Class of 2013 admissions stats

tk21769
Sun, 29 Mar 2009 07:57:51 +0000

I mean, if we’re on the waitlist, that means that the Midd people think we could handle doing the work and even thrive at the school in the even that we get off of it. Perhaps we weren’t exciting/different enough to be accepted in the first place, but that doesn’t mean that I’m just not going to investigate the possibilities of being on the waitlist.




LaM., you’re surely correct that they think you could handle the work and thrive. As for being “exciting/different enough”, well, I wonder how important that is. My guess is, you’re exciting enough.

What may have happened is that it reached a point where they looked at your particular interests and considered what they bring to the community’s table, compared to other strong applicants in this year’s pool. If they had more strong applicants than they could accept who shared those interests (publications, choir, whatever), then perhaps you were at a disadvantage compared to the only qualified soccer goalie who applied. This is why (I think) the NESCAC admissions can appear to be such a crap-shoot, compared to some other schools. They are all about small communities of people with shared interests, working in groups and teams, not (mostly) about brilliant loners solving the world’s hard problems (think Reed or Chicago, where the admit rates are higher, even though the average stats are quite high, too.)

As I understand it, the wait list can work in a couple of ways. Some schools rank the waitlistees and pick from the top of the queue. Others (most of the NESCACs, I suspect) use the waitlist to back-fill a few gaps in the community. If no violin players send a deposit and they are still short on students, they look to the waitlist. Be realistic, the odds are not great. But if you want to improve your chances you’ll probably want to update your application with any recent accomplishments or awards in your area of interest. If your intended major is an unpopular one, maybe this could work to your advantage too. Don’t be cute or a pest about it, just send one update letter telling them you recently won a school prize for your astute journalistic reporting, that you can’t wait to apply your skills to a college newspaper, and you still really really want to go to Middlebury. My two cents!