Tell her that her smart strategy–a good mix of reach, match, and safety schools–worked. Now she just needs to pick a new strategy from the several good options mentioned by other posters. As long as it includes getting excited about the best of the schools where she has already been admitted, it will also work.
Last year, my D (NMF, 34ACT, 3.9UW, dedicated to two ECs–though no big awards ) was waitlisted at a slew of top LACs and some mid-tier LACs (at least 5, I kind of lost count) . Once she went to the accepted student days of her top-choices of where she did get in however, she quickly moved on. So your D is not alone…
My advice is
a) go through the schools and decide which (if any) WLs lists she wants to stay on.
b) for those she wants to stay on, let the school know.
c) do a quick review of the apps to make sure everything was sent in and if not, address that. Turns out my D forgot to send in her Calc AB and BC AP scores (which were 5s). Lovely. She did not discover this until she was registering for math classes.
d) have fun at the accepted student days. Those were the best part of the college search process I thought.
We are in a similar situation. Wait listed at her 1st choice LAC. It was not a reach but we thought a match school. She was accepted to another very similar with a very nice merit scholarship & they work together in a consortium. Baffled us.
D joined facebook and group me pages for the accepted schools and has started to meet people and get excited.
She accepted her wait list spot and will send a letter of continued interest. Then we are moving on.
We looked at it like a science experiment- our 1st hypothesis was proven wrong (wait list) we are now in the research phase. Waiting on a few more decisions (reach schools) and honors decisions from accepted schools along with financial aide packages. We will gather all info in late April. We are visiting the accepted LAC with the scholarship in mid April, she is doing an overnight and attending classes.
D also attended an accepted student day at our state flagship.
Then we will decide - mostly she will decide. If she comes off the waitlist we will deal with that when it happens.
I can say the best thing that happened was joining the group me of the accepted LAC- she found other accepted students she felt connected to. She is making friends and moving on. I’m not saying the first day or so was easy- she was angry and confused. We took her to a very funny play (Something Rotten) and she hung out with friends. Now she seems to have moved on.
Congratulations on her acceptances! She has at least three colleges from which to choose. And she likes them all…and they are affordable.
My D16 applied to twelve (mostly) LACs as well and ended up on three waitlists. She felt like one of them (Kenyon) was more of a soft rejection. Stats there were more in line with the two schools that rejected her, but she had had a lovely interview with a visiting Kenyon admissions officer and would have fit into their writer culture. In retrospect, that was a bit of a dodged bullet because she has realized that rural isn’t as appealing as she had thought. I’ll note that she hadn’t toured any of the schools that waitlisted her.
The other two seemed more realistic and she did write to pursue one, but I don’t think they ended up admitting anyone from the list. I agree with the above posters who say that some small schools use the waitlist to manage their class size and that it’s hard to judge from year to year how many they will take.
I’m glad your D has some good choices. My two cents is that she will probably get over the emotional impact pretty quickly once she accepts her school. A year later, I’m not sure my D could tell you whether the two she didn’t pursue had waitlisted her or not (I had to pull out the spreadsheet myself.)
I’d say on the contrary. The fact that your child was waitlisted proves it was a match. A match is not a guaranteed admission - that’s called a safety. A match is a school where you have a good chance of being accepted. Being on the waitlist means the school would have liked to have accepted you but didn’t have room for everyone they wanted.
As to the OP, I think you’ve gotten good advice. Your daughter should take a second look at where she’s been accepted and pick one. She can stay on as many waitlists as she likes, but ideally you only stay on ones where you are sure you’d rather go than the places you’ve been accepted. If there’s a clear favorite, let them know you will attend if accepted.
“1 RD acceptance to a great match school she loved upon visiting. Also fantastic financial aid package.”
^^This one line by itself is a wonderful outcome. In one sense she’s all set.
If she gets another acceptance or two or gets off the waitlist at another school she really likes, then great. She can think about that when and if it happen. But for now she should focus on her acceptances in hand. Between WL, RD, EA, and ED, WL by far has the worst odds of acceptance, so I never got very excited about the WLs my daughters got and urged them not to focus in the WLs either…
A waitlist is a soft deny. There are always a few people who get accepted off of waitlists at the last minute, but that’s rare. If you need financial aid, it is even more rare – many schools which are need-blind in the admission process are very much need-aware when it come to bringing students in off the waitlist, especially if the school’s financial aid budget is already strained.
There is no harm in your DD pursuing a waitlist for a college she strongly wants to attend, but in general you should view those schools as being off-the-table, and on or before May 1st your daughter needs to choose among the schools that have accepted her. She is way ahead of the game at this point:
That sound like a wonderful set of options to have. Focus on those schools.
College admission is not a linear process. There is no reason for any person to expect to be admitted to any school which uses a holistic admission process, no matter what their stats. So no reason for confusion or despair - plenty of reason to celebrate.
It is great that your D has several good options that she likes and can afford. Congratulations!
I agree with the general advice above: look through the WLs, pick any that she would seriously consider over her acceptances, release the rest of them, then forget about it.
I am extremely leery of talk about “loving the school that loves you.” I know that it is just an exrpession, but I really think that it is a mistake to cast these decisions as emotional commitments/rejections on either side. An acceptance is not a declaration of undying love. A rejection or WL is not a declaration that the individual has been found personally unworthy and unlovable.
It’s all closely allied to the concept of having a “dream” school. I think it results in a lot of emotional drama that can be destructive. What happens when your lover is not perfect? We see lots of kids every year who are bereft because the school turns out not to be paradise in the first semester.
I think that the personal emphasis in holistic admissions feeds into this; every year, students are encouraged to pour forth their essential personhood in applications, then when they don’t get in they are told not to take it personally. That’s a hell of a balancing act for a kid.
Regarding the WLs, your D applied to a lot of small schools. Small schools have fewer places to give out and are far quirkier in their admissions that big state schools that are largely stats driven. Given her results so far, sounds like you hit the target of selectivity very precisely.
I would tell her to start loving her acceptance…if you haven’t heard from any other schools from the waitlist by May 1, accept and get her the sweatshirt. At that point I would pick only one college to remain on the waitlist for…you need to be able to tell that college that they are for sure your number 1 choice and she would 100% attend if admitted. Colleges at this point only want to take someone off the waitlist if they will definitely attend (helps their “yield” numbers).
Waitlists are hard, we also have a few. It muddles the kids’ heads up with the “what if” factor instead of them moving on with a clean break. Write letters of continued interest to any she feels strongly about, then try to move on with acceptances and get her excited about those schools. After you’ve done what you can with expressing interest, try to forget about them and make plans for accepted schools.
I am reading this with interest, as my D will be applying to LACs next fall. I have already started to ensure we have several “love to attend” safeties on her list, this thread just reinforces the need for safeties.
I agree with consolation. Thankfully, my kids are bloom where planted types. They didn’t expect their colleges to be perfect. What you want is a kid who will make the most of what they have. Remember that sometimes a star student at a less selective college may have opportunities that would have been harder to get at the more selective one. That doesn’t mean you still wouldn’t have preferred to be at the more selective college. I know, both my kids thrive by being pushed by their peers, but I’ve seen many students soar at places that are less renowned.
Any way to whittle down the list is a good thing! Imagine trying to pick if they had all been acceptances!
I know it may be confusing, but tell her it is just a way to make her decision easier by taking them off the table.You can look at the past common data set at the one waitlist that tops her list to see how many students were offered spots in the past. Right now she needs to choose from the three she has in hand, which may be harder than she thinks! Good luck!
Regarding the concept of a waitlist as a “soft deny” I imagine that when there is some reason the school really doesn’t want the applicant but they have a reason to avoid offense (legacy etc.). So the student’s on the waitlist but they’re not really on it, which is entirely possible since there is usually no transparency about how students are accepted off the list. So it isn’t really a “list” in the traditional sense of the word, it’s just another applicant pool. In a couple of days I will be able to test this idea with a friend’s kid who applied to an Ivy. Both parents went there and the daughter’s already been deferred from early to regular. If I were in the Ivy’s admissions department this is exactly the script I would be following. Unfortunately for my theory I’m not even sure the Ivy is the kid’s top choice, so if she does get waitlisted, she might not be interested in accepting a place on the so-called list.
You are right that it is not a “list” and certainly not a rank-order list, but it is a collection of students who have been pre-screened and whom the college would be very happy to admit if spaces open up. Every college wants to have these students available so they can be assured of enrolling a full class in the fall. It certainly is not an applicant that the college “really doesn’t want” or wants to avoid offense… rather the waitist is composed of students that the college really would be very happy to enroll, but doesn’t have room for. (Or in the case of financially needy students, doesn’t want to subsidize)
When spaces open up, colleges will contact students on their waitlist in the same way they made admissions decisions in the first place – to meet the institutional needs and agenda. Financial aid budget strapped? They’ll start calling students who are full pay. After all acceptances are in, does it look like they are coming up short in some other area? (Gender balance/ requisite goals of STEM students/ geographic diversity goals / test score range of matriculating students / etc.) They will prioritize waitlist calls to find students who are filling their goals.
Colleges don’t select individual students. The select a class. They have priorities in how they want that class to look overall, and they update and modify those priorities over time. The priorities in the RD round will be different than those in the ED round, and they will shift again for those few students who will be invited off the waitlist.
Your “test” with your Ivy applicant friend is no test at all. If the Ivy “really doesn’t want” your friend’s kid, they wouldn’t have deferred her. A deferral usually means that they want to see how their class is shaping up and/or want to see the kid’s senior year fall semester grades before making a decision.
The specifics of the situation I mentioned are such that the Ivy wasn’t waiting around to see how the student’s senior grades turn out because the student wasn’t even in school.
I agree that with the idea that the admissions department has institutional needs in mind when they make decisions. However, I don’t think it’s so outrageous to claim these needs sometimes extend to maintaining relationships with alumni, otherwise why would legacy admissions policies exist in the first place (putting side the fact that they started as a way to keep Jews out of Yale). People who give money to their alma mater take things very personally because, understandably, they have a very emotional connection with the institution they attended. I don’t know how much attention it received but Amherst apparently lost a lot of money from alumni donors when it changed the school mascot from Lord Jeff to a moose.
Most of the Ivies don’t pay much attention to legacy status these days, and almost none give it weight after the EA/ED phase. It gives students a very sight boost in admissions, but not enough to guarantee admissions for any student. I think Penn is the only Ivy known to give it significant weight during the ED phase.
Alumni donations factor in only when the alums are major, big donors – and those admissions decisions are often handled as “development” cases. If it is factor, they probably would not defer admission – rather they would make and communicate their decision early on.
You may be right that for a legacy, a deferral followed by a waitlist spot is a nicer way of saying “no” than an outright rejection - but that is not something that would hold true for the majority of waitlist spots. Again, the university needs to have a pool of pre-screened applicants to call to replace students lost in the RD process or summer melt away (students who accept spots in May but later notify the school that they will not be enrolling in the fall). There typically are only a very few positions opening, but they need to have a substantial waitlist because there is a huge level of attrition from the waitlist, as those students will be making deposits and plans to attend other colleges.
And again, your sample of one is not going to be a test of anything, whether that student receives good news this week or not. It is just that one student.
Well, alas, the student was rejected, not waitlisted.
When I was discussing this topic with my wife, she reminded me that her freshman roommate got into Stanford off the waitlist after a grandparent endowed a chair.
I have said this in other threads, but again, maybe the need for financial aid put her on the waitlists if everything else was on target. This would be the case for need aware schools. You haven’t mentioned any of the schools so it’s hard to say.