This forum was created to offer a place for Waitlisted members of the Class of 2018 of NCSSM to have a place to talk to each other.
thank you for making this thread! Are you on the waitlist?
What CD are you from?
Soooo… Almost hitting the July 4 holiday and still almost no word of anyone being brought in from the residential waitlist here or in the facebook group.
Are we having a second year in a row of extremely few finalist withdrawals? Two years ago over 70 of the 80 waitlisters ended up as finalists, although from what I understand last year it was only around 30 or so.
I was hoping we would see a little more motion after the school year ended. Has anybody become a finalist in the last month? The lack of ANY reported progress on the list seems… discouraging.
Bad news for waitlisters- we called in and the admissions office told us that this is a very slow year with almost no movement. 
I’d start assuming you won’t get the call.
So just a recap for posterity and future readers - very, very few of the residential waitlisters for class of 2018 were admitted as residential finalists…
For many years now, NCSSM has put 80 students onto the residential waitlist. There have been years when most if not all of the students on the waitlist have eventually been admitted. For the class of 2018, on the basis of the appeal written by the student and the original application materials, the top 40 girls and top 40 boys who are not initially granted Residential Finalist status are placed on the waitlist, with no regard for congressional districts. However, when a residential finalist decides not to attend NCSSM, the school tries to match with a waitlister from that district, if possible. There is more flexibility with regard to congressional districts during the waitlist process.
For the class of 2017, it was estimated by former parents that only about 30 of the 80 residential waitlisters were admitted.
For the class of 2018, my impression is that even far fewer were admitted. I’d be surprised if 20 of the 80 made it. It may well be significantly less. Not a single person on the 58-member “Don’t lose hope” facebook page reported getting in off the waitlist despite frequent posts of “anybody hear anything?” An NCSSM faculty member on the NCSSM parent facebook page reported that there were “several” waitlist students who got in over the summer.
We seem to have a 2 year trend of very little movement on the residential waitlist.
I mention this because being on the residential waitlist is not entirely benign. Some of the drawbacks include:
- Giving up your finalist status for NCSSM online. You must forfeit your NCSSM Online finalist status to try for the residential waitlist. That means if you don't get in residential, you are stuck at your old school without the benefit of the NCSSM online enrichment material.
- Attend Welcome day 2. (not required, but definitely recommended).
- Test in science, math, foreign language.
- Take a 15 hour science refresher course online.
- Do 60 hours community service in 1 location in North Carolina.
- Many dozens of forms to fill out related to residential life, health, etc. Doctors forms to get signed.
- Create all schedules for the junior year trimesters with backup course choices etc. This and the forms require familiarizing oneself with the NCSSM internet portals.
- Having uncertainty and anxiety potentially all summer long and up to 10 days into the NCSSM school year.
- Accepting the disappointment of being eventually rejected, if you are not one of the handful who get in (based on recent trends).
I don’t say these things to poo-poo the waitlist process. However, if this trend continues, I would hope that NCSSM would consider lowering their waitlist class size as the stress and effort to comply with the possible matriculation process is considerable and could rob students of other opportunities as they devote time and attention to complying with NCSSM prep. Some of the items above are “optional,” but the kinds of kids applying to NCSSM know that “optional” means have it done yesterday. NCSSM also incurs the financial and personnel burden of having to deal with all the processing issues of this large number of students who will never attend.
Also, I hope that NCSSM would consider not revoking a student’s NCSSM Online finalist status just because the student is also interested in the residential waitlist. I get that NCSSM wants the online program to be an independent honor, and not a “second place” to the residential program. However, forcing NCSSM Online Finalists to give up the enrichment of the online program for even just a tiny shot at the residential program through the waitlist makes little sense. It comes across as a “lets measure how desperate you are for the Residential program by seeing if you’ll sacrifice your Online finalist status and risk it all.” As Dirty Harry said, “do you feel lucky?” Its a pretty heartless stipulation to throw at a 10th grader. The result is that most students talented enough to be both Online finalists and Residential waitlisters get no enrichment or relationship with NCSSM, and the Online program is denied those students who were talented enough to also make the Residential Waitlist. That’s what most people would call a lose-lose.
I think NCSSM has a great academic program, and I didn’t mean this to come across so critical. Just want future parents and students to know what recent trends regarding the residential waitlist have been so that they make informed choices about the waitlist, as information is otherwise hard to come by.
If there is any official from NCSSM here who wants to chime in and report actual numbers admitted from the residential waitlist, or correct/debate ideas I have presented here, that would be welcome.
Cheers and congratulations to this year’s unicorns, and to those who were on the residential waitlist but didn’t make it: never fear, your future will be bright! To those considering the NCSSM Residential Waitlist in the future, recognize that like in the stock market, the past is not necessarily indicative of future results, and the very frozen waitlist NCSSM has experienced recently could thaw in coming years.
A couple of other points. I seem to recall that about 800 of those who were initially “non-finalists” for the residential program appealed. Of those, 80 were picked for the waitlist.
Also, among the list of responsibilities for waitlisters, there are some I am forgetting, like summer reading.