<p>Right now I can assume they are probably within their target class plus or minus 100 students, otherwise they either would have done away with the waitlist or accepted people off it.</p>
<p>The chance one will get off the extended waitlist is slim. This looks like a “playing it safe” tactic by Columbia, in case (once in a blue moon) an absurd number of people get off other waitlists and they are under enrolled. Usually taking off the waitlist is a sign of weakness/low yield and a top school like Columbia would consider every option before taking off the waitlist.</p>
<p>This is an absolute crock of BS. Admitting kids isn’t an exact science, and Columbia would much rather accept 10 kids off the waitlist than be overenrolled by 100 and not have enough dorms / classes for everyone.</p>
<p>… that’s a very naive way of looking at it. with an over-enrolled class, there are housing problems, allocation problems, over-crowding, etcetc. why do you think most schools are very hesitant to over-enroll. therefore, a school would rather use a waitlist to eventually have a full class rather than risk over-enrollment.</p>
<p>^yes but under uncertainty, no matter how high historical yeild is, college will and should always be conservative with their initial acceptances. It’s better to accept 100 people off the waitlist than have 10 extra kids in the class. if columbia wanted 10 extra kids for revenue purposes they could just do it off the waitlist, there is a very slight disadvantage to using the waitlist extensively which is that: over the month of april, kids envision themselves at lesser schools like yale, visit those schools and decide to matriculate there.</p>
<p>But in terms of the quality of students, it is always better to have more admitted in the first round rather than from the waitlist. A school does not want to take fewer people ED and RD, then resort to accepting many on the waitlist. It would not be good for its reputation.</p>
<p>I would think that taking a bunch of students off the waitlist would be better. Most people who are taken off the waitlist matriculate (100% yield rate) and the university wouldn’t face the daunting prospect of overenrollment. Furthermore, taking less people regular decision would artificially increase the yield rate. </p>
<p>How do you think Harvard maintains its high yield rate while taking ~200 kids off the waitlist since getting rid of EA.</p>
<p>I assumed harvard maintains its high yield rate because, well, it’s **Harvard **. Its name brings in much more yield than princeton or Yale could bring in.</p>
<p>yes, but they weren’t the top batch of accepted students. The average waitlistee is less qualified than the average acceptee.</p>
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<p>taking many kids off the waitlist usually means you are taking fewer kids than you should RD. so you can increase yeild by increasing the # of kids you plan to take off the waitlist.</p>
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<p>despite what I said above, this is not necessarily true. Sometimes waitlistees can display a huge drive to attend Columbia which reveal them to be better matches for the univ. But generally speaking, I agree with you, it’s easy to fabricate this huge urge to attend columbia once you are on the waitlist, so only qualifications and essays should matter.</p>
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<p>I would go a step further and say that it is not just Harvard’s name but the university as a whole. The admissions office does a good job marketing, it increases applicants but that by itself is not what gets 75-80% of kids who get in to accept their offers. they have more resources to give students a better education, they have the best financial aid of anywhere which not only directly incentivizes upper-middle class students to attend but also creates slightly more socio-economic diversity in the class. they also have significantly more rhodes scholars, top law, business and med school acceptances etc. the name has real implications which encourage people to attend.</p>
<p>I’m somewhat disturbed by statements or implications that waitlisted students are somehow less “credentialed” or “qualified” than admitted students. Remember, Columbia received approximately 25,000 applications for approximately 1,400 slots. I suspect that the school could fill its class several times over with similarly top credentialed or qualified students. Witness the future Yalie above who was waitlisted by Columbia, or my son’s pals who were waitlisted (or rejected) by Columbia but who have found solace in their admissions to Harvard, MIT, Stanford and other top institutions.</p>
<p>I just read the posts from today and had the exact same reaction; thanks for saving me the time to post this. While I suspect that Columbia, like most colleges, puts a lot of people on the political/PR reasons (it’s an absolute joke that Columbia and other colleges put over a thousand people on a waiting list), the 10-50 people who will ever get selected from a Columbia waitlist are not only just as qualified as the original admits but they’re going to have the x-factor that made them stand out to Columbia.</p>
<p>I mean qualified in a broad subjective sense. The admissions committee needs to make a decision at the end of the day with the information they are given. Someone with better essays and recommendations might be more “qualified” for the sake of the application. On a different application someones qualifications (or the admissions committee’s perception of it) could be much different. With the information that Columbia was given on the app, if a waitlistee was more qualified than an admit then the positions would be reversed. The admit would be waitlisted and vice versa. I’m sure there are some ridiculously amazing waitlistees who just got overlooked, but I was discussing the average.</p>
<p>OK, I acknowledge that a waitlistee could be as academically qualified as the average acceptee, but you know that is not the only thing that gets one accepted. Match is a strong factor here. It is arguable that those officially accepted are deemed by admissions to be better suited to the school than those waitlisted. Therefore they should be expected to contribute more to the school environment. Hence they are “better” candidates for admission.</p>
<p>The waitlisted student, while maybe on equal footing in terms of numbers, is less matched to the institution. We constantly hear of the perfect SAT scorer rejected from Ivy schools on reasons of fit.</p>