Ethics of Huge Waitlists

ucbalumnus
Wed, 18 May 2022 21:40:18 +0000

gardenstategal:

For ED deferrals, they have read the apps too but they need to see how they stack up against RD.

TonyGrace:

Which, short of a very niche skill, suggests you won’t get in?

There are likely some ED or EA applicants who are actually on the borderline as the college sees it during the ED or EA round. Such applicants may be retained for later review in RD (though any first stage application reading and scoring has already been done and presumably not repeated). The college may want to know whether the RD applicants in the deferred ED or EA applicant’s bucket (intended major, demographics, ECs of interest) are stronger or weaker, and thus could move the borderline above or below the deferred ED or EA applicant.

However, some colleges apparently do many ED or EA deferrals as “polite rejections”, so deferred ED or EA applicants at those colleges cannot assume that they are borderline applicants (with a reasonable chance of RD admission) or “polite reject” applicants (who have no chance of RD admission) who may be the majority of deferred ED or EA applicants. At a college like Stanford, which rejects most and defers few non-admitted EA applicants, being deferred is much more likely to indicate being a borderline applicant.

It is likely that something similar occurs in waitlisting. At colleges with huge waitlists, it is likely that most are “polite rejections”, and only a smaller subset of waitlisted applicants have any chance of admission if the yield in their bucket is too low.