<p>Hi
My daughter was put on the wait list at 2 of her reach schools. Can anyone give me some background on this?<br>
-- Do the schools rank their list and a student could be number 50 or number 5,000 in line on the list?<br>
-- Will schools typically tell you what position you are in?<br>
-- When do wait list students typically start filling in - doe any of it occur prior to the May 1 deadlines?</p>
<p>Thanks</p>
<p>Most schools will tell you they do not rank the wait listed students, and a school that does is unlikely to tell you where you are on the WL. Different schools use the WL in different ways. Some rarely have to go to the WL to fill a class, while other schools may eventually fill 10% of the class from the WL. You can search the school website to see what the trend has been historically, but every year is different. It sounds as if many schools are now using the WL as a “soft deny”.</p>
<p>Sometimes letting a school know that they are your first choice and that you are full pay helps. Schools that commit to meeting full financial need will do that even for kids admitted from the WL, but other schools may have committed most of their aid dollars to kids admitted in the regular cycle.</p>
<p>WL students can be notified before May 1, but generally you would hear any time from mid-May up until the week before school starts in the fall. Be sure to put down a deposit at a school that admitted your D. If she makes it off one of the WLs, you’ll lose that deposit.</p>
<p>From the very bottom of the last page of a NACAC 2012 study: </p>
<p><a href=“http://www.nacacnet.org/research/research-data/nacac-research/Documents/WaitListReport2012.pdf”>http://www.nacacnet.org/research/research-data/nacac-research/Documents/WaitListReport2012.pdf</a></p>
<p>“Only 16 percent of the respondents reported that they rank order individual students on the wait list. Many reported stratifying the list into groups, however. Fifty-five percent of the institutions divided the wait list by academic credentials, 42 percent by demonstrated interest in attending, and 21 percent by ability to pay. Wait list stratification criteria did not differ significantly by institutional characteristics.”</p>