I just thought I would step up and remind everyone to have their kids login to university portals and decline offers they don’t want.
There are so many kids waitlisted, or your kid may have gotten scholarship money that they’re not going to use.
Don’t make people wait until May 1. 
Very few schools will even look at, let alone process, waitlist applications until seeing post-May 1 yield.
Students have until May 1 to decide. Most colleges won’t make a move on their wait-list until after that date, so if your child is hoping for an acceptance off a wait-list they should commit to another school on their list by the end of April. That way, if they aren’t accepted at the wait-list school they still have a college to attend in the fall.
This happened with my son. The college asked him to please notify them as soon as possible, because they would then offer the money to another student.
Also, as a public service announcement, please remind your child to report to the high school counselor about the status of applications. Schools have to maintain reports, etc… use naviance or other software the school uses to provide the updates. Thanks, on behalf of your kid’s high school admin staff 
I agree that this is a good idea. This may be particularly important for students who have been accepted to graduate programs, and for students who got very large merit scholarships.
Undergraduate programs will over-book to some extent, assuming that some students will not show up. I do not think that they do this for doctorate programs (whether PhD or some other doctorate). There is also probably a limited extent to which they can do this when a large merit scholarship is involved.
One daughter was waitlisted at a DVM program. She was accepted off the waitlist before May 1, implying that at least for this particular DVM program they were accepting people off the waitlist before the May 1 deadline.
Our other daughter, years ago, applied to one university that was probably too much of a safety and was offered nearly a full merit scholarship. We had her let them know as soon as she was sure that she was not going there. Our thought is that someone else would most likely be offered the money that we were turning down, and our safety was someone else’s dream school.
Thank you for sharing the information about funds. I have been looking for that information & found it difficult to find an answer to.
There have been some reports in the past of waitlist movement before May 1, probably because the college in question was getting a high enough rate of declined offers early that it predicted before May 1 that it would underyield from its initial admit batch. (Analogy: an NBA game at the end of the third quarter has a 40-point difference in scores. Even though the game is not over, the result is highly predictable, and in-game decisions based on that will be made.)
The effect of any individual admit contributing to this kind of thing can vary. An admit declining an offer at a reach school (which expects a large percentage of such admits to matriculate) probably has more of this kind of effect than an admit declining an offer at a safety school (which expects most such admits to decline).
My D just got accepted today to UCI and her friend to UVA…
I think kids think it’s not “ a thing “ to turn down offers, but I bet it does help admissions.
Haha, my D today tried to decline a few offers and it was too hard to find where to do it! She attempted at three schools, succeeded only with one.
Very true, I think mine said the same and texted admissions.
My son also
Well, at this point, there’s no point to declining. They’re not going to do anything until Monday, and the offers expire before then.
What do y’all do if you can’t find a decline button? Just not reply?
My older son never declined. He just didn’t reply and I guess they figured he wasn’t attending.
My kid is not going where she wants because it’s financially not a good match. We expected more money, and it’s a long story, but didn’t get it and we all realize it’s not worth taking out loans. She’s in at what is actually a “much better” school but it’s not where she got the feeling, although she’s coming around to it. She can’t come to grips with hitting the decline button. It’s just very painful. I get where she’s coming from in her head. Does it really matter if she doesn’t officially decline? I mean, when she doesn’t accept, they get the picture, right?
No she doesn’t need to decline at this point.
“What do y’all do if you can’t find a decline button? Just not reply?”
I had my daughter send a warm email thanking them profusely. She had some excellent choices and a very difficult time deciding, so in the end she didn’t want to burn any bridges in the (unlikely) event she is not happy where she landed and needs to reopen those doors in the future.
Well said, must think of those on the waitlist!