Hi all, our DD was waitlisted for LSA but she was admitted to Georgetown SFS so it definitely softened the blow.
Does anyone know how they go through the waitlist? The FAQ says students are not rankedâŠso how to do they determine who gets offered a place when a spot opens up in LSA?
Stats: In state; SAT 1460; 4.0 uw GPA, started a non profit, MUN president, lots of leadership/volunteering; great LORs
Accepted:
U of Toronto
Queenâs U
Western (Ivey AEO)
MSU
George Washington
Georgetown
IU (Kelley)
UG (Warrington)
I donât have specific insight, but I would think they will look for similar profiles to students who declined acceptance.
I am sure the algorithm is more complicated, but the reason they donât rank the waitlist is that they want the incoming class to continue their resemble the class they shaped with admissions. The shaping includes so many things that they will want to keep balanced: in state/OOS, male/female, number in each college, financial need, geographic distribution, URMs, and much more.
So if more in state students than expected declined, or if more LSA students declined, etc., the wait list students who are extended offers may be similar to your daughter.
Those are the second edition of the exact publication I discussed upthread, and a treatise chronicling the historic evolution of American universities as a system (while the available first 30 pages are intellectually quite interesting, they are not a recitation of actual rankings and there doesnât appear to be an appendix with the old School and Society lists from the 1930âs, etc.). Maybe theyâre buried in the other chapters, which I note start with the 1960âs?
You stated: âThrough most of the 1900s thru the 70s Wisconsin was ranked higher in liberal arts and sciences than UMich.â Your narrative - due to some budgetary or other political reasons UW gave up rankings superiority to Michigan after the 1970âs - is reliant on college rankings having always been widespread and methodologically similar to today. They clearly have not. At minimum, âthrough most of the 1900sâ seems to have no basis, when discussing actual rankings. There is simply no comparison to the methodologies of Forbes and THE to those used a hundred years ago.
The timing in your narrative sort of raises the burden, Iâm afraid, seeing as how as soon as there were repetitive, comprehensive rankings, UWâs been ranked behind Michigan every time, beginning just a few years after the 1970âs ended.
If you had simply claimed that Wisconsin was widely viewed as being as prestigious, and by some observers even more so, than Michigan up until 40 or 50 years ago? Thatâs a different thing, may be a reasonable read of Graham and Diamond, and I donât think anyone would take issue with it even after you dropped into a discussion titled âUMichigan Class of 2027â to assert it. Though itâs about as relevant for upcoming college students today as mentioning CCNYâs 1950 NCAA basketball title to a young hoops prospect.
Wow and you already got that email this year? I thought it was only after the waitlist closed in late June and they email you that after not being able to offer a spot.
Pages 38-40 of âThe Riseâ by Graham and Diamond (1997) discuss the prior rankings from 1925 -1970. Your assumption that there has to be sort of ranking system consistency is unfounded. They reflected the thinking at the time. Nobody has yet come up with the ultimate ranking system and nobody ever will. The 1925 rankings had a top 10 of chicago, harvard, yale, wisconsin, princeton, jhu, umich, ucb, and cornell. Have things really changed that much?? Not really. Even USNews admits they know the acceptable results first and then tweak the system to yield the correct results. Gaming is rampant and cheating might be. So much for reliability over time.
Completely crazy that you would offer waitlist for 21,000 applicants and then only offer 77 people a spot. It would have been better to just reject them and be done with it.
Michigan is not the only school guilty of this - my son had 8 waitlists last year and every one of them was as ridiculous as Michiganâs!! Just crazy! It did help his ego in the short term, but really just prolonged the torture
It was the second half of the rejection letter that she got last year in late March or early April. They also provided links to how to plan out her freshman year someplace else for transferable classes. If you look at that wording Lauren shared the letter said the exact same thing last year.
However, her friend is also transferring in as a sophomore. I think he got off the waitlist right before classes started and had already enrolled in CC. Iâm not sure if his situation was entirely the same as the âsophomore transfer promise.â
