<p>Yes, music schools have waitlists. As Snowflake points out, schools may accept twice the number of, let’s say oboe players, as they need, because not every student a school accepts will choose to attend. They also may place students on waitlists INSTEAD of accepting more instrumentalists as places, and do go to their waitlists if/when accepted students don’t choose to attend. Usually schools will not accept or waitlist students that they don’t believe are qualified for their program. I believe its often the case that there are more qualified musicians than slots, which is a bummer. And, as applicants, you can never predict really how this is going o work. For Oberlin jazz, e.g., no acccepted jazz bass players chose to attend last year. Thus, no freshman bass players last year. This year, however, Oberlin adjusted their acceptances, and there are a good number of first year bassists. Music schools are always working their overall number of instrumentalists based on the total, so no class year is ever the same.</p>