<p>Anyone else really suprised that they didn't get in?</p>
<p>Haha, I expected to be rejected, after being deferred EA. Looks like another two or three months of waiting ahead.</p>
<p>I expected to be rejected back in EA. I was deferred, which actually lent me quite a bit of hope. I'm one of those "risky" students, with a fatal flaw or two in my application. Come RD, I actually thought I stood a perfectly good chance of getting in. After all, if I wasn't knocked out point blank in the first round... but alas.</p>
<p>The waiting never ends. The most annoying thing is that because I go to a boarding school, I set my mailing address to my school's address, not my home address. Well, I'm on my break right now, so I won't be able to see half my acceptance/rejection letters for two weeks!</p>
<p>i was expecting, at alternating times, rejection or acceptance. waitlist... i guess i didn't even think about it? but it looks like that's pretty much a rejection. sooo disappointing!</p>
<p>i was expecting, at alternating times, rejection or acceptance. waitlist... i guess i didn't even think about it? but it looks like that's pretty much a rejection. sooo disappointing!</p>
<p>I had thought waitlists were synonymous with rejections up until last year. One of my best friends was waitlisted to Harvard and later got in. It's only over now if you believe it is.</p>
<p>i guess that's encouraging! i wasn't super disappointed when i first saw the letter, but then when my parents heard the decision they were like "awwwwwww you poor baby!" and then... i realized it would be tough to get accepted. </p>
<p>also, re-reading that one line "the Committee has decided not to offer you admission at this time" was a bit of a heartbreaker. </p>
<p>oh well! i'll keep trying :)</p>
<p>^ I saw that line and immediately thought it was a rejection. I almost didn't read on, so the waitlist part actually made me feel a little better. Lol.</p>
<p>um... i thought i would get in... hmm.... this is sucky...</p>
<p>I really don't understand... my best essays were for UChicago... this is heartbreaking... I thought I'd get in... I didn't even apply for Financial Aid! (I'm an international)</p>
<p>If my best essays were for them... and I got rejected, then... oh, myyy, I'm so sad...</p>
<p>My best friend got waitlisted at Uchicago- so basically i am asking this for her- as an international who applied for 50% aid- will it make a lot of difference if she tells them that she's won't apply for aid now.
Also how exactly does an unranked waiting list work.</p>
<p>If she accepts a place in the waiting list- does it mean that she is committed to go to Uchicago and cannot accept admission at another college?</p>
<p>Because she's an international, not applying for financial aid makes a big, big difference.</p>
<p>An unranked waiting list means that the college picks and chooses whom to take off of it based on its own needs, as it sees what is happening with its accepted student pool. Generally, it will try to maintain whatever mix of qualities it was trying to achieve in the first place. Example: the daughter of someone I know was accepted to Harvard off the waitlist before the end of April last year. She was not the world's strongest academic candidate (and was planning to go to a not-so-high-ranked LAC), but she was a solid player in her sport. Translation: some of the women Harvard recruited for that sport decided to go elsewhere, so Harvard went to the waitlist for the next best athlete in that sport. If the oboists had gone to Yale, Harvard would have looked for an oboist on the waitlist.</p>
<p>Accepting a place on the waitlist does NOT mean you are committed to go there if accepted, and absolutely does NOT mean you cannot accept admission at another college. You absolutely, positively SHOULD accept admission at another college (and the waitlist letter tells you that). What happens if you are accepted off the waitlist and decide to go to Chicago rather than Brand X U, you lose your $X00 deposit at BXU. </p>
<p>If you are lucky enough to be in a position to maybe get taken off the waitlist, however, it will sometimes be the case that the college will ask you (usually indirectly, through a GC) for a commitment that if you are accepted you will come. (This is true lots of places, I don't know whether Chicago does it. I don't think Chicago has taken anyone from the waitlist in several years, so who know what they do?) But that won't happen until they start accepting people, which would be late April at the earliest, and more probably mid-May.</p>
<p>Realistically, don't pin too many hopes on the waitlist. There's a good chance that Chicago will take a few people from it this year, because (a) it accepted 200 fewer students than the last few years, and (b) all things being equal, the death of EA/ED and Harvard and Princeton would be expected to lower Chicago's yield a smidgen (although other things might raise it). If you do the math, that translates into a possibility that 50-100 kids get taken off the waitlist. Still, that's fewer than 10% of the people waitlisted (although many of them won't bother accepting a place on the waitlist), and it could vanish entirely if yield ticks up a percentage point rather than down.</p>
<p>Psychologically, what you should be doing is getting enthusiastic about somewhere you know you can enroll rather than a place where you only hold a lottery ticket. The most important determinant in your educational future is YOU, not the college you attend, and all of you have been or will be accepted at colleges that have great faculty, great students, great traditions, etc. -- places that are lots of other people's dream schools, and could (should) be yours, too. You know that.</p>
<p>JHS: In your opinion, does this hold for a waitlist person where the person in their school with identical stats, but with different EC's turns down an offer of admission? Same gender, same no FA situation, same identical curriculum? Does that give the wailisted student a "better" chance of being accepted off of a waitlist? Does it depend on the school?</p>
<p>I have no real idea -- I've never plumbed the mysteries of waitlists. Neither of my kids accepted a place on any of their waitlists.</p>
<p>If you want a semi-educated guess, I think the answer would be a strong it depends. As per my illustration above, the school may have nothing to do with anything. I think that would be the usual case. However, if your school for some reason has a strong relationship with a particular college, the school relationship may be helpful in getting someone off the waitlist. I've definitely seen that happen -- but it takes a full-court-press on the school's part. Sometimes what another student from that school is doing may be part of the equation.</p>
<p>But, despite folklore, I think school-to-school comparisons are relatively unimportant to admissions, or less important than other things that distinguish students. No school has a quota that has to be filled. And, except for 5 or 6 colleges, the yield on RD decisions at even very selective colleges is in the 30-40% range. So it takes more than one student turning a school down to open up a place for a waitlister.</p>
<p>JHS: thank you for your response..the most significant thing I took away from it was the last line.............it takes more than one student turning a school down to open up a place for a waitlister. Great point....forgot about the 30% issue......</p>
<p>anyone know what this "waitlist online reply form" is?</p>
<p>Whether you want to be on the waitlist or not.</p>
<p>log into your chicago account, where it tells u to go check ur decision letter. </p>
<p>there is a bunch of text in a light yellow box. one of those has a link to the form which asks you if you wish to stay on the list.</p>
<p>JHS,
Thank you for the waitlist analysis. It will be a tricky thing for these kids to get excited about the schools they were accepted to, while at the same time continuing to court Chicago.</p>