I was looking at the “% accepted off waitlist” discussion and I was shocked that at most schools less than 5-10% of students get off the waitlist. What is the point of waitlisting 1000 kids if they only accept like 23? I think that gives people a lot of false hope. I’m a junior, and when I apply to colleges next year should I figure that being waitlisted basically equals being rejected? Does anybody else find this practice misleading?
<p>Well being on the waitlist means that you qualify for the school but that other students are "more qualified" than you are. If I were you, I'd take being on the waitlist as being rejected so that if you do get in you'd be ecstatic and if you dont it wouldnt hurt so much.</p>
<p>tired_student is right, waitlist=severe rejection</p>
<p>It is really misleading. The colleges talk about how misleading it is, and the mental anguish it can cause to the people waitlisted. </p>
<p>There are three reasons for waitlisting. </p>
<p>1) The applicant is denied, but the person is a legacy, or the alumni interviewer liked them, or the school doesn't want to offend the high school guidance counselor. </p>
<p>2) The applicant is very close to being accepted, and the adcom doesn't want to make the applicant feel any worse than necessary. Waitlisting is a kind of consolation prize.</p>
<p>3) The college doesn't know what yield they are going to get, and so they have a waitlist of people to fill out the class if necessary. They have nothing to lose by doing this.</p>
<p>I still don't understand what makes somebody "qualified" or "almost qualified." At my school, several seniors applied to the same school. They had the same test scores, but one had a 4.0 and the other had a 3.8. The 4.0 had a harder schedule and much better EC's. Neither were URMs. The 4.0 was rejected and the 3.8 was accepted from Northwestern. It seems completely random!</p>
<p>There is luck involved. There is a lot being written about the lottery or crap shoot nature of applying to colleges. For every accepted applicant at HYPSM type schools, there are four or five denied applicants who are practically the same person. It is said that if a HYPSM school completed threw out everyone they accepted and started over again, the second set of acceptances would be statistically identical to the first set. Don't take it too personally, it is a lottery to a large degree. Everyone agrees that the vast majority of the applicants denied are perfectly capable of doing the work if they had been accepted.</p>
<p>The difference between accepted or denied might be legacy, minority, geographic location, stated major, the essay, minor change in extracurriculars, or whether of not the person plays the trumpet or the violin, or ...</p>