<p>We had to endure the “one or more kids from our very same prep school with lower class rank, lower test scores, and inferior EC’s were accepted and I was not” agony.</p>
<p>Life is unfair.</p>
<p>“I think the financial crisis sent many of the “top 20” institutions chasing after the full pay kids. It will be intereting to see if this impacts average SAT’s and , ultimately, rankings. If they all do it, the relative impact is nil.”</p>
<p>I don’t know about this BigG, we’re full pay and WL at 3 schools (rejected from 2, accepted at 2 safeties, one which gave him merit money), so the fact that we’ll be paying the full ride didn’t help us at any of the expensive private schools he applied to.</p>
<p>ctmom2boys, PC takes a fair number of students off the waitlist. My friends son was successful two years ago – he kept in contact, sent end of year grades, wrote short essay about why he was great fit for PC. He’s now a sophmore and loves it there. So, if it truly is your sons first choice – he should go for it!! Good Luck!!</p>
<p>ctmom2boys,</p>
<p>Valid point(s)</p>
<p>Acme:</p>
<p>Architecture waitlists are a bit different from other majors, I think. Almost all of the top-ranked undergrad architecture programs are very, very small (125 students and under), and highly competitive. The number of kids any architecture program will wind up taking off the waitlist will therefore probably be in the low single digits. I would have your son call the architecture admissions people at the college involved to find out his chances…how many students on this year’s waitlist, how many came off the waitlist last year, etc. </p>
<p>If he decides to stay on the waitlist, then the best supplemental material for “portfolio-required” schools I would think would be specifically architecture-related, i.e. additions to the portfolio, jobs or projects in architecture or design and specific honors.</p>
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<p>No, it doesn’t. My DD applied RA to an OOS public university which is required by law to accept a high percentage of in state students. Getting in from OOS is very competitive. Her stats are far higher than the stats of the average accepted in state student. In fact, her stats were high period.</p>
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<p>Oldfort, that’s absolutely true. Once the kids get to school, no one knows how anyone got in, nor do they care. I do know that when my daughter went through rush, she was highly recruited because of her academics. No one asked if she had been wait listed!</p>
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<p>This is a great point. I hear the sentiment a lot that kids hesitate to go on a wait list for a favorite school because they want to go where they were “wanted.” The admissions department will not be continuing to make a student feel wanted after they begin classes. The university at large will treat the students exactly the same. </p>
<p>Obviously, the later one gets off the wait list, the less desirable will be their housing, and the FA issue has already been addressed. My DD did not qualify for FA anyway, so not an issue for us. She came off the waitlist early enough to get in the housing lottery just the same as anyone accepted EA.</p>
<p>My DD LOVED her first choice school. The school didn’t change just because she didn’t get in during round one. She is doing fantastic, certainly not performing as a “bottom of the heap” student. Just our experience.</p>
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I’ve heard of kids getting off the waitlist as late as freshman orientation week. They may not close the waitlist till the first day of school - or later!</p>
<p>Being WL definitely doesn’t mean you are ‘inferior’. Many colleges, especially more selective private ones, build a class. They aim for a certain mix of students. This helps some students and can hurt others.</p>
<p>In my daughter’s case, she applied EA and was deferred. She re-took her SAT’s and they went up significantly, she visited, she went to a local admissions presentation. When she was waitlisted for regular, she updated her file and her GC did as well. BTW - her GC was ‘shocked’.<br>
IMO - what she had against her was being female, coming from PA (this college is very popular here for some reason) and her need for FA. She emailed her admissions counselor and even called him. He was very very nice. (maybe too nice)
After graduation she sent her final transcripts. In the last email to her her AdCom encouraged her to apply as a transfer after her freshman year.</p>
<p>I did tell her not to get her hopes up since she needed FA. even if she was accepted she may not have been able to attend and she understood that. (although being #4 is somewhat spoiled - lol)</p>
<p>I have <em>heard</em> that some schools will not send a rejection letter to waitlisted kids - that was the kid can say they were not <em>rejected</em>. I dunno, the letter would have been better.</p>
<p>I have also <em>heard</em> that some colleges will place all qualified, rejected candidates on the waitlist and it can run into the hundreds even if the college knows they have only accepted 3 kids a year for the last 10 years.</p>
<p>My d’s WL school had brought 0 kids off the WL the two years before. I know they took a couple of CC kids off last year when she was on but the number was still low.</p>
<p>I am fairly certain the fact that her EFC was relatively low weighed into their decision. But even now, 9 mos later, it is nice to read that she was not an inferior applicant 
Of course I never thought she was.</p>
<p>^^^^^^As far as being notified by the WL school of their final decisions, it does seem rather crummy to not notify students of their final status. My DD was also wait listed to one other school. She received a letter stating that they were not going to be able to take ANY students off the wait list that year, and graciously thanked her for applying. In addition, this school has an admissions blog where the dean addressed the wait list situation several times. I actually learned that there would be no students accepted off the wait list by reading the blog. The letter came in the mail a couple of days later.</p>
<p>I wonder if other colleges have a blog of this kind where you can kind of get an idea about when and if colleges will be going to the wait list and how many they expect to take.</p>
<p>S was offered waitlist to 4 schools last year (he applied to a lot of schools). He decided to accept waitlist status for 3 of those schools, to see what would happen. oldfort, your D’s GC did a lot more than S’s GC. She said that she didn’t make calls, and told S to send waitlist places a letter plus any additional information. He never did any of this. One of the schools came through, but he didn’t go there. The other schools never sent a final rejection letter to let him know they weren’t taking him off their waitlists. </p>
<p>Maybe he would have sent a letter plus additional information if one of the waitlist schools had been his top choice. But he was accepted EA to his top choice school. (He isn’t there, because the FA wasn’t enough.)</p>
<p>CC Parents, I thank all of you. Many of you have raised different thoughts for me and DS, including the financial issue should he get in off the WL.</p>
<p>acme: here’s what you typed by accident
[College</a> Confidential - Smilies](<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/misc.php?do=showsmilies]College”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/misc.php?do=showsmilies)</p>
<p>I think for the most part very few students move off waitlists. In our family, both my daughters did contact the waitlist schools to indicate yes they wanted to stay on the waitlist but realistically moved on to embrace their other choices, in both cases -those came with nice merit money. In grad school however my older daughter did email the dept head with more recent work(painting MFA) and did visit… she was basically told that she had an acceptance in hand for the following year - it was a space issue… and then moved off the waitlist within a month.</p>