<p>As a fellow UC wait list reject, I’m thinking that the outcome this year had more to do with the school’s increase in popularity than any of us. Chicago’s applicant pool has grown massively over the past few years along with the competition to get in to other elite schools, leading many students that would have turned down UC in the past to accept their best option. </p>
<p>The lack of “transparency” in the wait list process is also tricky. From what I understand, universities, after a certain point of sorting out everyone but the most qualified students, are trying to build a microcosmic community within a class. Once they put this together, they are subject to students’ decisions of whether or not they attend. This leaves the wait list students with another variable: admissions officers try to re-build a diverse class from those people on the wait list while taking in to consideration student interest. That means if a first - generation Russian bassoon player turns the school down, they’ll be looking for a similar woodwind player. Admissions can’t rank students on the wait list because it’s not a matter of #1 to #375; it’s about reconstructing the community that the admissions department tried to assemble in the first place. </p>
<p>So…we were all at the mercy of too may qualified applicants accepting spots and the arbitrary machinations of the admissions department. It happens. Luckily, we all retain what attracted us to UC in the first place, and that “life of the mind” will follow us wherever we go.</p>