<p>You have been waitlisted. You have virutally no chance of coming here, but we thought you'd rather say "I was waitlisted at..." than "I was denied at...", because we know that everyone wants to come here to this small LAC in the middle of no where. You should also feel better knowing that after we filled our class plus some extras we waitlisted virtually everyone who took the SAT and mailed in their money.</p>
<p>Additionally, you should understand that the one kid who we accepted from your competitive high school was a dumb, underachieving party-hearty football jock. We have to guard our reputation after all.</p>
<p>Go ahead and throw out that little postcard thingy if it makes you feel better. We don't frankly care either way. Thanks for the $60 you spent applying here.</p>
<p>I have a sort of related question. What is the policy reason for admitting someone starting in the Spring of what would be their "freshman year?" What an awful option.</p>
<p>A neighbor's D was admitted to USC (So. Cal.) this way. She ended up at UT Austin and is happy as a clam down there, and never gave the spring admit at USC a second thought.</p>
<p>Could a big private like USC have such a big drop out rate after one semester that it plans to fill the gaps this way?</p>
<p>Sometimes, it's more a matter of available housing. Lots of juniors go abroad in the spring term, thus freeing up space for incoming freshmen. Dartmouth made no bone about its extra quarter which students are required to spend elsewhere being used to deal with its housing shortage.</p>
<p>I think Berkeley uses the spring admits as an unofficial wait list. From what I understand from a parent whose son was admitted this month for the spring semester, Cal pulls a lot of kids off the spring "extension" list for fall.</p>
<p>Because waitlists are voluntarily I do not see how they can be construed to be a dishonest policy. Putting hundreds on when the college is expecting to fill a handfill of slots seems silly to me and can only make the adcom's task harder. But it is hardly dishonest.</p>
<p>I think Spring admits are a good tool. Many students offered them are insulted - taking it as an insincere or nearly-bogus admit. But I look at them this way: the school is saying we like you; we want you; you're in; but we just don't have room for you right now. But we know we will have room later after the first semester is over. </p>
<p>Every year I tell to kids who get them (mostly from Berkeley), that if they really want to go to Berkeley they should grab the Spring admit. They are not going to stamp "Spring Admit" on the diploma when you graduate, and after a semester or two no one will remember or care that they were admitted in the Spring.</p>
<p>On waitlists: you don't have to accept a spot on the list. If you do, don't count on it, make your plans as if it wasn't going to happen, and who knows, you might get surprised!</p>
<p>Waitlists are a pain in the ass. However, I got into my school of choice from a waitlist. However, I was a student-athlete who had the test scores but not quite the grades at a small Division I institution. I was pretty angry when I got the letter, but I ended up getting that call. You never know. On the other hand, I feel my school was pretty fair about the way they went about telling people about the waitlist. They admitted that the odds were slim, and backed that up with statistics. They encouraged students to accept other schools' offers.</p>
<p>A lot of these posts seem to echo what my mom said last year when I was waitlisted at the dream school: why don't you go somewhere that really wants you, you can't get excited about your second choices with this hanging over your head, etc. She was so angry (I think part of it is that my older brother was waitlisted at his first choice two years before too, and he didn't get in. I think she saw an inevitable rejection in my future). I was thrilled (well, not quite thrilled, but at least thankful) that I'd been given another chance. There are some definite negatives to the waitlist like still being uncertain when everyone else at school has decided and is moving on to choosing dorms and classes, and the self esteem question (when I get there, will everyone else be a lot smarter than I am?), but from the vantage point of having completed my first semester at said dream school and having made the dean's list (so much for feeling stupider than everyone else), I have to say that the opportunity to study at your dream school will always outweigh the negatives of the waitlist. Plus, once you're there, no one even notices that scarlet W you think you're wearing.</p>