Portal, but she got an email notification that her portal was updated. Nothing in snail mail yet.
Thanks, I will have my son check if he has an update.
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Just to clarify, itās in the financial aid portal. The email should explain. Fingers crossed for your son!
He needs to set up the two factor authentication to view the financial aid portal, so heāll wait until he get something in the mail 
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OMG that is hysterical!
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That may be true, but from our experience in '20, schools accept applicants from waitlist in groups. They may not have an individually numbered list where one student is #11 and another is #24, but they certainly have waitlisted applicants in discrete groups where the group itself is more wanted than the next group.
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I always figured they had them categorized. So as deposits come in, they can do something like "ok, for some reason we seem to be struggling with girls from the midwest who are athletes (or whatever). So they do a search, 30 names come up that hit the flags, then they narrow it down to the 10 (again or whatever) they want to fill that slice of the freshman class. Thatās why they keep more kids in the pool than they would ever realistically admit. They know they will probably only take 50 kids from the waitlist worse case scenario, but they keep 500 on there, so whatever puzzle piece is missing they have kids that fill the need.
I donāt think I have seen this in print anywhere, but I donāt see another way that makes much sense.
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I think each school may have different metrics that determine which āgroupā is moved up, but I know it definitely happens in groups.
In a college forum on CC, Iād see multiple messages that said āI was accepted from the waitlistā when my son and others were not. Then, when my son was accepted from another waitlist, Iād see some applicants respond they were also promoted to accepted, while other parents/students on that collegeās forum say they were not yet moved up.
I donāt know enough to know if they do it exactly as you guess or some other way. But Iāve seen enough to know there is a method to their promotions from waitlist. And I know it doesnāt make sense to offer one promotion every two weeks. It has to be done in small groups, and more intelligent admissions offices would have some way to order their waitlist groups.
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so you still will never know when youāll be called off a waitlist, maybe just that youāll be called off with some group.
We know kids who were waitlisted at Vandy. Three of them (three!) drove down there with extra recs in hand. I believe they had peer recs and new teacher recs. Handed them in at the admissions office (this was 2019) and said they would enroll if admitted off of the waitlist. All three were called that following weekend. So, not saying to storm the office, but this seemed to work.
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In the end, colleges are businesses.
I think by the time they get to waitlist offers, colleges are looking first for students that will accept. Each waitlist group that is accepted probably is less selective (by that collegeās factors) than the previous group, but the college is simply looking for a few more students to have a full freshman class.
I think that your friendsā method was as good as it gets at proving to a college that a waitlisted applicant would definitely accept. And being full-pay (or close to it) probably didnāt hurt either.
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Those kids were full pay and NMFs. Vanderbilt generally only takes kids from our school in ED and ED2 and then waitlists or denies in RD. They did take a bunch from the waitlist in 2019. They care about their yield a LOT and donāt believe youāll accept an RD offer here I guess.
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Nothing valuable to add here, but these analyses fascinate me!
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In the end AND in the beginning !
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My understanding of how these wait lists work is actually similar to how they pick the original admits. They are looking for specific fit. For example they may have a student decline the offer who was an east coast female tuba player. When they go to the wait list they donāt take someone from a numerical list they take a kid who is a female tuba player from the east coast. They are trying to fill certain niches and shape a diverse class
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Funny, from our school Vanderbilt appears to only take RD applicants. In the last 6 years, only 1 ED was accepted, but there are double digit RD acceptances.
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Letās hope it goes that way this year since D applied RD. Lol!
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Would any of your kids commit to a school without having been on campus? Does that go for all schools on their lists - are there SOME on the list that they would commit to but not every one?
LMU officially saying there will be no in-person programming and kids arenāt even allowed to walk on the campus. D wonāt consider any school that we canāt see in person. I knowā¦kids do it all of the time but we are just too afraid of making a mistake and want to try to get this right. Iām having her sign up for virtual live tours and some break out sessions. Iām thinking there has to be a small chance they will get the ok from LA county and let kids on campus but it might be really late in the process.
I donāt think D would choose any of the schools on her list without being able to at least do a self tour.
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S applied to 8 schools. Heās been on campus at 5 of them. The three he has not seen include FSU, Vandy, and Brown.
He would attend any of the three he has not seen. (In fact, he applied ED to Brown, but was deferred.)
He only applied to schools heād attend. (FSU is his safety since UF is not a given even with his stats.)
(He would have spent a week on FSU campus for Boys State if not for Covid. Vandy we had reservations booked and tours scheduled twice but they were canceled both times, and Brown we would have flown to see in the fall if not for Covid.)
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Well, D only applied to schools she would attend but that was assuming she could walk on campus and see them for herself. We only got to visit two of her 13 schools. I donāt even think she would go to Vanderbilt without seeing it and thatās her one big reach.
We had plans to see four of her schools for spring break 2020 and had to cancel. The rest of the visit plan included summer 2020 so was a bust too. We would have likely seen ten of the 13 if not for Covid.
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Thatās hard (2 out of 13). Very hard.
Would she consider the option of attending knowing that if a horrible fit for some reason she could always transfer?
S is our very āgo with the flowā kid and thankfully, was able to visit a lot of different colleges between 7-11 th grades. So he has a good sense of what he likes, what he doesnāt, snd where he is willing to make concessions.
(Like for him, he was NOT a fan of Georgetown. Killed us that he didnāt like it but he has continued to tell us why it wasnāt a good fit fit him. Still kills me!)
Anyhow. Iām so sorry that D is not able to visit these campuses.
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