This is what I’m looking at from usnews, the particular name of the school doesn’t matter.
My question is that third line, “accepting place on wait list”
Is there an actual request from the school made to the student asking whether they want to be placed on the wait list?
I mean, who would say no, they have nothing to lose by saying yes. If they applied to the school it means they want to consider it, and dependant upon whether the financial aid is competitive in relation to the other schools that they’ve selected, the waitlist school is still in the running. The only reasons I can think would possibly make a student answer ‘no’ to the question is, they got a result from a slightly better school with an agreeable-enough financial award, or they changed their mind that even if they were accepted to that school with a great award that they would not want to attend anyway.
But either way, that the school would even ask makes no sense to me. It’d make more sense if the student were plainly placed on the waitlist.
My D declined a wait list invitation. By the time the decision was released, she had pretty much decided to go elsewhere. She wanted to free up the list for people who really still wanted to go, so she informed the school that she did not wish to be considered.
Both my sons declined waitlists. The 1st declined WUSTL because the waitlist was huge and in Febuary he visited a match school with great merit and fell in love. WUSTL was his only reach school and he apolied because I thought he should apply to at least 1 reach, it was a wasted apolication because other schools were better fits.
Second son turned down spot on Haverford’s waitlist. He still really liked the school, but after looking at CDS and seeing how few kids got off waitlist he decided it was time to move on and choose among other LACs who had accepted him
To some it seems like a slight and they are no longer feeling the love. There are many students with comparable options so they go with the one that showed they want them. Human nature really.
DS declined 3 WL offers. All were at schools that he’d have been happy to attend had he not gotten into some of his other choices. He was WL at his top 2 choices and did ask to be kept on the list at those.
I think that if you have a preferable option, there’s no need to hang in there just to see what happens especially when there are others who are sure they’ll take the spot if it’s offered.
My DD declined one waitlist because she had decided it wasn’t her first choice. It’s the right thing to do if you are sure you don’t want to go to that school. My DD accepted one waitlist offer, but that year, not one student was offered admission off of the waitlist.
I am curious as to what the purpose of waitlisting 1600 students is? Certainly they don’t need that for the purpose of ensuring they can fill their class each year. In the example given above they accepted no one off their waitlist. Is it used as some kind of statistical hedge? In my opinion the school would have to be pretty important to the student to consider remaining on the waitlist. I would think it would prevent the student from completely committing to the school that accepted them and they chose. Unless a university has a history of using it’s waitlist extensively or it was a strongly felt first choice I don’t think I would ever encourage my child to accept a spot on the waitlist.
At several schools that were on DS list, it seemed that they had had a recent year in which they ended up with more freshmen than they expected. At a small school, 50 extra people in an intended class of 500 can cause a housing crisis! In those years, there was nobody accepted from the WL. Often, the next year, there was more WL activity - it appeared that admissions had deliberately decided to fill to exact capacity by going to the WL.
I know that lots of people on these boards feel like schools manage yield for their ratings, but I suspect that many of them manage yield for logistical reasons. Everything from ED to WL management keep their numbers in balance. DS got accepted off WL at his top two schools. The year before, the combined # of students accepted from WL at both was 3, I recall. If it’s a top choice, I would take the WL spot regardless of history but realize that it’s a crapshoot.
Maybe they have a list of acceptable candidates that they just don’t have room for, and waitlist everyone past a certain cutoff point. It doesn’t really affect the school either way, since they only have to shuffle through the applications if/when spots open up.
D accepted three WL, got offers from two of the colleges and attends one of those. The college she didn’t choose offered merit aid when they took her off WL. The college where she did not get an offer to come off WL, apparently took no students from WL, as they over-enrolled.
Yes, the college asks if the student wants to be on WL. Getting off the WL is the tricky thing. At more selective colleges, they aren’t going to randomly pick a name off of a WL. A student who REALLY wants to get off WL is going to follow up with an email, maybe two, briefly stating why they want to atend and that the college is the top choice and they will attend if accepted.
Wait lists are only going to get longer as students apply to ever larger numbers of colleges. The WL is quite necessary for some schools to ensure a full freshman class. But it is quite likely cyclical. A college errs on the side of caution the following year and accepts too many students. I see a point soon when many non-top tier colleges will struggle to meet their yield.
S received three waitlist invitations and declined two. He was insulted at one offer since it was a low match school. The other two were reaches so those made him happy (but only because he already had acceptances that he was delighted with). He was offered admissions in late June at the school whose waitlist invitation he accepted but by that time he was emotionally invested in the college he ended up attending.
Being on a waitlist can also be this cloud hanging over your head, so unless you are seriously interested in attending, just leaving your name on a list can just drag out the emotional drain of college decisions even longer. If it is a top choice then no harm no foul to stay on, but if not, sometimes it is best to take name off, close the case and move on.