Hi, I was wondering if anyone knows the chances of getting off the waitlist at American University. I have a 30 ACT and a 4.9 gpa (weighted) and 3.8 gpa (unweighted). I’m in 8 clubs and I am an officer in 3 of them and I play a sport. I was honestly a little confused as to why I was waitlisted when I know people who have been accepted with lower stats. Does anyone know anything about how AU picks who will be on the waitlist? Or any tips for getting off of it? Thank you!
They might have had better essays, or were applying for a less competitive major. AU is also really big into demonstrated interest. Or they come from less-represented states. Your GPA also might not matter as much since they likely recalculated it based on your transcript. It’s not good to dwell on what others may or may not have done. You can only focus on yourself now.
Make sure to send a letter of continued interest. According to the 18-19 academic year (the most recent data available):
4598 applicants were waitlisted
760 accepted a place on the waitlist
188 were admitted
So that’s about a 24% acceptance rate. AU’s list isn’t ranked so when positions become available, the admissions committee will decide who will be contacted first, based on the number of positions they have available.
I can’t help you because I have no info on that but my daughter was also waitlisted with a 34 ACT and a 3.97 unweighted GPA. She is also disappointed and I am as well as the mother. They highly recruited her for months to get her to apply. We never did get a chance to visit but we would have after an acceptance. Oh well, like the previous poster said, don’t dwell on it. My daughter has seen the same at 2 other schools where she was rejected and students with stats that were seemingly lower did get in.
You got some great advice from the other poster about what to do if you really want to go there. Good luck!
My daughter got wait listed for Wake Forest and University of Richmond, got rejected from UVA, and got rejected from Georgetown. She did get into American. These schools are so competitive. I just wanted to give you her stats so you have an idea. She has a 4.0 weighted GPA she took 5 AP classes in her senior year, 4 in her junior year, and 2 in her sophomore and Freshman years, her ACT was 32 and her SAT was 1440. She is the captain of her school’s robotics team, Senior Class President, Vice president of Young Democrats club and a ton of other things like that. I have no idea how good or bad her essay was because she would not let me read it, but she’s an okay writer so I guess it was probably at least average. Judging from your daughter’s stats, which are pretty similar to my daughters, all I can say is that these things are so subjective. It’s frustrating and confusing how similar kids can get different outcomes. It probably depends a lot on who is looking at the applications on a given day and what that person takes away from the application they are judging. I have a friend who’s son was accepted into UVA last year with much less on his resume than my daughter. Even though it is disappointing, In the long run whatever college they get into they will do well. I honestly thought my daughter was Ivy League material her whole life, I was obviously wrong. We are deciding if going to American is even worth the price tag. She got accepted into our state college which is ranked more than 30 places higher than American on the list of National Universities. She doesn’t want to go there because I think her pride is telling her that everyone gets accepted there and she feels like she is far superior to the kids that she personally knows who got accepted there. But since its a state school she can go for free where if she goes to American we’ll be in the hole for over $200,000 by the time she graduates. I told her I would rater her go to FSU and I’ll give her $200,000. when she graduates! Ugh…its frustrating for sure that a kid with all this potential and who has done so well in school her whole life gets rejected by every college she applied to.