<p>Hey all! There may be a thread for this already, excuse me if there is. Anybody know a lot about waitlists? How they work, and the likely hood of being pull off of one and accepted?? Any info would be fantastic!</p>
<p>A wait list is sort of the purgatory of college admissions. When you end up on a wait list, you’re in the twilight zone; you’re not in but you’re not out. You’re sort of on-call.</p>
<p>Wait lists are a kind of hedge against the unpredictability of accepted students enrolling at a college. From many years of experience, colleges know rather precisely what percentage of the total number of students offered admission will enroll. That percentage is called yield.</p>
<p>For example, if a college is looking to admit a freshman class of 1,000 students, they may offer 2,000 students admission. That’s because they know their yield is almost always around 50 percent. If their yield were historically 25 percent, they would offer 4,000 students admission, and so forth.</p>
<p>Sometimes, however, the yield flies in the face of history. When more than the expected number of students enroll (exceeding historical yield), temporary housing has to be acquired and there is a strain on college resources. When fewer than expected students enroll, colleges go to their wait lists and offer admission to those who are “in waiting.” This way, the college makes certain that the incoming freshman class is the right size.</p>
<p>The wait list can serve other purposes. At super-selective schools, where there are many more qualified applicants than can be accommodated, applicants are wait listed as a consolation. Instead of being turned down for admission, they are put on the wait list, the implication being, “We wish we could have admitted you, but there wasn’t room.” Diplomacy lives.</p>
<p>The likelihood of being admitted from the wait list is small. Some schools wait list 500-600 applicants. Your only chance is to undertake a heavy-duty marketing effort with the admissions office. Even then, your chances are small.</p>
<p>My personal opinion about being wait listed is to accept the fact that you “almost” made it and then get on with the business of enrolling in another quality school. If you get the call from the list, then you have another opportunity to enroll at what might be the right school for you.</p>
<p>It’s different for some very selective theater programs, which accept exactly as many as they expect to enroll, with a short waitlist that can be arranged by type and certainly by gender. You’ve really got to look at it on a school-by-school basis.</p>
<p>Does anyone have any info or experience to share about the Rutgers wait list? Are many placed there, are the chances of getting a spot off the waitlist slim, what is their yield, should waitlisted students “undertake a heavy-duty marketing effort with admissions” as kylerkays suggests, and if they do that, does that ever work? I know they are super competitive so I’m sure their yield % is pretty high. In their admissions decision email it states that waitlisters could find out as late as June 30th (!!!). That feels like such an eternity from now…</p>