A few ago we asked the Class of 2028 to take our 2023-2024 Decisions survey and let us know how they fared. We have been working with @BankofMOMandDAD who did amazing work to better visualize the responses and highlight some trends. Check out the graphs below!
*For Size @BankofMOMandDAD grouped the colleges whose total undergraduate enrollment (using 2021-22 IPEDS data) is Small <5000, Medium 5000 to 20000, Large > 20000.
Thanks, @BankofMOMandDAD for the amazing work! We really appreciate having such great community contributors! 
Any thoughts ? students were more waitlisted this year compared to last year ? It feels like 2024 was waitlist year .
No it feels the same as every year. Each year parents of highly accomplished unhooked kids see their kids waitlisted at many of their schools and think it’s a “waitlist year”. But no, it doesn’t seem to be any different.
Happy to contribute to this amazing collobarative community.
As they say, a picture 
is worth a thousand words!
This is my first year going through this process with oldest child. Has this survey been done before? You say this feels the same as prior years. What are you using as a comparison? I don’t want to fall into the trap that “our year was special “, but do you have any more information that compares numbers across multiple years? Thanks.
I think a blanket statement that its the same or worse than previous years isn’t useful. Each institution is different. I can say from statistics at the various UC’s in California - waitlists and admissions off of waitlists have increased. Thoughts are that the UC’s are initially admitting less as they try to cope with the omission of standardized testing and are using Waitlists in a larger percentage than previously in order to fulfill their yield. Some UC’s admitted over 50% that were on the waitlist last year. In 2021 - my daughter was accepted to ALL UC’s except Berkely and this year - my son with the same GPA and MORE EC’s, leadership and volunteering, sports captain 3 years - National Awards - was waitlisted at most.
A. The CDS published by schools that show how many they waitlist each year and how many they admit off the waitlist. With the exception of the pandemic years (2020 and 2021) when lots of kids got off of multiple waitlists, the trend has been similar over the past few years on a per college basis.
B. The data for the current year won’t be published until year end, but based on what people are posting on these forums and the experience of current year applicants I know in person, I don’t see a significant change.
2020 and 2021 should not be used for guidance. They were exceptional years with very large WL movements.
I’m referencing Waitlist from 2023. It was the largest movement off the Waitlist for all UC’s.
Here is once example - UCSB Waitlist stats 2021-2023 courtesy of Gumbymom:
UCSB Waitlist 2023 (CDS)
| Number of qualified applicants offered a place on waiting list: | 15689 |
|---|---|
| Number accepting a place on the waitlist | 9670 |
| Number of waitlisted students admitted | 5493 |
2023: NO DATA FOR APPEALS
2022 Waitlist stats from the CDS:
Number of applicants waitlisted: 16340
Number of applicants accepting the waitlist: 10163
Number of applicants admitted: 2793
2021 Waitlist stats:
Number of applicants waitlisted: 14076
Number of applicants accepting the waitlist: 9762
Number of applicants admitted: 2093
Thanks. I’ve seen those CDS data as well. The last few years of COVID uncertainty, test-optional pathways, increasing use of Common App, and then the impact of FAFSA have made it difficult to determine trends during that time.
I would not count any stats from 2021 at all. As @DadOfJerseyGirl noted, it was still very much a covid year. You can’t look at those stats in a vacuum of just UCSB. Since covid, students have submitted increased numbers of apps. That has lead to lower yield rates at all but the very most selective schools.
Each year, most colleges, from LACs to giant State U’s, offer thousands and thousands of WL spots, and very few students get off waitlists. For the 22-23 cycle, UCB, for example, offered 8,456 students a spot on the WL and admitted just 44. For the 23-24 cycle, they offered 7001 WL spots, and admitted 1,191 students from that. You can’t tell year to year how waitlists are going to play out.
The uncertainty from the covid years, in my opinion, has probably continued to play out into the last admissions cycle. I predict that students will perhaps submit fewer apps in the next cycle as people forget what the pandemic years, mainly 2020 and 2021, were like in the college admissions process.
I’m confused by the focus of 2021 stat comparisons - I didn’t comment on any stats from that year - just reflected that my daughter got into all UC’s in 2021 except one (not waitlisted, RD). That being said - I understand that we cannot use any previous stats as its different every year.
Thanks for clarifying she was admitted RD. The confusion arose from you mentioning your daughter’s acceptances right after you mentioned waitlist admittances:
One of the data issues that I think obscures some of what could be happening is that schools seem to report how many students they offer a spot on the waitlist, how many students accept a spot on the waitlist, and how many students in the final class came from the waitlist. But, we don’t know how much of the waitlist they had to go through to get however many students they actually matriculate from the waitlist (we don’t know the waitlist yield). We don’t actually know how the number of students offered spots from waitlists is varying from year to year.
I read that last number on CDS as the number on the waitlist who received an offer, not the number on the waitlist who were offered and then enrolled.
UVA is one of the few schools I’ve seen that shares data on the number of seats they were trying to fill and the number of offers they had to make to fill those seats. The latter number matches their CDS number.
Our trend for S24 vs S16 / S18 is not about decisions but costs. The max merit hasn’t changed but the costs went up massively.
Same exact $30,500 merit award at Fordham six years apart for two sons,
but the cost went from the $70,000-ish range to $89,000
In general, we saw the annual college price go up an average of $10,000 over the last six years with UMd the least and Fordham and Clark the most (though Clark remains more affordable)
This trend worked in our favor for UMd. Given inflation, we feel like Maryland actually became more affordable. Which is shocking. Go Terps!
Is this info able to be updated? DS had some acceptances off the waitlist but not sure that can be amended anymore.
Yes the charts are updated in real time
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