<p>MIT basically tells you that a waitlisting is for students who are strong enough to be accepted, but aren't, simply due to room. Does the same implication apply for Harvard, and how many students are on, and ultimately accepted, from the waitlist anyway?</p>
<p>There are probably more than twice as many students that are strong enough than can be accepted. If you get waitlisted you will be among perhaps 1000 other people. Best you can do is send back the reply and have good end of year grades; usually 10-20 people get to come off the waitlist.</p>
<p>It really changes every year... some year nobody gets in off the waitlist; other years 100 people do. Depends how much the yield is this year.</p>
<p>I think 50 might be a good guess at this early point.</p>
<p>Also, Harvard does not rank the students on the waitlist. Rather they do their best to keep the "flavor" of the class they've built by replacing students who decline admission with students who are similar. For ex., if a student from Virginia who plays the tuba and works for an NGO declines admission, they'll try to replace him/her with another student from VA who plays the tuba and works for an NGO... obviously this is an over-specific example, but you get the point..</p>