After applying in November and getting a deferral in January, I got my admissions decision tonight of being waitlisted. Does anyone know the probability of getting in after a waitlist? I don’t know how much longer I can take of all this waiting. It’s slowly killing me from the inside out haha. Any recommendations on what my next steps should be at this point? Thanks.
I’m in the exact same boat @mneagles
I’m no expert on UW-Madison’s admissions process, but I do think that they’re waiting on the decisions of those who were accepted. If you think about it, there can be only so many students that can be admitted into a University. Transfer applicants (which includes me), have not heard back. This means that admissions will also be waiting for those accepted transfers to make a decision on whether to attend or not. If lots of people deny admission and decide to go somewhere else, you’ll have a higher chance at scoring a spot in the University.
Again, I could be wrong but it just seems like the most logical answer for those who are “waitlisted”. I guess your chances of getting in depend solely on the admitted students and their decision to attend or not. BEST OF LUCK!
Same here, dying to get off the list. This year isn’t rolling admission so the turn out for waitlist people can go either way. Just gonna cross my fingers - best of luck to you too.
You should plan on SIRing by May 1 to your best option and get excited about it. My experience with other school is it could take until July or later to find out.
Transfer students are NOT in the same admissions pool as entering students. New freshmen are presumed to be taking many of the introductory classes, both for the major and to meet breadth requirements, while transfers presumably will have already taken those classes. Limits need to be set on new freshmen so students can get their classes.
Does anyone know if they move people off the wait list all at once of if that is a rolling process?
I expect it to be rolling. If students cancel their admission that frees up a spot which they then off to a waitlisted candidate. Depending on that person’s response they take that person or invite the next person on the list… There are likely people who end up on the waitlist who choose UW over the school they have been accepted to and paid deposits et al. There will be others who decline the offer.
So does anyone know what the school means when they say if you accept wait list you are placed on a “non ranked” list?
@mneagles, my daughter is in the same situation. She was deferred and is now waitlisted. She accepted the waitlist and will probably accept the UW Madison if they offer her a spot. In the meantime, she has accepted elsewhere (Statement of Intent to Register - SIR?) and we paid the deposit because she won’t hear back from the UW until after the May 1st deadline.
I too would like to understand how the waitlist works. I would like to know if “non ranked” means that it’s not first-come-first-served (that is, the earlier you get on the list a better chance you have) or if it means that everyone is equally qualified at this point and they pick out applicants randomly … or both.
I’m not sure if I expect the waitlist to be rolling on a one-to-one basis.
From College Data (http://www.collegedata.com/cs/data/college/college_pg02_tmpl.jhtml?schoolId=1703):
Overall Admission Rate 49% of 32,780 applicants were admitted
Women 53% of 16,363 applicants were admitted
Men 45% of 16,417 applicants were admitted
Students Enrolled 6,270 (39%) of 16,121 admitted students enrolled
They only expect only 39% of the admitted students to enroll. I don’t think they will replace a person who declines admission (or just lets it expire on May 2) with a waitlisted student because the waitlisted student has already said that they are still interested and would be more likely to attend. To put it another way, each accepted student has a 39% chance of saying “yes” while each waitlisted student has a much higher chance of saying “yes” since they already said “yes” to the waitlist. Students who are completely ready to move on will not say “yes” to the waitlist.
Please don’t mess with statistics- you can manipulate in so many ways. Percentages don’t really matter, nor do chances. You are either 100% in or out. The decision to accept a place from a waitlist for any school will be decided upon the timing, costs and how invested the student is with the next choice school. Those who really want to get a UW degree will consider transferring later as well.
@wis75, students who are waitlisted you are NOT 100% in OR 100% out. They are in limbo.
Each school has their own methodology when to offer students a place off the waitlist and unless you work in admissions we really don’t know what the “chances” or timing is are for being selected off the waitlist. What I’m saying is that I don’t think that one person will come off the waitlist for every person who declines admission because the UW basically overbooks their freshman class knowing that approximately 6 out of 10 students will decline (or not respond). If they replace declining students one-to-one with waitlisted students it’s a zero-sum game and the UW really needs to decrease the number of accepted students to a reasonable number of enrolled students because of limits on introductory class size and dorm rooms.
ETA: I agree with you about transferring into the UW at a later date. I think that the Connections Program is pretty awesome and I have suggested that she consider it if she really wants a degree from the the University of Wisconsin.
@CWNWSS and @rbc1999 I can explain in general terms the difference between a ranked and non-ranked waitlist. A ranked waitlist means waitlisted student Smith is #1, waitlisted student Jones is #2, etc. If an admissions slot opens up, student Smith, being #1 on the waitlist, will be offered that slot first. A non-ranked waitlist gives the school more control over shaping their freshman class. For example, let’s say that a higher percentage of male admitted students decline than the school was expecting. The school can pull a male student off the waitlist, even if several female students on the waitlist have higher stats and are in theory therefore more qualified in order to maintain the school’s male/female ratio and not let it get too lopsided. I am using gender as an example, but it could be international students, underrepresented minorities, majors, etc. The idea is that the pool of waitlisted candidates is exactly that - a pool with no specific order being assigned to each student. So the school can go “fishing” in the pool for whatever the school is looking for - a male student, an international student, a computer sciences major, etc.
The result is 100% for each student- all of you is in or not. Result not yet known perhaps. Like I said, messing with statistics can lead to so many interpretations.
@NolaCAR, that makes a lot more sense than just pulling out students at random. I wonder if each school has its own waitlist or if they are all lumped together. My D applied with a major in the School of Education.
Thanks for all the info. Finding out about acceptance in late June seems really late to me. University of MN seems to notify their wait list by early May.
@CWNWSS, my daughter is also waitlisted at University of Minnesota Twin Cities after applying by the Nov 1 priority deadline. She will know by April 15th.
While we have no idea how long the WL will remain open for 2017, here is a brief history of when it closed in the past:
2013 May 3 (basically, no one was taken off the WL)
2014 June 17
2015 June 11
2016 June 20
I saw that people were excepted early May last year. If they keep it open until June, does that mean they were getting more people off the waitlist?