I’m still confused on the process of waitlisted since they’re after may 1. Is the school I originally commit to guaranteed to allow me to change? If I don’t like the aid package am I allowed to decline an acceptance from the list?
First of all, admission from the wait list at most schools are very rare. Don’t expect anything would happen. Second, when it happens, you will have a very short time to decide. It is not binding at all. If you do accept the WL admission offer, you need to notify the school you have originally committed and withdraw your enrollment. You are likely to lose your deposit at that school. In any case, you can only commit to one school at any time although a small overlapping due to processing time is not an issue.
yes, you are allowed to decline an acceptance…although most schools would tell you what if any aid you will get before they offer admission and would ask if you would enroll if you were offered admission…if you say no then they won’t offer admission.
To get an idea of the WL likelihood look at the Common Data Set for the college in Section C2.
Bear in mind though that kids accepted from waitlist can vary wildly from year to year. At a selective school, it can and does vary from 0 admitted one year, to 20 the next, to 7 after that, and so on. If you are on the waitlist for a really selective school, don’t count on anything. Assume it won’t happen.
^ Exactly. That is one thing the CDS does not necessary help. It all depends on the yield rate of the current year which is not really predictable. The adcom try to meet the admission target as much as possible but at the same time want to avoid over enrollment. I have seen more than 10-fold change in the number of WL admission at the same school year to year.
A few comments:
- Agree with the above that any waitlist is a long-shot. Assume you will be attending the college you have deposited with.
- You can withdraw from the school you deposited with if you get accepted to your waitlist school and want to go there. The only penalty is that you will lose the deposit. You just need to inform the school (preferably in writing so there is a record) that you will not be attending in the fall.
- IF you are accepted off a waitlist you are not obligated to attend. You can turn down an offer of admission from a waitlist for any reason you like. So if the aid is not sufficient or if after some thought you decided to stick with the school you initially deposited at that is all perfectly fine.
@acceptmyname Here: http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/2068808-waitlist-what-is-it.html
@Lindagaf but if it swings from 0-20, you know that there is a small likelihood.
At Case Western, they use WL extisively to get the exact right amount of students as they guarantee freshman housing but don’t want to triple up. There the swing in the last couple of years was 300-500.
Yes, there’s always a small chance. The chances can be even smaller at a big school like UC Berkeley. One recent year they admitted hundreds, but the previous year, they admitted a number in the teens, if I recall. There can be huge variation.
^ Same case at UMich.