<p>I feel like April 1st meant nothing. Every school seems to love to wait list! My friend applied to 7 schools and was waitlisted at 5. Does anyone else feel like they seemed to put everyone on the Wait List? What are the typical chances for people on the wait lists anyways?</p>
<p>yea i'm on 5 waitlists too. it's rediculous. i'm not really sure what to do</p>
<p>im on six as of five minutes ago... i applied to 9 schools..... i got into my safeties and thats pretty much it..... awesome</p>
<p>Lots of schools saw a big jump in admissions this year. Kids are also applying to a lot more colleges (thank you, Common App!). What this all leads to is that I'm sure these schools are preparing for some deviation from their normal yield, so they're trying to keep the waitlist up. I might be making this all up, though.</p>
<p>waitlists at many schools these days are rejections under a different name. They're not doing it to spare you any hurt, BTW, it's to help the school get apps for next year. They know a lot of inexperienced counselors, parents, and students will treat a waitlist as almost the same as an acceptance. Once it was that way; a school would put 100 or so kids right on the fence on a waitlist and they really were just waiting for a seat to open up. Some schools still do this. </p>
<p>But there's no law saying how many kids you can "waitlist", so less scrupulous schools began using this to their advantage and now a lot of them have joined the bandwagon. The schools are using the "waitlist" to avoid discouraging next years applicants. They know a lot of kids next year will be thinking "I've got stats just like Joe, and he got into X -- well, waitlisted -- but if he can get in so can I". On the other hand if the school rejected Joe, the kids will be thinking "I'm no better than Joe and he didn't make it -- no sense wasting an app".</p>
<p>Reading these boards it seems like some schools (eg. WUSTL) have "waitlisted" almost everyone who didn't get in.</p>
<p>I think heybucs has it right. Many schools have seen very large increases in apps. Everyone suspects this is many because students are applying to larger number of schools. That means the yield will be dropping at many schools. Waitlists are difficult for the schools also. By the time they do make offers, the yield off the waitlists can be very low.</p>
<p>it isn't just the ease of the common app. Most of the intelligent kids have figured out the randomness of the system and realize that they need to apply to ten or more schools or really roll the dice and possibly get lost in the shuffle. The schools have created this mess and it is only going to get worse.</p>
<p>I agree with heybucs and edad. There definitely seems to be a large jump in the number of people put on waitlists this year in conjunction with a decline in admissions. I read somewhere, I think it was UPenn, that they purposely took fewer kids in RD to avoid overmatriculation and will use the waitlist more heavily if necessary. And I think there is an obvious correlation with the number of schools so many people are applying to - so the schools are playing it safe and will see what happens come May 1. I suspect (with no real basis for this except logic and education guessing) that there may be more movement than usual from the waitlists at certain schools since not everyone can attend all the schools they applied to.</p>
<p>I got on 3 waitlists, rejected three places, and into 4. At my school, everyone who applied somewhere with a low acceptance rate and had competitive stats is on several waitlists. Sadly, this just prolongs everything. I wish Duke, my number one, would tell me if I have a chance on the waitlist since I feel like I do, but when so many people are waitlisted... I say the common app has to go. It makes it way too easy. Writing a Why_____? is much harder if you don't really know much about the school. I don't think it's much of an accident I got in or waitlisted at every single school I visited, but rejected at those I didn't. While I know many of these schools don't look at interest, I think it can still come through the application. I think the waitlists will be really interesting to watch this year with some schools scoring big in regular, while others are forced to pull lots from the waitlists. The number who actually put their name on will shrink them somewhat.</p>
<p>I applied to ten schools, got accepted to four, rejected by one (and I'm not too disappointed because I didn't expect to get in there anyway), and waitlisted by four. I'm still waiting for the decision from my top choice school and I'm feeling a bit desperate over it. </p>
<p>I know that being waitlisted doesn't mean I'm not qualified, but I feel as though I should have been able to get into at least one of them outright, possibly because my guidance counselor felt that same way (and was quite shocked to learn that I was waitlisted there). At the same time, it feels as though I've overshot myself and that I didn't take demographics and financial aid into as much account as I should have. It's rather depressing to have to tell everyone that I got waitlisted and then overhear someone say later on, "I thought she was smarter than that". </p>
<p>I suppose it boggles my mind a little bit, in one sense, because a classmate of mine with a much lower GPA, SAT scores, ECs, etc. was accepted to one of the schools that waitlisted me, and she's roughly the same demographically. I don't want to sound embittered and try to belittle her acceptance, because I am happy for her, but I can't help but wonder why. </p>
<p>I'm not sure what I'm going to do because I can't afford to put in an enrollment deposit somewhere and then change my mind later on because of waitlists. At the same time, I'll kick myself if I don't stay on those waitlists because I'll never know if I could have gotten in to them. Three of the four schools in question are in my top five. Is it worth it to wait it out until "sometime between late April and early JULY" (to quote a letter), or should I just try to reconcile myself to one of the four I was accepted to (mostly safety schools)? </p>
<p>Also - there was an interesting article in the NY Times recently called "To All the Girls I've Rejected". As I'm new to this forum I'm not sure if it's been brought up already but if you can manage it, it's worth a read. If nothing else, it might make you (if you're female) feel a little better about being waitlisted or even rejected.</p>
<p>Duke overenrolled last year, and last year they promised to purposely admit less people RD to take some more people off the waitlist this year. last year i believe only around 10 people got off the Duke waitlist.</p>
<p>I guess I'm the exception. I haven't been waitlisted anywhere!</p>
<p>dwerbowy - what duke did is exactly what i was referring to in my earlier post. i get the feeling that many schools used that strategy this year. i know brown for example took less and since there are many overlap schools (for example kids applying to multiple ivies + schools like stanford and duke etc.) it stands to reason that there should be openings this year.</p>
<p>But schools claim to not rank the waitlist, so how do they select when there are openings: the NH violinist who's the first in her family to go to college and wants to study quantum physics and run track decides to go someplace else so they look for another NH violinist blah blah blah to fill the slot? then what happens to the delicate balance of the class they've assembled?</p>
<p>"I'm not sure what I'm going to do because I can't afford to put in an enrollment deposit somewhere and then change my mind later on because of waitlists."</p>
<p>I am in the same situation so I figured that if the waitlist school accepts me and offers me roughly the same financial package, I would definitely accept because my waitlist school is definitely better (whole package) than the school that I am enrolling at even if it meant losing my deposit. However, if they can't give me enough money I will just go to the one I enrolled at, which is still pretty good.</p>
<p>^^^I've always wondered how they take people off the waitlist if they say "unranked". Does that mean it is like a lottery?</p>