Son Wait List - In State Nova - Applied Env Science - 35 ACT, 3,87 W GPA - 7 AP. Put deposit down for Ohio State but still holding out hope for VT.
Anyone have any idea approximately how many students are on the wait list? Son is on the wait list right now and was seriously considering VT, but he and many of his friends got put on the wait list this year. Would help to have a rough idea of how many people are waiting right now.
@vadad2019 There have been a couple guesses re: waitlist numbers that have been posted in various threads. VT doesn’t share that information and it likely varies from year to year. And because you apply into a specific college/major, knowing the overall # of students on the wait list wouldn’t be much help anyway.
@vadad2019 Based on the data from the previous few years, my best guess would be that out of 31,000 applicants ~19,000-20,000 will be offered admission. Wait list ~3,500 offered spots, ~2,500 will accept. Most likely pooled by college. Depending on the yield, they may or may not start taking people from the wait list last week of April/first week of May. So two months to wait…
I was just waitlisted for engineering and I applied RD.
I accepted my spot on the waitlist like 2 minutes after decisions were posted.
Can anyone tell me if there a decent chance I’ll get accepted off the wait list? Does VT accept people off the waitlist based on how quickly they accepted the waitlist offer?
@LittleLiam Based on what has been said in prior years, the waitlist is not ranked based on when you accept a WL “offer”.
Ah I see, so it’s stat-based? 
@LittleLiam based on stats, departments, special skill, male vs female… No way to predict what they think will fit the vacancies
Current out of state freshman here. I was waitlisted last year, and I was extremely discouraged. I was not all that surprised by my decision because of my stats. My stats were not that great: GPA well below average, test scores a tad above average, but nothing extreme. On the other hand, I went to a pretty well known, extremely competitive school and I think Tech knew this when reviewing my application. I had lots of EC’s, wrote strong essays, and I explained why my grades where not where they should have been. I paid my deposit for another school May 1st, and got into tech May 3rd! It was a long waiting process, but it was all worth it in the end. My advice is to keep your head up, I got in when I least expected it. Wherever you end up, you will find your perfect home. Good luck to all of you!
@hokie2342 Thanks for the encouragement, very nice of you. Not quite sure why you are back on this site though 
A few new variables this year (Coalition, EA, etc) make wait list chances and comparisons with prior years difficult. I just hope that the yield is lower than they expected and wait listed kids get a chance. Two extra months of waiting is excruciating.
My stats:
Early action - waitlisted
Business
In-State
4.11 weighted gpa
All honors and AP classes
1350 SAT
I’m honestly just so confused about how they accepted/denied people; It seems completely random. Almost everyone at my school was waitlisted and the few people who did get in had lower stats (around 3.6 gpa and 1280 sat) than those who were waitlisted.
Does anyone know if anything can be done to increase my chances of getting off the waitlist? I kinda wish I could send in my first semester grades since I had straight A’s, but I don’t think they care.
The who early action thing seems a bit of a mess this year. Normally with a college doing early action you would be deferred to regular decision (where you could send in your mid-year grades etc.).
But with VT their early action was really Regular Decision 1 vs. Regular Decision 2. They waitlisted people instead of deferring.
With a 4.11 and 1350 SAT I think you will get off waitlist. I think this year they waitlisted a bunch of people as with the new applications process they didn’t know their yield and didn’t know how many early actions they should take either. I would be very surprised if you didn’t get in sooner than later.
@ken3dall Our school recommends emailing a letter of interest and update to your school rep if you are waitlisted at a school. Ask your guidance counselor for your school’s specific rep email address and name. Put your ID number college gave you in subject line with word interest and your full name. Express your interest and also the increased grades senior year. It can’t hurt to try. Good luck. Your stats look great.
I agree can’t hurt
I feel like they went so much easier on regular decision than early action. It’s like they realized they waitlisted too many people for early action and hence needed to accept more people for regular decision. Their admission process is honestly just such a mess. Virginia Tecg used to be my first choice, but I don’t even know if I wanna do there anymore.
This is the first time they have done Early Action so they have to go through the year to see what they want to tweak for future. I don’t think they looked at anything different early action vs. regular decision - it was only a few week difference so I feel they just looked at the regular decisions applications last - they probably had half of them complete when early action went out.
My counselor says I can’t write a letter of continued interest or anything to increase my chances of getting off the waitlist. I definelity agree that they went easier on regular decision…seems like people with 3.5 gpas got in regular decision, yet people with 4.0s got waitlisted early action. Seems fishy considering they urged people to apply early action on the tour.
I think it’s important for students and parents to realize that posts on CC represent a mere fraction of 1% of the actual admissions results. That’s not even a small sample size… it’s really no sample size. You can’t extrapolate that data to form an informed opinion on whether a process was/is a “mess”, or if one segment of the admissions pool was treated differently than another. There were plenty of 3.5’s that got in over 4.0’s last year too. Static numbers don’t make up the whole of an admissions decision. That’s why I wish CC would purge “chance me” threads from their forums. Ditto on posting guesses on wait list numbers, unless the poster puts a big “I have no idea, there is no real way to know, and this is just a guess” disclaimer on their posts. But I digress…
VT got over 2x as many applications under EA than they did for ED and RD combined. By sheer numbers alone there were going to be more people waitlisted from that group than from any other.
and the non-waitlisted don’t tend to come here.