<p>My son (who just graduated with class of '09) applied to a few schools with Stanford as his first choice, hoping he'd get accepted and could defer admission since he's planning to do volunteer work for a year before going to college.</p>
<p>He got waitlisted at Stanford, and I've been unable to find any posts with info about the value or success rate of reapplying the next fall when one has been on the wait list. He should have a more interesting story and definitely has more awards and accomplishments than when he applied last December, and he still has the tiny advantage of being a legacy applicant from small town Alaska, but I wonder how much hope there is.</p>
<p>It sounds to me like there is plenty of hope, getting waitlisted this year was quite an accomplishment. You can’t find any posts because people wouldn’t typically do this. I mean, it’s different for your son because he was planning to take a year off anyway, but I don’t think anyone would advise someone to wait for a whole year and then try again next year.</p>
<p>There will be a whole new applicant pool next year. His being waitlisted this year will give his application something unusual about it and I suspect that will help.</p>
<p>I agree with the poster above that it gives your son’s application a unique twist. However, gap-years are becoming more and more encouraged these days. Even highly-revered schools such as Vassar recommend that you take one. The idea is to take one year off the heavy workload of high school/college and just do something else, so that incoming freshmen bring more maturity and introspection than they would have if they had come directly out of grade 12.</p>
<p>My daughter’s experience with a gap year has been tremendous. Not only did she travel and live in Honduras and New Zealand for the year, made friends from all over the world, became more fluent in Spanish, she was accepted at every school she applied to. One of them waitlisted her last year. One of them completely rejected her last year. Both accepted her this year. And one gave her a lot of FA to boot! As for other side benefits, she is a lot more mature, ready to go off to college, more focused on what she wants to do, and not at all worried about being homesick. I was extremely reluctant to let her do this gap year when she initially presented the idea. Now I cannot praise it enough. Good luck with figuring out what is best for your son.</p>
<p>If I remember correctly, when I visited the admissions office, they said that you can apply up to three times, so I think they do allow reapplications.</p>