Hi! I was just waitlisted and the letter says that if I get accepted/denied will come out in may. I was curious if there is a possibility they would take students off the waitlist earlier like in March or if students always have to wait until may. I really like the school but I’m not really ok with waiting that long to choose a college
Thanks!
@collegeperspn – “May” is not meant to torture you, or to make you wait unnecessarily. Question – what is your decision deadline from the schools where you have been accepted? I’m betting most, if not all of them, are May 1st. That’s why you won’t hear about the wait list until May.
They don’t pull off the wait list one-for-one as people don’t accept their offer of admission, because they estimate a certain yield when they offer admission, because they know a certain percent won’t come. Unfortunately, they won’t know for sure how many WILL come until the May 1st deadline has passed, so they don’t know how many, if any spots they have for wait listed candidates until the deadline has passed for admitted students to accept. Remember, a lot of kids don’t make decisions until the last minute, and plenty of kids never even tell schools where they are not accepting offers of admission that they aren’t coming. Schools just assume this once May 1st rolls around if they don’t receive a deposit. Unfortunately, nobody other than those on the wait list are sensitive to the position this puts you in, and there is nothing you can do about it.
Lots of people are not okay with waiting until after May 1st to know where they are going. Those with good options are therefore not really candidates to go to a school off the wait list. Unfortunately for you, there are enough people who would happily give up a deposit at a second choice to happily accept an offer of admission whenever it comes, that the admissions office does not have to move up its timetable to accommodate people like you. It is what it is.
You definitely have to put a deposit down somewhere else. If you don’t want to wait until May, decline the offer of a place on the wait list. Otherwise, accept the spot, assume you are not going wherever you have been wait listed, and then make a final decision when and if you are accepted off the wait list in May, or, at some places, even June or July.
Good luck!!!
I believe accepted students have until May 1 to secure their spots. Unless a bunch of students decline their offers prior to May 1, I don’t see them letting waitlist students on before then.
I’m also a little worried about waiting until may to choose a college and how that would effect the ability to pick a roommate. If you get in that late do you pretty much have to get a random roommate and take whatever dorm is leftover?
@collegeperspn, I don’t think getting in that late affects housing as much. My daughter was in the process last year, and in the housing application, they make you pick 4 life learning communities. Univ of SC tries to group students with the field/major that they are in. So if you’re in business, you’ll most likely be put in the business dorm. There’s the capstone scholar dorm, honors dorm, engineers were put in bates last year (and that’s the dorm you want to avoid), boys were put in McBryde dorm, there’s the women’s quad (3 dorms) and my daughter was put in the “Women for Science” community in one of the women’s quad dorm. So, it’s not like a free for all grab, but they instead try to put you with roommates that are in a similar major to you. My daughter’s roommate and suite mate all have science field majors and they have ended up in similar or even the same classes so far this year.
@collegeperspn – I beg you, if you don’t listen to anything else anyone else tells you, please listen to this – DO NOT WAIT UNTIL MAY to choose a college. If they did not say this in your wait list letter, they should have – you need to send a deposit by May 1st to a school that has accepted you, and assume that is the school you will be attending in the fall.
If you happen to get in off the wait list somewhere you would really rather go, you deal with it at that time, with the realization that you will be losing a deposit (and may be a housing deposit as well) at the school whose offer of admission you accepted, and will possibly be at some disadvantage at the wait list school because you will be coming in a little after most of the class.
Some schools don’t assign housing until later in the cycle while others do it on a rolling basis starting in the fall when they start accepting students. Accept that getting in off a wait list is less than ideal, and either go with the flow or not. But you probably don’t want to make a four year decision based on a less than ideal situation for the first year, particularly if it’s a school you really had your heart set on!
On the other hand, the best reason not to go to a school off the wait list is not housing, or being annoyed over being unsettled for a few extra weeks (or months!), but rather it’s that you were a “first choice” at other schools, while the wait list school only agreed to accept you after more of their admitted kids turned them down than they planned for, and they are using you to fill out a class.
Agree. You have to go with Plan B. If Plan A (USC) pans out, then all you lose is a deposit.
Good advice here. You need to assume USC is gone unfortunately and move on with that mindset.
According to collegedata.com, not too many get off the list.