This is where your guidance counselor needs to snap into action and make some phone calls. I am only too happy to call schools where there was a deferral or wait list and have a chat with the admissions counselor. I will also send a revised recommendation letter which re-states how excellent the student is, and how interested she is in that school. (Granted, my caseload is small and I know each of my students well - this may not fly if you’re at a huge HS).
HOWEVER - this won’t help if you overshot the safety/match schools. It kills me when students have safety schools that aren’t really safeties - although a good guidance counselor should have warned her about that earlier. No matter how great the student is, some schools are simply NOT safety schools. For anyone.
The other thing I will say is that the more apps a student submits, the less their chances seem to be of acceptance. I advise no more than 7-10 schools, top. I don’t know if this is because the kid is spread too thin, there are too many essays to really be strong and specific, they lost track of the process and missed steps, etc.
I did have a kid last year apply to 14 and get rejected from all. I had suggested several schools to add to her list which I thought was reach-heavy, but she declined, as she thought my safety suggestions were not good enough colleges. She wound up applying late and getting into a satellite campus of a big OOS school. Not ideal.
Firstly, I’m sorry for you and your daughter. It’s a horrible feeling, but she will surely get into at least one college. Isn’t she still waiting to hear from 10? 6 reach schools is a lot. Are you talking Harvard-reachy? She might be denied at every one of them.
Often, high school guidance counselors are just not that clued up on what actually is happening with competitive college admissions these days. It’s so difficult to say what might be going wrong in your D’s case.
What was her essay like? Were her matches and safeties really matches and safeties? Did she show interest? Interest can be really, really important, especially at schools kids think are matches, and especially if the student has good stats.
My first thoughts are: the schools she and her counselor thought were matches are probably low reaches. Some of the safeties might be high matches. Match schools are not safeties.
There is much she can do to improve her odds of getting off waitlists. My daughter attends the college she was waitlisted at. If she really likes the school, she should let them know now, not after all the other decisions come out, that she will attend if accepted. She should ask her GC to send most recent grades to that school. In another few weeks, say around the very beginning of April, she should email again to say it’s her first choice and provide any new info. She can also ask her GC to let the admissions office know if a school is her top choice. Bear in mind that if she is waitlisted at a school like Harvard, the odds are almost nonexistent to get off waitlist, but if it’s a match school she might have a decent shot. IMO, it’s almost pointless to expend energy trying to get off a waitlist at a tippy top school, unless a student has a very compelling reason why that’s the best school for them above all others.
And before @ucbalumnus posts this…I will add…andison didn’t really have true “safety” schools when he applied the second time… up he did a very well constructed gap year.
And also, he was a very strong applicant for the schools to,whichnhe applied both times.
From what I’ve read, it is becoming very common for those “safety” schools to either waitlist or even reject the best applicants. They are very concerned with yield. So the first suggestion is to NOT take it personally as it says absolutely nothing about the applicant (well, it IS a compliment in an odd way).
Probably others have mentioned, but as it gets closer to really wanting to get one of those waitlists to move to accept, I strongly suggest visiting the school and show a ton of love. A TON of it. As admissions about which professor you could email to ask about research opportunities. Ask about an overnight visit. Anything and everything to show that the applicant really is very interested.
Other than that, it probably won’t come to that. But it is tough to wait. This process is so difficult but it will work out well in the end. This applicant will thrive anywhere. Best of luck to you.
It is a tough situation but just be patient. It is not the end of the world in any case. Gap year or transfer from a CC are a couple ideas if that happens to be the case. The whole college application plan is very challenging and there is no one size fits all approach. The number of matches and safety schools are important, but more so, how do you define those.
I agree about letting the waitlist schools know that you are interested, but that exercise may wind up having to be done with a phone call that essentially says “if you would admit me, I’ll send the reservation commitment check” by Fedex today. In such a circumstance, you should work down the waitlist list from most preferred so that you can say honestly that you’d come if admitted.
Your description sets off an alarm, based on another person’s experience a while back, of which I am personally, directly aware (not my child, though). We had an applicant with very good qualifications who targeted an elite school and was deferred in early admissions. He had a consultant who called to ask about strengthening the application, and the admissions officer said something to the effect that “it can never hurt to have additional recommendations”. It seemed to be an odd comment, but he applicant did that, and was admitted.
Later, after matriculating, he went to look at his application file and discovered that one of his original recommenders, who had actually volunteered to write the recommendation, had essentially damned him with faint praise and a conclusion that he probably wasn’t “school x” material. He and his family were stunned.
I don’t want to create paranoia, since this incident seemed to me to be quite isolated. But it did happen, and the instructor was among the most respected in the school. So if you have another recommendation source maybe you could call on them for some additional support.
Sounds like she has not yet heard from her match schools and the rest of the reaches. If one of those does not come through, pick a safety and let them know she will definitely attend if admitted off the wait list. My guess is they will take her.
As others pointed out Andison did not have any safeties or waitlists so not the same situation.
I am sorry that you found yourself in this situation and hope for good news for her before this season is over. I think it happens but not very often. The main reason might be bad essays, recommendations with good intention but bad written and applying to wrong set of schools. Her test score is a little on a low side depending on schools she targeted.
Also you should really choose one of the WL to target…with the “if you admit me i definetely will attend and you are my top choice”…but look at the Common Data Sets to see which of the colleges has the greatest % of waitlist admissions.
Lindagaf always has good advice on this subject, one of the best posters on this site.
Moving forward, we can tell our experiences so others on this site may learn for the future. My daughter only applied to one school where her SAT wasn’t average, and still got rejected from 3 and wait listed from 4. In the end, her decision was pretty much made for her. She got wait listed at one where her SAT was at the top 10% for accepted students, should have been a safety but we needed a good amount of aid.
This seems to happen to females more than males, as 57% of college applicants are female, and many schools try for some kind of balance.
On the positive side, most need blind schools do consider finances for wait list or January admits. Needing little aid will help in these situations.
I think there is also the propensity to look at the actual matriculation from a particular high school to a particular college. If over the course of 3 or 4 years, 50 kids apply to XYZ University from the same high school yet only 2 attend, XYZ will start accepting fewer from that school as they see they are not viewed as a first choice. I agree with the other post that stated kids are applying to too many colleges. There is certainly some backlash happening.
Waitlisted (i.e. effectively rejected, but with a slight possibility of being admitted after May 1) or deferred to RD?
Sometimes, “safeties” are not really safeties because:
a. Some colleges consider “level of applicant’s interest” and tend to reject or waitlist “overqualified” applicants who are unlikely to matriculate unless they show interest in whatever way the college sees interest beyond applying.
b. A college may appear to be a safety in general, but not for a specific major or program. An example is San Jose State University, which is not generally that selective, but is much more selective for those applying for the computer science major (and some other majors) than for most majors.
c. A college may weight more heavily characteristics that the applicant is relatively weaker at and weight less heavily characteristics that the applicant is relatively stronger at. An example is applicants with strong test scores but relatively lower GPAs applying to Universities of California, which more heavily weight GPA over test scores. Some are disappointed after mistakenly assuming that a UC campus is a “safety” based on their test scores when their GPA was at the lower end of or below the campus’ profile.
I would not panic yet - still so many schools to hear from. Bookmarking this page, as I will want to celebrate with you when your daughter is accepted. Think positive!
OP keep up hopes and know we are all rooting for you. As has been pointed out there are many threads like this but the good news is most have (very) happy endings. It’s one of the best reasons to come here, to read those. The Andison thread should be required reading (with a quiz!) before you can post here
This also makes me so appreciative to have such an excellent guidance department at our public HS – although this is happening to kids here too. 58 applicants to BU, all of them qualified! They can’t take them all…
There is a list that comes out shortly after May 1 with schools still accepting applications because they didn’t fill up. There are always some surprises that would be great for a kid like yours.
If you want to be proactive, there are also good schools that are still accepting applications. Many are large public schools with honors programs (Arizona State Barret), but there are some public LACs (Truman), and also some private LACs (ex Hendrix).
There are several Canadian LACs in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia that I think still accept applications (Mt Allison, St Frances Xavier).
Finally, there are international options that care only about statistics and are accepting applications such as Edinburgh and St Andrews in Scotland. St Andrews has a May 1 application deadline.
I don’t know what kind of school your student is looking for, but I’m guessing LAC because those are the hardest to protect. Because these schools are small, they really care about demonstrated interest. With 15 applications, it’s really hard to do that. Often they think that your student will not attend and they will not admit.
Just wanted to say I will be thinking good thoughts for you and your daughter! We have had a number of surprise waitlists this year. Yield protection really seems to be a thing!
