| Warning: Wild assumptions ahead.
Caltech can't handle too many new frosh, which means that if they underestimated the yield, we're in trouble. My House has already reserved spots for the frosh, which could obviously be filled with upperclassmen if we get underfilled with new frosh. If the other Houses are reserving the same number of spots proportional to their size (assuming negligible dual memberships and that Avery is taking in the same number of people as it has the last four years,) that means Caltech is expecting a maximum of ~225 new frosh without going to the waitlist. I'm assuming the "ideal" class size is about 215, so I'm making the wild guess that they admitted a number such that they would expect to get [185, 225] (0.9 probability range) without going to the waitlist. I doubt they would admit so many frosh if they thought there was a larger than 5% of there being a housing shortage, though they have done this in the past, so who knows. Most years they go to the waitlist, and since this is a highly variable year, I'm guessing it is most likely that they'll take ~10 people off of the waitlist (205 from non-waitlist.) If my assumptions are about right, there is a large chance of them taking a non-zero number of people off the waitlist and around a 50% chance they'll take >=10 people off.
Trying to guess if they'll take people off the waitlist from Facebook group numbers is even worse than what I'm doing. I had never even *heard* of Facebook before I came to Caltech, and plenty of Techers I know still don't have a Facebook profile. Even if you ignore that plenty of people who have Facebook profiles don't join Facebook groups, it's a little silly to assume that nearly all admitted prefrosh will have joined the group, or that everyone who is still in the group is going to Caltech (or was admitted in the first place.)
Honestly, you should just relax and ignore everything having to do with the waitlist. There's not really anything you can do about it now (if you've already sent in extra information.) Assume you're rejected and that you're going to attend wherever else you may have planned. |