<p>My S received an email this evening advising him that he was waitlisted. Given his course load, GPA and SAT's, I was certainly suprised.</p>
<p>Jacobsmw - I will reprint my post from the other thread, modifying it appropriately:</p>
<p>I suspect the top students get waitlisted because Tulane knows your son is very unlikely to choose them. And the way the rankings at USNWR and other, similar publications work (and this is why the ranking systems are somewhat worthless) they use stats like acceptance %, yield, etc. to make those determinations. So think about it. If Tulane accepts your son, it makes their acceptance rate go up, which makes them look less selective. And when he turns them down, which they, at least, must think he will, it makes their yield go down, which is also a negative.</p>
<p>So don't blameTulane for it. As many kids on here freely admitted, Tulane was their "safety" and "last choice". If you are a school trying to move into the top 25 or whatever (because as much as anyone might think those rankings are BS, they are a reality), it is an understandable way to play the game.</p>
<p>As I mentioned on another thread, I think many top students who applied RD are being waitlisted simply because Tulane needs to see how many of the already accepted students will enroll, before going to their waitlist. Last year they had 200 more enroll than they had planned for (though about 50 of those dropped due to summer waitlist movement, attrition, financial changes or what have you) so in Aug. they ultimately had a class of 1550 rather than the anticipated 1400. I don't know if the school is prepared to again take a class bigger than they can accomodate. If your son is truly interested in Tulane, jacobsmw, he should show a lot of interest-- speak to his admission counselor, visit campus, etc. Good luck</p>
<p>USNWR doesn't use yield in ranking.</p>
<p>If he didn't apply EA, that's probably why. There were just huge numbers of EA applicants this year. If your S is very interested in Tulane, it's worth calling admissions and they might take him off the waitlist. I know somebody who went from rejected to getting a scholarship because he told them it was his first choice.</p>
<p>Yeah, I addressed the yield thing in a different post. Was just pointing out they all play the game to get higher in the rankings, whatever manipulations it takes without hurting their main purpose. No knock on Tulane, they all do it.</p>
<p>During a "college chat" on the Tulane webstie the other night, an admissions person stated that their confirmations for enrollment were up from this time last year. I'm sure with thousands more applications compared to last year, they must be very careful about how many more people they make offers to.
They are asking people they've made offers to on a weekly basis about their decisions. I'm sure they'd love to make more offers to great quality candidates. On the flip side, during my freshman year of college in NJ, students were actually sleeping in bathtubs because they didn't have room for them. I can't imagine any college would want to risk that.</p>
<p>Soccerfreak - exactly right. When I was a freshman at Tulane, right after I unloaded my stuff off my dinosaur I found out that I was tripled up in a 2 person room because they had gotten too many acceptances. Fortuantely within a week they knew who the no-shows were and it worked out, but it can be hell for the school and the kids. There really has to be a better way.</p>