In the letter they said 1/5 get off waitlist.
Psychologically move on and get excited about the school(s) that have accepted you. Make sure to deposit somewhere by May 1.
U Wisconsin may or may not go to the waitlist. If they do, they will choose students who fit one of their needs at that point, and you will have zero visibility to what they are looking for…In state/OOS, Full pay, Major, male/female, and on and on.
Good luck.
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Not sure I understand this. Per the CDS section c2, last year 6449 were offered WL spots. 4006 joined the WL.
11 were accepted.
The previous year 14 of 4335.
https://m.box.com/shared_item/https%3A%2F%2Fuwmadison.box.com%2Fs%2F1156jfkw8rmecrcqdowokza5jd08ltla
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Why would they blatantly misrepresent that statistic then?
Only 11 got called from the waitlist last year based on WI’s self reported admission stats. I have no idea why they’d tell anyone that 20% get accepted off the WL. That has not been true for the last 3 years.
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It’s not like the cds can be inaccurate, correct? They are either lying to applicants or to college board.
I can’t answer that ? You’d have to ask them.
Listen, you were rejected. That’s what a waitlist is.
It’s a rejection but a hedge for the school - in case they fall short.
Stay on it but move on. Choose school #2. Fall in love with it and have a wonderful experience.
That’s the truth. They did not accept you. Even 1:5 odds are not good.
You can have a great experience at many schools, as long as you open your mind to it.
Stay on but move on. Based on what they report it’s one in 300-400. Love the schools that already love you. It’s highly UNLIKELY to happen. @Mwfan1921 first sentence is the proper guidance for a WL student.
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Can you screenshot the communication that says 1 in 5 waitlisted students are accepted and post it here? Of course don’t screenshot anything that identifies you.
As others have said, that waitlist acceptance rate wasn’t true for the last few years because Wisconsin has overenrolled in each of the last few years, by quite a bit.
Your next step is to make plans to go somewhere else. Put UW in your rear view mirror and don’t look back. You will have a great experience where ever you end up, just don’t plan on it being Madison. Especially, don’t hold off on other schools hoping on Madison to change their mind.
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I wonder if the 20% is based on a 3-year average. And that one covid year, I do think a lot more than usual got moved off the waitlist. If it is a 3-year average, the last 3 years are definitely not very typical.
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If you search up uw Madison waitlist it’s in their faq’s. It was also in my decision letter.
Everyone thinks that colleges are perfect. Maybe their CDS is wrong. Maybe their online resources are old (more likely). I work for a preeminent luxury company. We have lots of old, out of date stuff. It happens. They don’t have the resources to keep track.
I’d assume the cds, since it’s current, is accurate.
Either way - a WL is a rejection. That’s what it is. It’s a hedge for them in case they mis judge yield.
If you have a 1:5 chance, it’s still long odds.
Fall in love with #2. It’s likely a wonderful school. It may even be better for you personally.
Good luck.
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The FAQs do say that and it’s appalling to have outdated info on that page. I will be calling them Monday, because it’s also appalling that they put thousands on the waitlist.
Regardless this is the part of the FAQs you should focus on…
Given the number of students typically offered admission from the wait list, we recommend that you focus on the colleges you were admitted to and decide which of those institutions you wish to attend, accept your admission offer there, and begin the next steps towards enrolling.
…because you can easily see the low number of enrolled waitlisted students from CDS for the last few years, and I expect those numbers are accurate, as I have spoken to the highly competent institutional reporting peeps at Wisconsin on more than one occasion.
Someone just posted this on the other Madison thread (sorry, I don’t know how to paste a post properly, so forgive the quotations marks).
“UW could do a better job providing waitlist data. True, if you average the numbers from UW’s Common Data Set for the past 3 years, a total of 2886 out of 13426 applicants on the waitlist were admitted, which is 21%, or roughly the “one in five” as stated in UW’s waitlist FAQs. But the problem is in the details. For the class entering Fall of 2020 (the Covid year) a whopping 56.3% were accepted off the waitlist, whereas in both 2021 and 2022 only a scant .3% got off the waitlist. Specifically, only 14 out of 4335 (2021) and 11 out of 4006 (2022) were accepted off the list. In other words, over the last two years, approximately one in 334 students on the wait list have been offered admission, a sharp contrast from the “one in five” as stated in UW’s FAQs!”
That’s extremely misleading and unfair to anyone who was waitlisted. Based on this data, anyone waitlisted should move on and love the school(s) that love them back.
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Apparently in 2020 (first Covid year), they accepted very many applicants off the waitlist. That is the exception skewing the average.
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Regarding F2023 waitlist. Is it standard practice that their waitlist letter gives an invitation to their connections program? If anyone knows I would appreciate. I don’t know if this is standard or they just sent an invite out to some people that are waitlisted.
I just did some research - I think the connections program is for in state only? So I can’t help you there.
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Seems like not a bad option tho in my opinion
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