Breakdown of decisions

hoedown
Fri, 07 Apr 2006 13:46:11 +0000

Well, she was a little off if she truly said only a “small percentage” are admitted/rejected. U-M is admitting a smaller number this year than last year, and given the big app pool, that means the percentage of students getting an admit is lower than usual. But a small percentage? No.

It’s true that traditionally, U-M has a pretty large waitlist. For some of those waitlisted people, one could argue it would be more realistic for them to be denied (in terms of their likelihood of eventual admittance). But not for all–some of those students are just as strong as admitted people;there just wasn’t room. Some of those people could be admitted off the waitlist if yield is lower than expected, or if U-M decides to change its freshmen targets late in the game (this has happened before, but I think the chances of this happening this year are darn close to zero).

In recent years, U-M hasn’t gone to the waitlist because yield exceeded all expectations.