<p>It seems the admissions office was caught off-guard by the surge in applications and decided to waitlist an unusually high number of people because it couldn’t predict the yield. The same thing happened at UChicago this year and the two years before it, as well as at WUSTL. Because application numbers and yield are correlated, however, the UChicago waitlist has been pretty tight in recent years, usually used sparsely between May and the middle of summer to fine-tune the numbers. WUSTL, if I’m not mistaken, didn’t go to its waitlist at all two years ago, when it had a big spike in applications and waitlisted tons of people. Reed could go either way.</p>
<p>In any case, I wouldn’t hold out too much hope if the Reed waitlist really is as big as the results here suggest. But still, this is all conjecture on my part. Good luck to everyone!</p>