Ok, I’ve been wondering about this for a long time. Most colleges (lets just say for an example) accept 6000 kids. And about 3000-4000 actually end up enrolling. And these colleges only accept like 30 kids off the waitlist. My question is if these colleges could have 6000 kids enroll (since that is the # they accepted), why do they pick only a few kids off the waitlist? hopefully the question makes sense lol
they factor in the yield when they accept that many kids; they don’t actually want 6000, they know only 3000-4000 will enroll
Because they don’t have 6000 seats. They have 4000 seats for incoming class. From historical data they know that only 4000 will enroll. If they are short few seats on May 1, they will take kids off the wait list.
They can’t have 6000 kids enroll. In your example they can only have 3-4 K. Each college sets it target class size. For sake of argument, let’s use 3000. In order to get 3000, they need to accept, in this example, 6000. If only 2975 accept, they will pull 25 off the waitlist to hit the target #. If 3025 accept. they will ask some students to take a gap year or (more likely) squeeze in 25 beds converting doubles to triples.
The entire university’s budget is predicated upon having a class of 3000. They can’t have many more, or they have logistics issues (not enough beds/classrooms/instructors, etc.) They can’t have too many less or they will have a potential budget shortfall.