<p>For the class entering fall 2010:</p>
<p>U Chicago: 100 were admitted from waitlist of 4,790</p>
<p>U Michigan: 79 were admitted from waitlist of 9,409</p>
<p>U Virginia: 301 were admitted from waitlist of 3,744</p>
<p>thx, familyof3, well not too bad from UVA, but it appears that chances are indeed much worse overall from the WL than i had expected.</p>
<p>Waitlist is a luxury for the well-to-do. Waitlist acceptances don’t come with merit $, and many schools baldly state that they aren’t need-blind in whom they take from their waitlist. Moreover, even a full-pay family might balk at the prospect of losing deposits and non-refundable travel costs to the previously-committed school. </p>
<p>Deferral isn’t like that, because colleges don’t disadvantage RD acceptances versus EA/ED when it comes to financial aid. ED kids that were deferred to RD have more (not less) opportunity to compare financial aid than those accepted straight away in ED.</p>
<p>Mihcal1 - Those applying for ED should not be looking to compare financial aid packages. Most schools probably work the way you have described, but I know that Carnegie does not work like that. ED acceptances only are offered Full Need. If you get deferred to the RD round - no more Full need. So in that case - it is a huge disadvantage to get deferred if you need FA.</p>
<p>And most deferred applicants do not get an FA offer - they are only for accepted students. So the deferred applicant would first need to get accepted in the RD round and then compare the packages.</p>
<p>OP, it is much worse on waitlist than on deferral. We received a call from a waitlisted school that my DD was admitted. They gave us 5 days to think over and it was full freight, not even a loan was offered. We flewed over in 2 days and signed up right then and right there or else…NEXT. As the above indicated, very few waitlisted got off and even they were admitted, the yeild is much lower, because of the pressure. Unless it is your first choice and if you are willing to pay full freight, don’t even think about stay on waitlisting.</p>
<p>We also had to forfit the deposit on the other school where she was accepted before.</p>
<p>My son felt being waitlisted was the equivalent of “You are well qualified, but don’t stand a chance this year.” He did not elect to stay on the waitlist. (Rice)</p>
<p>I don’t think he would have felt the same had he been deferred.</p>
<p>Depends on the college.</p>
<p>Some colleges clearly state that they only accept the very most qualified students in Early action, and they may tell you what percentage of deferred students end up being admitted in regular decision. </p>
<p>In regards to wait list, the important number is not the number of wait list students who enrolled, or the number of people on the wait list. The important number is the number of wait list students in the previous year who were offered admission. That is typically available at the end of the “common data set” for a university. Some colleges have absolutely huge wait lists and almost never use them. Others regularly pull from their wait list. </p>
<p>The number of wait list students who are admitted may vary from year to year. For example, one year a college may find they admitted too many students, so the next year they admit fewer students in the regular cycle and rely upon the wait list more. Or visa versa.</p>
<p>Just be aware that some colleges have a policy of giving preference on wait lists to students who can pay full price, and they may say that financial aid is not available to wait list students.</p>
<p>OP, Unless you are one of the extremely lucky, tip top students who can pay full freight, being on the wait list is the same as being told "thanks but no thanks, you qualify for admission but we chose someone else instead ".
The best thing to do is move on.</p>
<p>here is some thing about how to get off the waitlist</p>
<p>[Waitlisted:</a> Turning ?Maybe? into ?Yes" | InLikeMe](<a href=“http://www.inlikeme.com/apply/waitlisted-turning-“maybe”-“yes.html]Waitlisted:”>http://www.inlikeme.com/apply/waitlisted-turning-“maybe”-“yes.html)</p>
<p>I don’t see why anyone would compare deferral and waitlist. They’re totally different, happen at different times, imply different things. </p>
<p>But I’m interested to see the MIT numbers-- once you’ve been deferred your chances of admission are lower than they were originally. (Down from 9% to 6) I’d have guessed that, having survived the EA round, your chances would be greater! (Maybe my statistical understanding is faulty somehow?) </p>
<p>I’d expected last year’s waitlists to move significantly, (As people were applying to more schools than every before. But they didn’t, which I’ll never quite get. There were fewer students applying last year, even though there were more applications.)</p>
<p>In reference to the stats above about UVa’s wait list, the number admitted from it were much much lower for the 2011-12 year. They have different wait lists for each college, which are separated into out of state vs. in-state categories. That is because they must meet a minimum in-state percentage of total enrollment.</p>
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<p>But you never know where you stand on a wait list. I’ve never heard of any school putting out such info.</p>
<p>Your odds are much worse on wait lists. Depending on the RD yield, some schools in a given year end up taking only a handful of students off the WL - in the single digits or even none at all.</p>
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<p>Then my understanding may be faulty, too. Maybe the fact that the schools get so many more applications in the RD round means your chances are lower. But certainly, if stats are equal, they’d pick the ED or EA applicant, as it should help their yield. I’m sure they track the TYPE of applicant (ie: ED, EA, RD)</p>
<p>There are schools which could easliy fill their entire class with well qualified early applicants BUT they want to leave room for the regular application pool. Yes, I think your chances of acceptance are lower if you are deferred early but you still have a real shot. Waitlisting I think is sortof like the breakup line you use when you don’t want the person being rejected to feel bad – “Its not you, its me”== “You are qualified but we don’t have room” but I’ll keep you on the hook just in case it benefits me/the college later.</p>
<p>I don’t believe that schools are “letting you down easy” by wait-listing you. At that point they are only looking out for themselves; they have filled 40% of their incoming class with the ED applicants, then offer the remaining 60% of the seats to possibly one-and-a-half to two times that number. The wait-list game benefits no-one but the school.</p>
<p>In any case, the chances of getting off a wait-list are inversely proportional to the popularity/ranking of that school.</p>
<p>I would not be happy if my student was wait-listed. It is awful enough for the next 3.5 months, after being deferred in mid-December, to then have to hear that you are wait-listed?</p>
<p>Or perhaps they only wait-list RD applicants and NOT deferred applicants?</p>
<p>Wait lists are also used to let alumni parents, politicians and other powerful people down easy. They can go around telling everyone that their child was “almost admitted.” It keeps the dollars flowing.</p>
<p>There was a piece in the NYT “The Choice” blog, I believe it was last year, by an admissions officer at Duke. This officer compared himself to a painter or sculptor molding a freshman class, and encouraged kids on the waitlist (numbering in the hundreds) to knock themselves out, sending video updates and any other communication as to how much they want to get into Duke. In the end, one or two kids were admitted off the huge waitlist. The whole spectacle was appalling.</p>
<p>Actually, I think a deferral puts a student in a potentially advantageous position: they have had some feedback on their application (“close, but not quite good enough”) and an opportunity to supplement & improve upon their application. When my d. was deferred from Univ. of Chicago, she and I talked it over and I made some suggestions as to what to submit for supplemental information. No agonizing – she waited until her mid-term grades were available, and then submitted the supplemental material at the same time as she submitted the grades. (At the time, Chicago had the students enter their grades online rather than waiting for the transcript from the high school – I don’t know what they do now.)</p>
<p>My d. was accepted RD, as was the one other kid from her school who also applied EA to Chicago and was deferred. Both kids ended up going elsewhere - the other kid went to Harvard. </p>
<p>In my view, a waitlist is tantamount to rejection. Schools have waiting lists as a reserve to fill up their classes if & when their yield falls short. They create very large waiting lists because they know that the “yield” on waitlisted students is far less than the initial applicants. That is, maybe 2 out of every 5 students who are accepted to their university end up enrolling – and maybe only 1 out of 8 students on the wait list will actually accept a spot when offered. The waitlisted students usually have other options. </p>
<p>The waitlist is often used as a way for the school to draw in full pay students as well – especially useful for schools with need-blind admission policies.</p>
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I can see that logic for the ED applicant – there was a time that applicant clearly viewed that school as their #1 choice, a good sign for yield. But EA is different - students proactively apply EA to schools they view as safeties as well as their top choices – but I don’t think that deferred EA applicant is particularly more likely to enroll than the RD applicant, so I don’t think that would be much of a factor. </p>
<p>My d. turned down the spot at Chicago because the financial aid award was weaker than other schools. I’m sure there are many, many other students whose final decision is impacted largely by financial aid, and so I don’t think it benefits the ad com particularly to treat the deferred student any differently than other RD applicants. </p>
<p>The advantage the deferred student has is simply in knowing she was not rejected.</p>