I was on a call with the admissions director at a T30 school. He expressed that they were trying to figure out if they should go to the waitlist earlier than usual this year due to the expected loss of international students due to Covid-19. I think we are seeing that play out a some of these school.
Has anyone heard about Villanova going to WL early? Colby has gone to WL already.
I think the loss of internationals, and the massive downturn in the economy is leading to colleges going to waitlists early (and often)
Has anyone heard about CMU or Wellesley?
Where did you hear that?
UMich & Chicago have gone to WL
Has anyone heard about Duke?
For those of you commenting that you turned down a school so that “someone else could have a spot”, remember that colleges accept way more kids than they will know will attend. They don’t take someone off the waitlist because someone who was accepted declined the offer. They only go to their waitlist if their yield predictions look like they won’t be met - if a larger percent of accepted students than expected are declining.
Last year, Tulane’s yield rate was 35% so 35% of the kids admitted enrolled. If you turn down your spot, you’re one of the 65% of kids who did the same. That was Tulane’s highest yield yet so I’m sure they are thrilled with 35/100 kids choosing to enroll. They would only go to waitlist if it looks like they won’t be close to that percentage again.
@homerdog - What you said is true, it’s not 1 for 1. However, the sooner kids decline schools that they know they won’t attend, the sooner schools can begin to pull off the waitlist. My D has already declined several offers and only holding on to the few where she’s undecided.
Brown and Cornell are notifying those on WL.
How do you exactly know if you get off the waitlist? Do they send an email or is it just an update to the portal that I have to check?
Most will send email, some schools will call
Is Wellesley selecting off the waitlist yet ?
Michigan has made waitlist offers based on the forum here on CC. I have already declined offers from schools I won’t be attending to try and allow the spots to go to others. But I understand decisions this year are tough for so many.
Hamilton went to WL this week.
BC went to the waitlist on Tuesday
I am curious if colleges go to waitlists do they include those applicants in their “accepted” and “yield” percentages?
I have a feeling WL is not included…another way to appear “more selective”
@CUsucceed If you are talking about common data sets then for example MIT does include the accepted students from the wait list to the accepted students overall. For example in their blog it says that last year they accepted 1410 students but then in their class statistics they state that they accepted 1427 students and that 17 were accepted from the wait list. This is true for a few other colleges that I have checked.
Wait list students also count in the acceptance rate. For example here it is from Bowdoin’s announcement:
“Bowdoin’s regular decision admittance rate hit an all-time low of 8.3 percent for the Class of 2024, down from 8.9 percent last year (9.05 percent after students were accepted off the waitlist).”
I am not sure about the overall yield. I would assume that wait list acceptances have a very high yield as some colleges accept students from the wait list after they call and ask if the student will attend if admitted, give only a few days to decide and accept in waves.
So far a lot of colleges (that usually don’t) went to wait lists earlier but there are no data yet as to the numbers of accepted wl students. The “early” part might be a new strategy to secure wl students and not necessarily an indication of higher numbers.