Freshman orientation - Fall 2019 Discussion

cbl1
Mon, 22 Apr 2019 16:01:46 +0000

Well …. if students are polite they let them know after they have accepted at another college. So you have thousands by now that I’m sure have declined their offer. However, the deadline is 5/1 …. so after 5/1 all those that haven’t responded to VT are assumed declines … so that’s when waitlist will really start to pop. As of right now they are primarily focusing on number of acceptances. So after 5/1 they will know the total acceptances and know how many spots they have in each college. Then its just a matter of your not on some grand waitlist. There are multiple waitlists for each department and then it just depends on how many acceptances that department received.

That’s why there is no master waitlist - like hey your #50 out of 3000 on waitlist. You may be #20 on a list for your department that may only end up with 15 spaces to fill. That where you start seeing strange acceptances off waitlist. Say you have a 4.1 GPA and are on the waitlist for business. There is another person who has a 3.7 and on waitlist for History. They may not get many acceptances in the History department and the 3.7 student just got accepted off their list and the 4.1 student still hasn’t heard anything.

It goes to show acceptance off the waitlist is completely unpredictable as you never know where you stand on the departments list and how many acceptances that particular department is going to have.

In example above - say your #2 on the waitlist for the business department and they have budgeted out having 2000 freshman and offered to 4000 assuming they will have 50% acceptance rate. They get 2500 acceptances - not a single business major then would get off waiting list. Then the history department budgeted 500 freshman and offered to 1000 assuming a 50% acceptance rate. Only 400 accept - so a huge 100 students on the waiting list get in.

It’s all projections based off prior results that can be completely flawed from year to year. In my opinion, they had a large acceptance rate a few years ago that pushed their enrollment up more than they planned. They had to scramble to get enough dorm rooms for all the accepted students. Therefore, I would assume in the past 2 years they have been a little more conservative in their acceptances (meaing probably a slightly better chance for waitlist students).