Read this and the one that follows and this. Then, let us know if you still have questions.
I turned in my SSAT at 98% percentile to Exeter and still got waitlisted if that helps at all, I believe the Exeter average is 93% I read that somewhere but take it with a grain of salt
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Letâs level set expectations. According to Exeter, the number of students taken off the wait list ranges from zero to 15 depending on the year.
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I have a question about the waitlist. Theoretically, letâs say a school had a projected yield of 80%, and has 80 spots so they admit 100 students so everything fits. However, a few extra people choose not to go so they have 1 person from the waiting list who can get in. How do they find this 1 person. I know they find someone whose stats somewhat match a person who chose not to go, but do they match it to the 1 extra person who chose not to go, or one of the 20 students out of the 100 admitted that chose not to go?
The school has already determined that you can do the work or you wouldnât have been WLâd. Itâs no longer about academics. Now youâre waiting for the school to become underenrolled and need to fill a you-shaped hole from the WL. There is nothing you can do to change that. Please read the links I posted in my previous reply and let your concern about the SSAT go.
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Before M10, they have a projected make-up of the 80 broken down by gender/day v boarding/race/talents, etc.
If only 79 enroll, they look to see what the biggest void now is.
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Ok, thanks a lot!
I know thereâs no definite way to determine yield rates, but do you guys think it would be logical to reason that since covid impacts finances, some people
May not be able to go? Thus making yield rates lower and could have high chance of wait list movement this year?
i think especially during these times, it is hard to predict yield and WL movement.
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@Yuhh222 , I suspect this would have had a bigger impact last year when there was more uncertainty. As weâre emerging from covid, people may have a clearer employment picture. Some may be happy with portfolio gains over the last year.
Nobody knows. Take your WL spot and then start working on plans with the expectation that you wonât get in. You will be prepared if thatâs the case and happy to be wrong if itâs not.
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Thank you!
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Just to share my experience. My son applied to a handful of schools. We are from Canada and he currently attends a private school with a strong track record. Usually 4-5 from his school are accepted to prep schools each year. This year, the students who applied had the strongest credentials, academic, community and sports resumes of any of the past few years.
None got accepted. My son is on two waitlists and another boy is also on two. One thing in common for all is they requested FA.
There are students from another local private school who did get acceptance with much lower academic credentialsâŠthe difference being they did not need FA.
I think this is going to be a very difficult year for international students needing FA.
I also would not despair on the WL. With the pandemic, parents in Canada are wary about travel restrictions. Last year was an unmitigated nightmare for Canadians who sent their kids to prep schools in U.S. There may be many who donât accept offers.
Good luck to all waiting. For my son, he does have alternative plans. It just was an eye opener how many students with impeccable credentials did not even make a WL.
My one criticism of schools is they should disclose what their wait list size is a approximately.
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I know many people think that having that number will somehow help them assess their chances of getting off a waitlist, but that is not the case. Waitlists are not ranked and their size is immaterial. As I posted here, A WL could be 500 deep, and if youâre the one who perfectly matches an empty hole, youâll get off it. A WL might be only five deep, but if you do not match an empty hole, you wonât get off it. In either case, regardless of the size of the WL, you have zero ability to assess chances because you can never know what the holes at any school will be, and they will be different at every school every round.
Would you feel better if you knew that a WL had only ten names on it? If the school youâre waiting on doesnât go to the list that year (happens often with the most coveted schools here), it doesnât matter how deep or shallow the list is. Alternatively, if a school ends up with two spots, both for girls, and youâre male, chromosomes become the limiting factor, not the WL size.
Or, would it bother you if you knew that the size of the WL matched or exceeded the size of the admitted class? Remember, WLs are for the schools, not the applicants, and some may prefer a deep well from which to match the profiles of those who choose not to matriculate. The schools know that many of those on their WLs have other options and may not be available when they make those calls â and calls can be made right up to the start of the next school year, so the list may need to be long; it thins considerably with time.
The conventional wisdom here is to consider a WL a rejection and donât look back, move on with Plan B. Should you get a call from a WL school, you can decide what to do then, but donât hang on to hope or try to deduce something meaningful from the size of a WL.
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Information is always useful and knowing scope of waiting list tells you something about how a school behaves.
An interesting ratio is waiting list to spots available at the outset. Just as an exampleâŠschool A has 100 spotsâŠthey accept 125. Why in the world would they need a waiting list of 500?
This is my first time through such a process.
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Hyperbole. The size of a WL is immaterial and provides no useful information for any individual, IMO. YMMV.
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Because they have 1000+ different unique sports, clubs, interests, genders, races, countries, personalities, etc, etc, etc to fill.
Folks can always say no to invitations to join the waitlist.
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@Canuckdad , when DS applied to college, he was offered WL position at several schools, including his top 2 choices. They DID tell us how many WL spots they had offered. That was our first rodeo, so we were shocked.
I just looked up one of those schools common data set for the 19-20 year. It has a freshman class of 500. They offered WL to 1605 students. 643 accepted WL positions. 42 were admitted. The offers and acceptance of WL spots is pretty similar year over year. The number admitted from the WL varies from single digits to about 50.
BS admissions follow similar patterns because they all use similar enrollment tools and practices, and they all have some âidealâ class they are trying to create.
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Wait until you see college wait lists. 500 is chump change. 
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I think transparency is generally positive.
So few kids will get off of longer waitlists this year. I no longer believe those kids are âat the level, there are just so many spots.â Easy to say when never accepting someone - and lack of acceptance supports there is something preferred about the ones who got in.
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Once A10 passes, probably 85% of that WL will have dissipated, which is why schools need to have such a large WL from the start in order to have some choice should they need to go to it further into the summer.