<p>I know that the colleges use the waiting list as a precaution against falling yields, but doesn't it cause the applicant unnecessary anxiety? I knew where I was going by April 1st, and as many of you experienced, waiting for regular decisions was unbearably stressful. For those of you lucky enough to know where you were going by April 1st, didn't you feel sorry for those kids who STILL had to wait until sometime mid-summer to make their decision? Wouldn't that cause a great psychological burden? Senior year ends, and kids are still stressing out about choosing colleges. It's ridiculous. </p>
<p>I think colleges should accept, or reject, and if their yield rate is significantly low for a year, then hooray! smaller class sizes and more room.</p>
<p>what confuses me is when they say that their w.l. isn’t ranked. if so, how do they decide which people to offer admission to off of the waitlist?</p>
<p>@OP:
Is there any benefit whatsoever to the college to eliminate the waitlist? On the negative side, you could get over-enrollment, in which case some students may be forcibly deferred to the next year’s class (not good). Some college in upstate New York had this in spades, and it was a huge problem. Or you could have under-enrollment–even worse! The school is under-utilized, providing its quality of education to many fewer students than it could serve, and potentially losing hundreds of thousands of dollars in tuition money.</p>
<p>And would you really rather have been straight-up rejected from Caltech than have had the chance to go there at all? If so, why didn’t you stick with Duke? Hello, why did you even accept a spot on the waitlist? You could just have rejected /yourself/ and there we go. No “horrible anxiety”!</p>
<p>@LL:
It’s often not purely ranked because if you, LL College, end up with such enrollment that you have precisely one spot to offer to the waitlist, you do want to take into account the balance of your class. Let’s say, if you ranked, #1 is an English student with awards in essay contests, #2 is a math student who programs computers for fun, and #3 is a violinist. Well, when the students you admitted responded to your offer of admission, you got four more English students than you wanted, and one less math student. Do you want to be forced to take #1 just because you ranked your waitlist? No, sir, you do not. And #3 would not be in in any case.</p>
<p>Uh, wrong poster I guess. Someone with a similar name to you is going to caltech off of Duke’s waitlist. Sorry! >> To make that example more general, let’s say that you were waitlisted at your first choice. Wouldn’t you want the chance to go there, even if it eventually fell through?</p>
<p>Students need to understand that at most schools, especially top ones, chances of coming off a wait list is small. They must treat it like a rejection and in the happy event they get in, great. This will not cause anxiety whenn see in the proper light.</p>
<p>It’s not about protecting yield, it’s about keeping a class full which is necessary at every shool. Any student is welcome to decline a spot on any wait list.</p>
<p>I have very mixed feelings about the wait list. When I was initially waitlisted by my three top choice schools, I really didn’t know what to think. Eventually, I moved on, fell in love with another school, and then was accepted by two out of the three universities (one of which I had applied SCEA to). As a result, I would say that wait lists, while extremely frustrating, can be very rewarding. From the college’s perspective, of course, there is no benefit to discarding the wait list, and doing so would result in a lot of issues for the school (see Lirazel’s posts). No matter how much one may resent being placed on a wait list (or multiple), the results for some select few make the process worth it.</p>
<p>If colleges had to drop a WL, they’d likely respond to an increased emphasis on ED to better manage yeild. Financially, they cannot afford to be short 100 students. At $50k per, that is some serious cash. Or, if they are a small college, they can’t afford 100+ students too many – no room in the dorms to house them.</p>
<p>You can do without waitlists if every student ranks his school choices, each school ranks the students it accepts, and there’s a central “clearing house” that has access to all this data. However this cannot happen because a student cannot rank till the financial packages are known. And I assume the schools can’t rank their accepted student list for the same reason. </p>
<p>So waitlists seem to be the least traumatic way for all. If a student doesn’t want to cope with the stress, assuming he got into a safety, he can reject all waitlist offers.</p>
<p>The whole premise of this question is off. The WL serves the colleges’ aims to fill their rosters – and make budget projections for the overall financial well being of the university. Nothing wrong with that. </p>
<p>For the consumer (student), if the thought of WL causes unneccessary stress, here’s the simple sol’n. Accept your best offer and decline any WL offers. There U go.</p>