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Health & Fitness

Moving off the college waitlist

After battling through the epic journey of the college application process, with all its emotional twists and turns, the torturous anticipation, the potential heaven of acceptance or hell of rejection, judgment day has finally arrived. You tear open the envelope and frantically scan the letter for a telling phrase. You have been “offered a spot.” So far, so good…”on the wait list.” Ugh. Welcome to admissions purgatory.

The good news…

Colleges do not place students on the wait list to soften the blow of rejection or to spread false hope. The waitlist exists as a useful tool that provides institutions with a safety net against tough-to-predict yield rates. A growing number of top-tier schools have opted to drop early decision which makes pinpointing how many accepted students will actually enroll an even more unpredictable science. Thus the percentage of students plucked off the waitlist varies greatly from year to year. For example, in the last decade Brown University’s wait list acceptance rate has fluctuated between 5 and 20%. It’s quite possible that you will luck into a good year for waitlisters.

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The bad news…

Of course, the odds are not exactly forever in your favor. In 2012, not one of the almost 600 waitlisted applicants at Stanford was offered a spot. Notre Dame’s waitlist acceptance rate was 7%, similar to Georgetown’s. Yale’s was a slightly more favorable 10%.

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Bottom line, in a good year, your chances may be half-decent. In a bad year, your odds are more on par with a participant in The Hunger Games.

What you can do…

The number one thing students can do while they’re on the wait list is communicate clearly, firmly, and respectfully to the admissions office that, if offered, they will accept a spot at their school. Admissions officers like knowing that they have students who will enroll if called upon. 

A sincere letter to the admission office and an occasional check-in from your guidance counselor will suffice.  Waitlisted students who obsessively pepper the Dean of Admission’s inbox with crazed inquiries typically do not do themselves any favors.  Remember, colleges are looking for the next productive member of their freshman class, not the next stalker.

Of equal importance to expressing your intentions is, not surprisingly, maintaining a strong academic performance. Spring grades, another teacher recommendation, a recent unique accomplishment can still sway an admissions committee.

You’ll still want to submit a non-refundable deposit at your first-choice school to which you were accepted. There are no bonus points awarded for declaring that if you do not get off of the Tufts waitlist, you’ll skip college altogether and become a street performer.

If the call off of the wait list never comes, grieve as you must, and then move on and get ready to thrive at your second-choice school. After all, your second-choice school surely has a waitlist full of people stuck in their own purgatory who can only dream of being in your shoes.

College Transitions recently compiled 2013 waitlist statistics for some of America’s most competitive colleges.  Click here to see who “got in.”

College Transitions is a team of college planning experts committed to guiding families through the college admissions process. As counselors and published higher education researchers, we aim to bring perspective (and some sanity) to college planning, and we strive to provide students with the support they need to enroll and succeed at a college that is right for them. Please visit our website—www.collegetransitions.com—to learn more.




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