<p>People have written before that the waitlists are for the most part a marketing ploy by colleges -- marketing to the current juniors who will be applying next year. By putting people on the "waitlist" they create the impression that they "almost" got in and are just waiting for the dust to settle before many if not most of them get accommodated. You see this time and again in local newspaper articles about a star student who was "accepted to A & B, waitlisted at C and D". This is good marketing because it encourages others to apply next year, reasoning that with a little bit of luck they may get flat-out accepted instead of having to wait a bit to get in.</p>
<p>Exhibit A should be Duke, a school striving to better its reputation. Duke waitlisted 3,382 students, a number that is about twice the size of the number of places they have for frosh. In other words to empty the waitlist every single person accepted would have to decline, and so would the entire set accepted from the waitlist to replace them. Of course Duke has no illusions this will happen; last year they took a grand total of 60 and the odds are pretty good the number this year will be similar. </p>
<p>It is however a good move on Duke's part to have 3,382 kids out there spreading the word at their HS that they are waitlisted at Duke. If 2 or 3 kids say to themselves "Sally got waitlisted and I'm just as good a student, maybe even a bit better; I think I can get in!" then Duke gets a bump in the number of students that applied, making it even more selective and boosting its desirability.</p>
<p>As I said in another forum it is a statistics formula. Duke is probably making a decision based on past statistics of how many kids will 1) deny their initial acceptance and 2) deny staying on the waitlist. These factors probably lead to a formula result telling them that to be “better safe than sorry” that they need to have 3,382 kids on the waiting list.</p>
<p>^^^On another thread, someone has posted that Duke admissions admits it has too many on its waitlist. Supposedly the explanation is that they ran out of time to go through the list and cull it, so they just let it stand so they could stick to their ‘deadline’.</p>
<p>Sounds like incompetence to me, if that is true.</p>
<p>There is no way Duke needs to have a waitlist that large.</p>
<p>^If it allows them time to reconsider waitlist applicants intelligently should waitlist spots open up, I don’t see a problem with it. They’ve been perfectly candid about admitting that they didn’t have enough time to review every app they were considering waitlisting. It’s not as though they were waitlisting potential admits they didn’t have time to review.</p>
<p>As long as everyone is perfectly clear that it is all about <em>them</em> and what is convenient for <em>them</em>.</p>
<p>It is unprofessional. When an institution charges more per year than the annual salary of the average American, I don’t think it is asking too much to be professional about every aspect of the process.</p>
<p>I think admitting that they didn’t have time to review the potential waitlist applications in their entirety is profressional. Nonetheless, I think the size is absurd, and waitlisted candidates at every school need to forget about those schools and move on.</p>