I was talking to my D today about her results thus far and we were discussing the waitlist she received at what should have been a safety school. Now, she has offers on the table so all is well. But she visited, interviewed, checked her portal etc so I think she did show interest. Her course rigor exceeds the average admitted student’s to this school but she hasn’t won any major awards or anything. She took the SAT twice. The first sitting put her about 100+ points above for this school and the second put her 200+ points above. This school does meet need but is not need blind (and we have pretty high need). So we were thinking that the FA element was the key issue. And then my daughter says :
"I should have only sent my first SAT score. "
And I thought, omg, she might be on to something. I’ve heard of schools waitlisting kids who they thought wouldn’t matriculate to protect yield. I imagine it is doubly so when large amounts of FA is involved.
So then I took a look at her school’s naviance. There are a few schools that do seem to have a cluster at a certain SAT score. One school, for example, trends to take the most from 2100 to 2200 and waitlist those above 2200, gpa being equal or greater. Perhaps she should have withheld the second score from that college as well.
Thoughts? Would it be just crazy enough to work?
PS: I know that their are multiple reasons for her to have landed in the waitlist. But she’s been admitted to all the other schools where she was in the top of the pool so I don’t think there’s anything wrong with her essays or recs.
In theory it makes sense, but imagine this - your D only sent her first SAT and was rejected; there’s no way of knowing how an AO will feel the day s/he is reading an application. Unfortunately, there would be no way to test this, and it could have drastic results.
I noticed the same at our school. For example the very top tech/science kids apply to wpi as their safety and they always get wait listed. I think though it is mostly their rank that causes the waitlist and not the sat scores for that specific school.
In this case WPI is doing what it thinks best. It doesn’t want to accept students who likely will not matriculate. Many colleges don’t want to be the safety school…
If I worked in college admissions (a bit of a dream of mine actually, lol,) I wouldn’t want to accept students who are unlikely to matriculate either. The college process nowadays is extremely quantitative. Colleges lure in students by getting good rankings. They get good rankings by having a high yield of accepted students and a low acceptance rate. The more applications they can draw in, the more students they can deny. Denying more students lowers their acceptance rate and helps them move up in the rankings. It’s all a never-ending cycle. @SlackerMomMD is right - no college wants to be the safety school.
I am an eternal optimist, but I really don’t think the admissions officers are waitlisting the top of the applicant pool just to “protect yield” for the rankings. My more pollyanna view of it is that I think the admissions officers genuinely like the kids whose files they read. They see promising potential students and they are more likely to pick the ones that they think are going to show up and enroll. I’d rather look at is as saying they want to admit the middle of the pack kids who are their target audience. That means the superstar kid ends up being a “poor fit” and moves down the priority list. That said, I really feel bad for high stats kids who have their hearts set on a school and get waitlisted for this reason. If the high stats kid was just using it for a safety school, and ended up admitted to a match or reach but WL from “safety”, well then c’est la vie. Seems the system worked for all
