistic as possible and letting me know what my odds are at getting off of atleast one of the waitlisted schools. If you think there’s a chance, albeit small, let me know what I can do to maximize whatever chance I have for atleast getting into one of them. Thanks so much, and sorry if anything I wrote was offputting in any way. I’m just frustrated that I got waitlisted at more schools than I got accepted or rejected from. That’s not how the system should work in my opinion! haha

I also am facing a lot of doubts in the back of my head about whether if I did early decision to one of these schools (rather than REA to Stanford) I would have a pretty good chance of getting in. I know there’s nothing I can do to go back in time and change my mind, but yeah :confused:

Thanks again, and please let me know what you think!

2

Definitely an interesting read. Thanks for the help! I’m not too in tune with small liberal arts colleges, but do you think employing those stratagems would help at schools like these?

3

Congratz on your high school achievement! I’m very impressed :slight_smile:

4

thank you!

5

bump

6

Why would you post a “chances equivalent” thread at this stage? You seem status obsessed – I have no idea what these schools have in common except ranking. No one here has any idea where your odds are best to get off a waitlist. Give them all accomplishment updates, remind them that you are interested, and that is about all you can do. Shame if you have to go to lowly Cornell on the end. :((

7

Getting off the waitlist is pretty rare. Choose one of the schools that admitted you, is affordable, and which you do not face high barriers to get into your major after enrolling.

8

The only people who don’t respect Cornell are status obsessed high school kids. Go to Cornell and be happy.

9

Use more exclamation and question marks in your letters of continued interest. Meanwhile, get excited about the inferior choices of Cornell, Cal, UCLA, and Ga Tech. That’s a pretty terrible outcome.

10

I can assure you that your mom’s having gone to grad school there had nothing to do with your acceptance.

Congrats on your achievements!

Don’t be too obsessed with waitlists.

11

@Lindagaf @intparent you must not have read the part where I said I was just frustrated and knew that what I was saying was out of touch with reality and not meant to be off putting. I assure you though that the vast majority of the schools I got waitlisted at were higher on my college list not due to prestige but due to other factors such as location, feedback from friends, and cost. I may not have mentioned earlier, but UCLA, Berkeley, and GA tech are all out of state for me, so my options are basically narrowed down to UVA or Cornell, and I did not enjoy the UVA campus when I visited (the atmosphere, etc.). Basically, getting off the waitlist at any of the schools I was waitlisted at (minus CMU and perhaps UChicago, since I don’t necessarily prefer those schools over Cornell ) would greatly open my options for college. This was written in the heat of the moment, and your snarky, sarcastic comments were not needed at a time like this.

12

Suspect you’ll disregard my comment because it’s not what you want to hear but your list of schools and corresponding posts reek of a desire for prestige. Given that more than one has responded in a similar way to your narrative, you might want to consider that the way you are expressing yourself about this is indeed off-putting to adults not related to you. Sounds like you were aware your comments could be taken that way. In the future you may want to rephrase so you do not turn people off whom you are looking to for advice.

Look at common data set for each of your waitlist schools and see how many have gotten off the WL in the past. That will give you hard data - not anecdotal experience - about the likelihood of ultimately getting in. Then you can decide how much effort you want to put in given the odds of reaching your goal.

Maybe a gap year and apply to a different list of college would be your best bet if Cornell really doesn’t fit your needs?

13

Sorry not sorry. You basically have two great options. You knew that you would not receive any money from your OOS schools, so those were wasted app fees. Why apply to unaffordable schools?

No one is going to give you chances for getting off of waitlists. There is literally no way to calculate that. Acceptance rates from waitlists at elite colleges can vary wildly from year to year. Last year UCB took 1400 off WL, the year before it was 400. Rough figures.

You could have used those app fees to apply to colleges where you would get merit aid. You ONLY applied to schools with very low acceptance rates. You were seeking prestige and not thinking about affordability. Hopefully Cornell offered you enough money.

Meanwhile, there are literally dozens of threads and websites that will tell you how to write good LOCIs. Write them and move on, becasue hoping to,get off a WL is a mug’s game.

14

The fact that the OP didn’t realize that they wouldn’t get money from their OOS schools is another sign that this is a prestige list, not a list with any consideration to fit. If you don’t apply to appropriate matches & safeties, you don’t usually get tons of sympathy out here. As you might have noticed. :wink:

15

In response:
If you look closely at all the schools on my list, you’ll notice that they are all in the top 25 or above for CS (minus UChicago which I simply liked a lot during my campus visit and UVA which is my state flagship), which is my intended major. Of course, many of these schools are prestigious, often times because of the school’s CS dept.
Because I got into GAtech early, I did not need to apply to any schools with a lower acceptance rate. Else I would’ve applied to VAtech, Wisconsin-Madison, and JMU.
Also, I applied to the out of state schools because I did not want to bank on getting into an ivy or similar caliber private school. If I did not get into Cornell, I would definitely be going to one of the out of state schools. They are expensive, but not unaffordable to me, but now that I have gotten into Cornell, it is not worth it in my mind to go to one of the more expensive schools. Hence, my options are narrowed to either UVA or Cornell.
Nonetheless, I was looking more for advice on how to approach my numerous waitlists. As you can imagine it is frustrating to be so close yet so far away. As I said earlier, i knew this post would be offputting to some, yet I hoped people would reasonable in their judgement of a frustrated 17 year old and actually try to help rather than put down someone already in the dumps.

16

You applied to schools that have very low acceptance rates and most applicant are as qualified as you are. Some are even more impressive than you are. There was no reason to expect that you would be accepted at all of them. Unfortunately your life experience of privilege and success has lead you to expect to receive what you want. I’m. not denying that you’ve worked hard; but you’ve also been in an environment of wealth and opportunity. It’s hard when you first encounter denial of something you want. Most kids experience that before age 17.

This is a life lesson in realizing that life doesn’t always go the way you want it to. At this point expect to go to Cornell and stop feeling sorry for yourself about having to settle for such a terrible school. There is NOTHING you can do to improve your odds of getting off the waitlists. If you get off of one that’s great. But you are best off remembering how fortunate you are to be going to Cornell.

17

This is a shameful statement, unhelpful and unnecessary. I am tired of things like this here and if you feel calling out this student is acceptable then calling you out similarly should be as well.

18

I will chance you: you have about zero chance to get off those WLs. Look at those schools’ Common Data Sets for last year (Google it). They will tell exactly how many they took from the WL. I’m betting less than a dozen, as the WL is used to fill in when not enough accepted kids commit by May 1. Carnegie Mellon CS might as well be HYP in its exclusivity. My advice on the WLs, accept your spot and wait. There is nothing else you can do. The reality is you are not “so close but so far away.” You are no closer than the thousands of other kids on those WLs, and only a hair’s breadth closer than those who were denied. You need to know that for the vast majority of kids, these WL spots are just soft rejections. They mean you are great, but we don’t have room. You are not on an exclusive list of 20 or 50 kids waiting. These schools keep many many multiples of what they might need in the worst case scenario: which never materializes. You need to understand the truth here. My kid had better stats than you, and was WL or denied at his “top” 2 choices as well, Cornell and Duke. (He tried to be realistic and not apply to any and every top 20) He’s at his #3 choice now and loves it.

I know you say you knew it might sound off-putting to pooh-pooh Cornell, but that is a bit like saying " I know this might sound off-putting, but you are really ugly." You are very lucky to have gotten into the schools you did. Kids with your stats this year are sitting with only their safety and all WLs right now.

My advice is to be more self aware. You got a fantastic result. You understandably are disappointed with all the rejects and WLs, but it was never realistic to think you would have a better result than you did. Do you realize how rare it is to get into all 5 of those schools? The rest are crap shoots, and applying to more, more, more does not increase your odds. Kids know that, but they still fall into the “surely one of them will accept me if I apply to enough of them” trap.

You have great choices. Enjoy them. You got into an Ivy and can afford it…be immensely grateful whether your mom helped or not. If there is a miracle and you get off a WL-fantastic. But mentally commit to Cornell now, or you will go into fall with the wrong attitude and that will color your freshman experience!

Good luck!

19

This is what’s frustrating for us, as parents. These threads are littered with posts from kids who didn’t get into most of their schools because they had little guidance and poorly crafted lists, and what few acceptances they do have aren’t affordable. Or they’ve gotten into good schools but have parents who miscalculated or misunderstood what their contribution would be and won’t pay.

You, on the other hand, have several affordable options and are lamenting that based on your results and stats, you could have done “better” than the Ivy that accepted you. I don’t understand how this is possible given that the results are what they are – you weren’t accepted to wherever you imagine is better than Cornell – so you have to deal with the hand you have.

Accept as many waitlists as you want, but treat them like rejections because the chances of getting off the WLs are really small. Find something to love about the schools that accepted you because the likelihood is that you’ll be attending one of them this fall. Good luck with your waitlists.

20

The usual recommendation for a student who has been waitlisted at their absolute first choice is to email your admissions officer at that school and say that, if offered a spot from the waitlist, you would accept immediately. This does not work if you say it to 6 schools.

Consider whether any of your waitlist schools give financial aid to WL admits, if aid is a consideration. No point being on a waitlist if you can’t afford to attend if admitted from the waitlist.

But, at the end of the day, waitlist chances are slim to none at Ivies etc., as their yield predictions are usually pretty accurate. Look at the Common Data Set to see how many they have taken from waitlist over past 3-5 years.

And, your post does frame the question in terms of Cornell not being good enough, and you feel you could have done better, so that is why people are reacting this way to your post.