Yes, exactly!!! It’s a whole mess because everything is unpredictable at this point they need to maintain diversity. They need to keep a good amount o FGLI students to maintain diversity and to have a balanced class overall to maintain rank to ease the donors and many other factors that play a huge role in their choices so there’s a lot of stake involved . Because if they choose to not enroll international students that on its own is a whole other problem.
So have you received any communications from Harvard, specifically regarding international students since being waitlisted?
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No , nothing new since I called them back in the first week of July, but I did call the office yesterday to let them know that I have a visa stamp ,so technically I could legally enter the United States (for context purposes), they said that it’s great to hear but they can’t say much right now about the waitlist.
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Aren’t there International Students who have already deferred admission? I’m pretty confused why there hasn’t been any waitlist movement since Harvard knows that there is a certain number of students who cannot attend this year. This is also an underestimate given that there are many more students who will be unable to enter (including a few who have already gotten a VISA). If Harvard waits too long, it could suffer from major underenrollment.
Personally, I doubt that International Students (even with a VISA) will be getting off the waitlist: that’s like trying to fix a flight delay by switching passengers — the problem isn’t who’s waiting at the gate, it’s that the plane isn’t cleared for takeoff.
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I couldn’t have phrased it better since they can’t finalize their class for good without international students , so we are stuck in this limbo for now
Yes but if the waitlisted international students are finally getting visas then it makes sense why Harvard is waiting… to see how many of them they can offer to replace the admitted international students who have chosen to defer. It only makes sense they want to replace international with international
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But then there are more details to it than it seems. Do they just replace all the internationals with people from a certain region (which pp seemed to imply) or do they try to reassemble a similar culture diversity? I doubt you can just replace all internationals from China with those from Europe and then be done with it, if that’s the line of thinking at all.
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Isn’t it possible they had a very high yield to begin with and even if a decent number of internationals have deferred so far they haven’t needed to fill more than a tiny handful of spots?
I don’t think the ivies (aside from brown which purposely underenrolled) went to the waitlists much at all. Wharton did not at all, Dartmouth did not, did Princeton? (I don’t think so..), etc etc
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This could be the best explanation so for on this… and hard to hear for us
In that case, doesn’t it make more sense to officially close the WL like other ivies?
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But then why bother to tell us all they want to keep the waitlist open past June? Why not just say that the list is closed.
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Other than brown which you have mentioned, I heard Columbia had a few waves with one wave particularly large.
I have a feeling that there may be a wave this Thursday or Friday. Personally, I think that Harvard is more likely to admit Domestic Students than International Students (even those who have VISAs), but we will see.
Has anyone been able to get a response from Harvard about when a wave could be expected? I really hope that Harvard doesn’t wait until next week or the week after.
Princeton and Yale also went to their waitlist even quite recently. Columbia just closed their extended waitlist a few days ago.
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Princeton went to their waitlist as well (I heard of Yale doing so)? Harvard holding off releasing decisions is also delaying the ripple effect that could lead to other students being accepted off waitlists at top universities.
Yes, Columbia probably took 100 kids off. That’s my best guesstimate based on everything I’ve followed online and I’m sure is due to the the protests and the completely locked down campus. Brown took off maybe 300 off the waitlist but they purposefully admitted 100+ kids less this year from ED and RD combined than they did last year from ED and RD. So for whatever reason Brown had planned to go the waitlist (and then I think they probably had to extend more offers to fill these spots then mayve they had planned on. )
The rest of the Ivies (minus Columbia and Brown) really didn’t go to the waitlists much at all. Like maybe for 10 kids or zero in the case of quite a few. I bet Harvard OVER enrolled out of the gate and then maybe with the loss of internationals that they know of so far have gotten back down to an acceptable number or maybe 10 below their goal which is why they’ve extended a tiny trickle of offers. And they’re keeping everyone else hanging IN CASE they lose more. But they certainly aren’t sitting on a bunch of open spots right now from internationas who have deferred over the summer. That doesn’t make sense. It makes far more sense to think that the international deferrals so far have gotten to to their goal–down from a position of being over-enrolled.
Princeton maybe admitted a half dozen kids this summer. As did Yale. It was tiny. I bet they were also a few over to start and then with the loss of international deferrals probably got to be a few under and admitted a tiny handful.
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While anything is possible, I doubt that was the case. Harvard actually had a few waves albeit small, which didn’t support the over enroll theory. But anyways we’ll probably see what happens really soon.
Thoughts on a wave coming this Thursday or Friday?
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That has been my best guess.
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