Waitlist Epidemic?

Applying to College
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Is it just me, or is there a WL epidemic? My son has been WL at 4 (!!) schools so far – the odds of achieving that result are less than if he had just been admitted to one of them. I would have thought he’d go 1 for 4 on them, or 2 for 2. I never would have thought he’d get 4 WLs! BTW, 2 were reach (BC/NE), 1 high match (Colby) & 1 low match (Villanova) (which, unfortunately for him was one of his favorite schools & the one he would have picked among these four)… This is crazy! I have heard anecdotes from other kids’ parents at his school (elite prep school) that many kids are getting WL & there is no apparent pattern to it. Today, I talked to a mom whose DD (4.3/34ACT) has been WL at UCDavis (her safety) as well as at BC! Overqualified kids are getting WL at #25-40 ranked schools, while low achievers are getting WL at schools you would think they’d be flat out rejected.

The problem with WL (for me as a parent) is this: (1) it unreasonably gets my kid’s hope up that he’ll get in, when it’s only a handful who will be so lucky; (2) it prevents my kid from being fully engaged & excited about the schools he actually CAN choose from because he may think he still has a shot at a WL school – it doesn’t even matter if the WL is better or not, you aren’t committed if you leave a “what if” out there; and finally, (3) have the balls to just reject him if you don’t want him. Either he’s good enough & you want him or not. WL is like asking someone out on a date & they say “maybe” & expect you to wait around long enough until they decide if you’re worthy. Meanwhile, excellent prospects really want you…but you’re looking for the “hard to get” option.

My educated guess on the WL epidemic (at least it’s an epidemic in our household LOL) is the following:
(1) app #s are on the rise in a big way. Many schools are reporting that they are up as much as 20 % this year (Villanova; Colby; Duke; UCLA; etc). With this rise in app #s, schools are uncertain of their yield & also want to protect their coveted low admissions rate. The WL is essentially a larger accepted pool that won’t count as one against the %.

(2) Top students are applying to more schools than ever. It’s not unusual for kids aiming for top 25 schools to apply to 20 of them… Or, top students are applying to colleges that give generous merit aid, thus raising the bar for the “average” applicant at mid-level schools, where they used to be a lock. This makes yield uncertain – no matter how many acceptances a top kid gets, she can only go to 1 school. In the past, accepting at Harvard may have meant a student turns down 2 spots (e.g. Yale & Princeton). Today, many students (excepting ED admittees), may be turning down 9 top schools for every acceptance. Or maybe they will only get into the 1. This uncertainty in the pool drives adcoms to WL a back up admitted pool.

That’s my rant for tonight…I’d be interested in knowing if there are others out there whose kids have multiple WL…

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Hm, not sure… I have yet to be waitlisted: I either was accepted or rejected-- so who knows!

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Regarding your point 1, I agree that schools receiving a big increase in apps, will likely have to wl more kids, but if they do take kids off the wl it is eventually factored into their accepted rate. A school may put out a press release saying they accepted only x% of applicants, but they do have to adjust that number for wl accepts when they submit the CDS.
You are right to have tempered expectations for the wl. But depending on the school, sometimes 10% of the freshman class is from the wl, so movement is possible and does happen. There are also a lot of kids that accept a wl, but are not super interested. They are doing it, ‘just in case’, or accept a wl and then get a good rd decision a week later and never remove themselves. So if you are interested in a wl, make meaningful contact with admissions, have your gc do the same, and follow up.
Regarding kids who get in to a school while a classmate does not, at 2 of the schools on your list, BC and Villanova, the school applied to has a big impact.

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I’ve been pretty lucky- only 2 WLs so far and I got accepted to a school I liked better than the WL school so I don’t wreally care, but all my research about WLs has just made me angry.

One of my waitlists was at Bowdoin. I thought I had a really good shot at getting in (3.9 UW , 35 ACT, had support from a board member). After being waitlisted, I looked up some stats about their waitlist. They accept around 1100 kids for a class size of ~500, and waitlist approximately 1200. They end up taking somewhere between 0 and 50 off the waitlist each year, making the acceptance rate off the WL far lower than the normal acceptance rate. Why are they waitlisting more kids than they accept in the first place?! Are they accepting every single one of those kids to turn the school down?

From the college’s perspective though, it makes sense. Good for admission rate, yield, and, if a kid they want turns it down, why not keep a big pool to choose from. However, it is very stressful for kids and just draws out the hope, turning an already long and stressful process into an affair that can consume the entire summer.

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I think it’s a combination of factors. First though, Colby has an acceptance rate of 17.5%. It’s the reachiest of the schools you listed. You shouldn’t be surprised. I do think the huge uptick in number of apps submitted is causing problems for many colleges, especially those in the category of 20-35% acceptance rates, where there will be a lot of stellar applicants who are counting those schools as matches. Common App needs to put a stop to this madness. No one needs to submit 20 apps, and it’s getting more and more crazy.

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I am also seeing a lot of waitlists amongst my twin DD’s friends. Fortunately, my DD’s results so far have been more predictive based on their profile with 3/3 acceptances to their safeties (1 more to go), 2/2 acceptances to their targets (2 more to go) 3 denials,1 waitlist to their reaches ((4 more to go) - hoping for 1 reach acceptance… Regarding expectations, if BC/NE is a reach then Colby probably was as well as their acceptance rate was only 15% this year with many 34 ACT kids denied.

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I don’t think anybody is “overqualified” for any of the schools in the top 40. A student either has stats in range for acceptance or they don’t. There are so many kids with high stats that colleges can cherry pick amongst them to build the class they want. Strong stats are only part of the picture. That’s why the students you consider “low achievers” are being considered by highly ranked schools. Their stats are good enough, and they obviously have something else the schools may want.

Rejection or WL at schools that appear to be academic safeties can be due to yield protection. The college may assume they’re the student’s safety. If they think the student won’t attend, they won’t accept them because it lowers their yield.

How you handle waitlists is up to you. I’d send a letter of continued interest, then treat it like a rejection. If your child ends up getting off the WL, that’s great. But I’d focus on the schools that accepted him because those are likely going to be his only choices.

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@Steglitz90 The college process is very frustrating. I definitely think that the volume of apps received by colleges and universities are contributing to the increased waitlist offers. In the end, it’s a business for these schools. Trying to protect their yield and he reportable stats. I’m sorry your son isn’t hearing the news he had hoped for. Just make sure he doesn’t get his hopes too high for getting off any waitlists, although it can happen. I know Villanova planned on taking no one off their waitlist last year. Good luck to your son!

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DD was waitlisted on only one of her nine applications, but was eventually accepted. I had my suspicions that, for this particular school, it had to do with her ticking the box for financial aid.

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I think the waitlist is a soft “no” in most cases. A WL benefits the school, but I don’t see how it benefits the student to drag out a decision process until late May, June or July.

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@chelsea465. May I ask if the school she was waitlisted at was “need aware” or purportedly “need blind”. Many have surmised that schools can gleen enough information from the common app even if they are need blind.

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I’m a transfer applicant now, but during my freshmen application process I was waitlisted to most schools I applied to. The University of Richmond was my #1 and they waitlist typically over 3,500 people out of 10,000 applicants. I also was waitlisted at UVA, Emory, and Wake Forest. So yeah, there is definitely a waitlist epidemic. I decided to take myself off the waitlists and attend a safety school and now I’m in the process of trying to transfer to one of those 4 schools mentioned. I agree with @snorkelmom that its typically a soft no.

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@Steglitz90 I TOTALLY agree! My senior and friends have all been waitlisted/deferred by the majority of schools they applied to this year. Most are saying “well I did not get rejected from any schools yet”… I think this is the new managing of expectations. Putting a kid on the waitlist means a school never has to officially reject them… therefore saving stress for admissions (and all the unhappy parents/seniors) with the added bonus of another month of waiting for the student.

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OP here - Thanks for letting me vent. I definitely agree with those of you who commented that a WL is a soft no & done in the college’s best interest, not the student’s. They have you waiting anxiously by the computer, hoping you’ll get that email saying, “we want you (now that others don’t want us)!” My vote would be to say F.U. to the WL & go to a school that wants you straight up – but it’s my kid’s decision, not mine, whether to stay on the WL.

As for Colby, with its admit % of 17-18%, it certainly can be classified a reach; what I meant was that my son’s scores were more in line with Colby, which has a little lower avg, than BC/NE. Like I said – I never expected 4 WLs. I would have been less surprised with 4 rejections (or even 4 admissions). My kid contributed to the Colby mess (huge rise in apps from 7500 to 11000 this year) because he applied on a lark (as I bet a lot of kids did) when they sent him a waiver for the app fee & didn’t have any supplemental essays, so it was literally “add Colby to the Common App & press submit”.

Of all of them, the Villanova one hurts the most (just like a hard rejection would have stung), because my kid is in the top 50%, maybe 75% of their admitted students, and historically they have close to 50% admissions rate. Nova was a match, maybe a low match, but most importantly to my kid, it was top choice that he had a realistic shot of getting into (unlike an Ivy). But, their apps were up 20% this year! So, they aren’t sure if their yield will go up as well.

His top school right now is one he got into EA & is in the top 3 of his original choices, so he is happy about that. The decision btw this school & VU would have been made primarily on money & luckily for him, his EA school is giving him enough to make it very attractive. However, because he got in EA (& well ahead of the WLs), he took it as more of a sure thing versus realizing what a huge accomplishment getting into this school is (& with large merit $). If he had applied RD & got the admissions & scholarship email today, he’d be over the moon… stupid how timing can affect how your view on a positive result.

My takeaway from this, especially after hearing how many kids in the top of my son’s class AREN’T getting in to schools where they fall in the upper 25% & have basically worked themselves to death over the past 4 years, is that I’m glad we stressed well-roundedness to my son & balance in his life. Nothing is a given, so work hard & do your best, but it’s ok to go out & socialize, go to prom, play Xbox with your brothers & watch Impractical Jokers – you could have had a little higher GPA or test scores at the expense of missing out on your life & you may well still have been in the same place – Waitlisted.

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@Steglitz90, I agree that it’s tough when these kids work their tails off and end up with WL or Denial when they profile in the top-25% at every school, as my twin DD’s were - luckily mine have 4 acceptances so far at great LAC’s, but I know it hurts them that they’ve only been WL’d at one of the top 5.

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I got waitlisted at Villanova as well, which really hurt since that was my top choices. But I’m in the same boat as your son, I was waitlisted at 4 schools that I personally believe that I should have gotten into. However, from what people have been telling me that it might be a financial reason or even he was overqualified and they school thought that maybe he wouldn’t go there in the first place. It’s a number of reasons, who knows what goes on in the admissions process.

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This is where parents and counselors can do a better job of guiding students. A waitlist is not a ‘maybe’ or ‘almost’. As someone mentioned above, Richmond waitlists about as many students as they admit. Waitlisting purely a game played by schools to manage their yield and class size. Schools have managed to pull the wool over the eyes of applicants over the years, to make them think in terms of “i feel honored to have at least been waitlisted to ‘Super U’”.

A waitlist is no better than a polite ‘no’. Focus on the schools that said ‘yes’ and don’t give the WL schools a second thought … until they come back saying you have indeed been admitted off the WL. Then you can decide whether to give THEM a second chance. (I like the ‘dating analogy’ above).

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@lz57c4 1001 likes for your post. My thoughts exactly!

WL is a chicken-sh*t “no”. I’d would respect the school more if they just said no. And I’m so glad my kid realizes that “where you go is not who you’ll be”.

Meanwhile, I’m pushing my 2 younger kids to excel & then go to Alabama on a full tuition scholarship…lol

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I think different schools handle the waitlist differently. There may be some, who wl a large amount of kids and that perhaps is really a polite no or as others have termed it a chicken no, but others who accept kids from the wl every yr and so are thoughtful about who they put on it. A poster posted a link to an article where an admissions officer at a top school said that in committee they end up with too many yes’s, so they go back thru those and turn some admits into wl, and those are the kids who would come off the wl first.
You may want to check the CDS for the wl schools and see what they have done historically with the wl. If the wl has been huge, then maybe it really is a no, but if the wl is smaller and kids do come off it, then there is a chance. Some of the smaller schools can’t afford to over-admit due to housing concerns, so they manage admissions thru the wl.

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Last year my S was WL at 4 schools. All were soft rejections.