<p>I just had a quick question. After browsing the various stats on accepted / waitlisted, it occurred to me that there is not much of a difference. </p>
<p>I understand that the college admissions is subjective, but nevertheless, my question is: </p>
<p>What is the difference between waitlisted and accepted? </p>
<p>There were two people in my school who had lower stats than I did, and they were accepted. On the contrary, I was waitlisted, along with another person with similar stats (higher than the acceptees). </p>
<p>If anyone has any suggestions, please tell me. </p>
<p>They waitlist people they have character questions about. If you ask why you were waitlisted, they don’t let you in. Instead, try to make wry remarks about the admissions process.</p>
<p>Both accepted and waitlisted students are applicants that the admissions officers really, really want to see at MIT. But they only have a limited number of offers they can make, because MIT is a finite place, so some number of students they really want to take must be waitlisted, with the hope that some of the other students they really want to take will decide for themselves that they want to go somewhere else. </p>
<p>But I really doubt the caliber of the accepted students and the waitlisted students is different overall by any objective measure you can imagine, and, anyway, some of my favorite current students were admitted off the waitlist.</p>
<p>Yeah, they are. Every person who gets into MIT is academically qualified, but that’s not the sole factor to their admission. Lots of people also get rejected when they have very high stats. That’s how it goes. The difference between your scores likely didn’t make a difference in the eyes of admissions - you were both qualified academically. The rest of the application decides.</p>
<p>And even with that, MIT still has to reject tons of people they’d love to take.</p>