Waiting to Exhale: The Waitlist and the College Numbers Game
The wait is over. Except if you’re on the waitlist. Then, the wait is just beginning.
But waiting doesn’t mean doing nothing. Waiting can be active, creative, even exciting. There are things you can do to enhance your chances.
Those things and more will be on the agenda in our next Live with Colledge session on Thursday, May 6 at 6 p.m. PST. Our guest will be Robert McCullough, Dean of Undergraduate Admission for Case Western, a seasoned college admissions professional with a wealth of wait list knowledge. Fun fact: Robert’s alma mater Case Western is one of the hardest-to-get-off waitlists in the nation. Click HERE to sign up.
Every year, and especially this year, college admissions offices play a game I call “Too Many/Too Few.” Colleges can’t accept too many students – housing constraints, course sizes, and budgetary decisions limit schools to a maximum number of first-year students. And no college wants to accept too few students – tuition dollars are too important to pass up. As a result, they almost always admit fewer students with their initial round of acceptances, undershooting their admit targets, knowing that they’re going to end up with Too Few students.
Here’s where the waitlist comes in. In order to ensure that enough students say yes to fill their freshmen classes, the chances of getting off a waitlist look like this:
- On average, US colleges admit about 11 percent of all students who accept placement on a waitlist.
- About 71 percent of colleges admit less than 10 percent of their waitlisted students.
- Approximately 57 percent of universities admit less than 5 percent of students on their waitlists.
But these general numbers obscure how unpredictable the dynamic can be. This year may look very different given the circumstances.
You won’t want to miss this one. Click HERE to sign up. And while you’re waiting, you can listen to Robert’s waitlist playlist. For more information on how to get beyond the waitlist zone or to set up a free phone consultation to discuss how we work with students on the college admissions process, click HERE.