Our family friend’s son was 4.0 GPA 2350 SAT and Waitlisted Harvard. He was accepted UC Berkeley with Regent Award. What is is his chance to get offer from Harvard? It will be really hard to refuse admission offer school like Harvard.
Berkeley is just as good.
Tell me why you think he got into Berkeley. Any alums in the family? What’s his ability to pay status?
I agree with you. We live in California and we told him that UCB is a great as some of Ivy league schools. But his parents are first Asian Immigrant and name recognition is very important. They believe that name of the Harvard will guarantee his future success. So, when my daughter told him that she would rather wants to go small LAC than big research university even she knows UCB is excellent school he was shocked to know.
It’s tough to tell one’s chances on the waitlist. It varies from year to year. Supposedly, there were about a thousand folks waitlisted last year. They took 30. That looks like the regular decision admission rate of about 3%. Other years, there have been almost no students taken from the waitlist, and going back a ways, there have been 100 or more. My sense is that in recent years, Harvard has become increasingly efficient in predicting yield, which means that the use of the waitlist is reduced.
Thank you for the useful information!
@bambi0611 - I suspect waitlist offers are used to balance the class, so that if the yield for one portion of the accepted class (by gender, ethnicity, intended field of study, whatever) is less than anticipated, Harvard can make up for the deficit by making offers to similar students on the waitlist. Odds are long, so it’s best to move on mentally and be presently surprised if he gets an offer.
Thank you for your suggestion. I think he needs to move on, too. And Berkeley is great school. My daughter’s classmate got into Dartmouth and Cornell but she couldn’t get into Berkeley.