I am wondering if anyone that is currently on a waitlist has heard anything back from any of the schools as to their status on the waitlist.
Usually schools don’t start pulling from the wait list until after the universal May 1 acceptance date has passed.
Remember that schools often offer places to more than they think will accept (so, if they want 4 freshmen, they might offer to 6, and then have a waitlist, too). So they will want to know that 4 of the 6 are definitely not going to come before starting to look down the waitlist, I would think.
Waitlists depend on a lot of factors, as people have pointed out, and it isn’t necessarily about the slots on the instrument. For example, let’s say the school has 6 slots for violin, they offered to 8 kids (as others point out, almost all schools with some exceptions, over accept), then there are kids below that 8 who are waitlisted, that is straightforward.
However, waitlist often depends on the teachers you indicated, too. Schools will waitlist students (and this is not speculation) who basically passed the audition, but none of the teachers they indicated either showed interest in them, or had interest but didn’t know if they had an open slot (or as in happened to my S at one school, admissions fouled up, when his first choice was not available, they didn’t immediately ping his second choice,they dragged their feet, and he ended up waitlisted on the other two choices, even though he technically had been accepted,he was waitlisted for a teacher, which is a slightly different situation). If the hold up is the teacher, and a slot opens up before May 1st (remember, students can decline before may 1st), they may get in touch before then, if the waitlist was teacher based, and in the case where a teacher wants to teach a student, but doesn’t have slots, they won’t pull from the main admission waitlist, they will offer admission to the kid the teacher wants, whether he/she was #1 on the waitlist or #5, because if the teacher doesn’t want to teach let’s say #1-4, #5 will get in.
First they look at the purse. As in all things, money is a big factor.
^^That may be true in some cases, but not all. As always, there are many factors (as musicprnt points out) and the waitlist process varies from school to school. If you are on a waitlist, the most important thing you can do for yourself is to make your strong interest clear to both the teacher and to the admissions department.
I have to disagree. When schools are down to waitlists, financial considerations take over. If you are dependent on scholarships, not “financial aid” which is often just the ability to borrow huge sums without collateral, the schools are looking at what they have left in the kitty and how much you are going to cost them.
My experience, and that of others I know, is different from your projection. Again: different schools, different processes.