@gardenstategal “As an aside, I don’t think the schools are “fighting for a lower acceptance rate” as much as they want the best students for their institution aND they don’t want to be reliant on one geographic region or one socioeconomic group.”
If this was true, that they want only the best students, then yield protection wouldn’t exist. And it very evidently exists. I know it’s sometimes called Tufts Syndrome (did Tufts start it? Or was it just that it first became obvious there?) but it’s spread like wildfire.
I think it’s less yield protection than enrollment management. Tufts, btw, has had that reputation for 50 years. No exaggeration! For a long time, it was tHought of as the place where people went who didn’t get into Harvard or MIT. I think they’ve finally shed that!
But I do think that schools sometimes sniff out someone who is less interested but is using them as a backup, and I suspect they are more inclined to accept the applicant who seems they really want to be there. Smaller schools are trying to build a class, so they hope they have a shot of getting the students they admit to keep that balance. They are more likely to achieve that if they admit the ones who want to come.
I think we agree that they want a good yield. My point is that they want it for institutional reasons, not for rankings.
I never really thought about WL being for full pay kids only. BC did tweet that their WL is need blind, but who knows if it really is, or maybe they make educated guesses based on the data they have in the CA as to whether a student can pay or not. For instance, the profile of their HS, zip code, parents’ education & professions.
Years ago, I was admitted to Duke as a Jan-freshman (I don’t think Duke does this anymore). Anyways, I remember talking with the reg Adcom at an accepted students event & I flat out told her that if I was let in for fall, I’d come to Duke. Otherwise, I was going to go to Berkeley & probably love it so much that I wouldn’t come to Duke in Jan. I got a call the next morning at 6am (9am Eastern) from the AO offering me a spot. We were full pay, but I didn’t ever tell anyone that at Duke, but I’m guessing they knew based on zip code, etc.
" BC did tweet that their WL is need blind, but who knows if it really is, or maybe they make educated guesses based on the data they have in the CA as to whether a student can pay or not"
They don’t need to go to all that trouble… They can just select from the kids who selected “I am not applying for financial aid” on the Common App. That said, I tend to take people at their word, and if they said they are need blind for WL, I guess I’d believe them. I know other highly ranked need blind LACs that specifically tell students that accepting a spot on the WL means no FA.
Agree. And I would go even further: there is nothing wrong with staying on the wait list just to “see if I’d get in.” The applicant doesn’t owe the school anything, and their effort and money went in to submitting the application. In the end, if the student gets off the wait list and turns it down – no harm no foul.
Agree with PPs above. I think the idea of being “fair” is nice, but too personal. The colleges ACCEPT 3X the number of students that could fill the class, and then some colleges put hundreds on a “wait list”. It sounds more like a marketing plan to me than helpful to a student. Of course, it helps students with pull or money. I am interested to see who from my school gets off the wait list (and why).