<p>It seems like a lot more students are being placed on wait lists this year, compared with years past. Do you think this is true? Also, why would that be?</p>
<p>It happened last year also. You have tapped into the thing that most annoys me about the college application process right now. Last year the reason given was that with the economic crash the colleges didn’t know what the yields would look like so to be safe they had huge wait lists. The yields turned out to be the same from previous years.</p>
<p>My daughter was waitlisted at 3 out of 10 schools last year, including the school she most wanted to attend. I called them and was very appreciative when the person I spoke with admitted there were thousands of students on the wait list. When my daughter heard that she realized her chances of being accepted were nil, so she moved on. Indeed, the school accepted about 40 students from the wait list.</p>
<p>I find it annoying. In my opinion if you are place on a wait list there should be some (reasonable) chance you will get off. There is no reason that I can think of to have a wait list that numbers into the thousands when you only will ultimately accept 40.</p>
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<p>I agree. While they probably don’t know exactly how many students they will be able to take off the waitlist at the time they offer wait list spots, it sure seems they could do better than to put thousands on a wait list that ultimately yielded only 40 invitations. My daughter accepted a spot on the waitlist from her top choice and received a phone call on May 2 or 3, if memory serves. I think her school ended up taking a couple of hundred that year, but supposedly only 4 the next. That’s crazy.</p>
<p>In these hard economic times, schools are going to cover there bases, and that includes expanding wait lists. I don’t think the fact that you and many others find it annoying has any bearing on their admissions strategies.</p>
<p>Not only the economy, but the students are applying to more schools than ever, making it more difficult to predict yield.</p>
<p>Could not agree more (posts #2 and #3). I see no benefit to it for either the students or the colleges. Think of all the calls they are getting - more info from WL students - it seems counterproductive for all involved. I work in a hs college counseling office and we will be having a meeting with a few of our closest college reps in April and this is my number 1 question that I want to ask of them.</p>
<p>^^ Let us know what they say</p>
<p>rm: let us know how that goes; should be an interesting conversation; “fly on the wall” moment…</p>
<p>Not to be cynical, but every kid who forfeits a deposit at their second choice school when they get taken off a waitlist at their first choice puts more money into the admissions department’s revenue stream. It’s got to add up to quite a bit of extra money.</p>
<p>How many kids actually have the financial resources to put in a deposit at two schools? When I was applying to college, it was kind of a pinch just paying the enrollment and the housing deposit to just one of them, you know? I can imagine that’s probably a trend for more affluent families rather than for everyone.</p>
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<p>Gardna, who do you think are the families applying to a dozen colleges in the first place? The affluent ones for whom the deposit is chump change and easily forfeited when the WL call comes.</p>
<p>The reason colleges offer that many wait llist spots is because they don’t know which of the kids they accepted is going to matriculate elsewhere. So, they keep the interesting math whiz kid, in case THAT kid is the one, or the emo girl with the purple tipped hair gets kept on the list in case too many emo girls with purple tipped hair go to Swarthmore instead…</p>
<p>I’m not saying it makes it right. My D did not choose to stay on the wait list at the one school where she was waitlisted. But, that’s the reason they do it. That and the money, obviously.</p>
<p>What is an emo girl? The only reference I have for emo is “extra man offense” … a lacrosse term.</p>
<p>emo…“My Chemical Romance” is a popular emo band…I think it means emotional…heavy eyeliner…I see it as the evolution of Goth, personally. It’s a “style” but it is also a musical taste, fwiw…read: “artistic”</p>
<p>Thanks … never would have guessed!</p>