| Boho:
I understand your frustration. I don't know what the right answer is. Here are the three big problems:
a) the more information a college gives, the more they are setting up their waitlistees for a cycle of hope and dissapointment. For example, finding out that Swarthmore is taking 20 people off the waitlist gives you encouragement, right? But, then a week passes and you haven't gotten a call. You've just been put thru an unnecessary cycle of disappointment. Now, multiply by 500 or 1000 disappointments. Isn't it ultimately better to not say anything? I don't know..tough call.
b) The admissions offices don't know. They are aiming at moving target for the entire month of May. One minute, the are over-enrolled. Three days later they've lost ten students as waitlist musical chairs plays out or deposited students defer to go do missionary work in the Andes for a year. If they tried to update fast enough to keep up, you would have whiplash and they would be posting information that is erroneous by the time anyone reads it.
c) It's easy to be misleading. Suppose they send out an e-mail saying that they are going to accept 20 more students. Do they add the important qualification that they are only going to top up internationals, African Americans, and mens baseball players? Or do they let all 500 to 1000 people on the waitlist falsely believe they might get a call?
Isn't the only honest thing simply to say, "we are still evaluating where we stand; we haven't officially closed out the waitlist; we don't know if we'll be taking any more or how many; we'll notify you when we have closed out the waitlist..."?
I dislike everything about this waitlist business. I think it borders on cruel and unusual punishment. IMO, colleges, including Swarthmore, should tell each waitlistee exactly how many were offered a place and the historic numbers that have been accepted off the waitlists. They don't do that because then nobody would accept a spot on the waitlist. |