<p>Just curious how difficult it is to get off the USC waitlist and in for the fall...my good friend just got waitlisted and she's a bit bummed out.</p>
<p>i hear that the chances of getting off the waitlist is very high....a true waitlist unlike WUSTL's waitlist</p>
<p>:) (crossing my fingers)</p>
<p>Thats what i found on some other forum,</p>
<p>"Waitlists are done to manage the yield of an incoming class and ensure that all of the seats are filled for the coming fall and, accordingly, the admissions committee will have more people on the waitlist than they will have anticipated openings to remove applicants from that list.</p>
<p>There will be some applicants on the waitlists until late summer as there will still be a few admitted applicants who will, for lack of a better word, flake at the last minute and decide to take a promotion at their current employer or choose a significant other who threatens to leave if s/he goes off to b-school. </p>
<p>There is a bad assumption that a person gets waitlisted because there is a 'problem' with his/her candidacy. If the admissions committee had a problem with a person's application s/he would have been denied, not waitlisted. Most waitlist decisions are based on the extreme competitiveness of the applicant pool; and the admissions committee deciding (admittedly, very arguably) that the folks to whom they extended offers are SLIGHTLY better candidates than the folks they waitlisted. In short, we're talking of assessing razor-thin gradations of excellence here; and the admissions committees would actually love to have the folks they waitlisted in their class also.</p>
<p>So, the strategy a waitlisted person needs to adopt should focus on the 2 biggest concerns of the admissions committee: availability/interest and progress since initially submitting. A candidate on the waitlist needs to convince the admissions committee that s/he will drop absolutely everything to attend XYZ school; the waitlisted candidate needs to confirm his/her commitment to attending that specific school. The admissions committee is also interested in knowing what's been going on since s/he submitted his/her application. Continued professional progress is important and this is where an additional letter of reference can come in: to substantiate recent accomplishments, etc. So optimally, one, and in a few rare cases, two letters of reference are appropriate. Additionally, any weaknesses in the applicant's story (why an MBA, short and long-term career goals, etc.) should be addressed as well.</p>
<p>Finally, while the chances of getting off a waitlist may not be very high, the good news is that many waitlisted applicants do not follow these steps. They often do either nothing or, worse yet, something destructive such as flooding the admissions committee with multiple phone calls."</p>
<p>btw, I am also waitlisted for CNTV-MFA Animation. :) Chances don look much bright. HELP!</p>