Waitlist, Common Data Set questions

Applying to College
1

I am trying to understand the Common Data Set (CDS) info.

Let’s say there is a college with the following CDS stats:

Total applicants who applied: 3022

Total first year admitted: 967

Total first year who enrolled: 283

Number applicants offered waitlist: 711

Number who accepted a place on waitlist: 352

Number of waitlisted student admitted: 25

  1. Number admitted of 967, enrolled of 283 means to me that the school must have first offered spots to the top 283, then as the admitted students made decisions to enroll elsewhere they offered admission to more and more people to get their desired enrollment of 283. Is that correct?

  2. Doesn’t that mean they must have offered 967 - 283 = 684 spots on their waitlist by the time it was all settled?

  3. Then how did they offer 684 spots when only 352 students accepted a place on the waitlist? Maybe that meant many accepted a place on waitlist at first, but by the end when many of those students found acceptances elsewhere they withdrew from the waitlist so by the end there were only 352 official applicants on the waitlist?

  4. That number admitted off waitlist of 25: does that mean they went through 684 additional acceptances offered to people on the waitlist to get their 25?

2

Number of admitted students is just that…the number of students that the school offered admission to. In this case that’s 967. Of those, 283 enrolled, giving a yield of 29%. The other 71% of admitted students chose something else…another school, military service, etc.

The number offered a spot on the waitlist is above and beyond the 967 admitted…by definition waitlisted students are not admitted. Applicants can choose to accept a spot on the waitlist, or not. In this case they offered 711 applicants a spot on the waitlist, and 352 accepted it. The ones that didn’t accept it likely had a better offer in hand.

We only know that 25 students chose to attend after getting off the waitlist, we do not know how many were offered admission from the waitlist…but likely more than 25. We also don’t know if the number of students offered admission from the waitlist is included in the 967…IME many schools don’t do include this.

The 25 students from the waitlist should be included in the 283 enrolled students, if the school is filling out the CDS correctly.

3

Thank you… Yes I agree more than 25 on the waitlist must have been offered admission later. I would guess the number is the difference between total offers and final enrollment? I would imagine the number of students offered admission from the waitlist must be included in the 967 total offers.

Otherwise who else be getting offers but those on the waitlist, unless they were offering admission to the top 25% and seeing how many immediate deposits they were getting (what the yield is), then the next 25%, and so on… but that would take so long?

And this particular example stood out because of the extremely low number who enrolled from the waitlist, which led me to think what the true likelihood is to get acceptance off the waitlist. Obviously higher than 25, but wonder if 967 - 283 = 684 is the answer.

4

I don’t think so. That would be technically the correct way to do it, but I think school’s “applied” and “accepted” numbers come before the waitlist.

5

My understanding of how acceptance offers, wait lists, etc. work may really be off, then…

The way I understand it:

a school offers acceptances to a number of applicants roughly equaling its desired class size, and then another bunch is offered wait list spots, and the rest are denied.

Accept/Wait List/Denied decisions are anounced at the same time, around end of March to April 1. (In my example, the desired class size is the 283, and the number offered wait list is 711.)

Some students on wait list will declare continued interest, and some will say no thanks. (Continued interest = 352, out of the 711 offered wait list.)

Then as the month of April rolls on toward Decision Day of May 1, a number of the first accepted group will decline their acceptances because they’ve gotten into their more preferred schools.

Wait listed students are then offered acceptances to fill the newly opened spots, and have @2 weeks to decide. The acceptances are offered down the list until the vacancies are filled to comprise the desired class size of enrolled students.

This last step is where I wonder if I can actually figure out the number of students who were offered acceptances off the wait list.

If initially 283 were offered acceptances, but it took a total of 967 acceptance offers to reach 283 who finally enrolled, doesn’t that mean they went through 967-283 = 684 ADDITIONAL acceptance offers after the first round to reach 283, and those 684 would be offers made to wait-listed applicants?

Certainly they could offer any number of initial acceptances if they have a sense how many will usually say no, but I would think that number would not stray too high from the ideal enrollment size, or they would risk over-enrollment.

6

No! A school accepts far more applicants than the number of students they want to matriculate. That’s what I explained above. Each school knows their historical yield (283/967 = 29% above, and say that’s typical for this school) and accepts enough applicants (967 of 3022 above) so that when 29% say yes, the class is at the level they want it to be. (say between 275 and 290, above.)

If yield is higher than the expected, they could over enroll. If yield is lower than expected, they go to the waitlist.

Of those 3,022 applicants, they accepted 967, offered waitlist to 711, and denied the rest (1,344).

7

I think a lot of the schools miss this, and don’t include the number of waitlist admitted students in the total admitted number.

But, the enrolled number should always (and usually does in my experience) include the students admitted from the waitlist who enroll.

One can always compare the CDS numbers to press releases and/or student newspaper articles that discuss number of apps, acceptances, enrollment. Additionally the institutional reporting departments (preparers of the CDS) are typically happy to answer questions about the CDS and what’s included.

8

I understand that they always accept way more than actual enrollment That is obvious. And I think I made it plenty clear I understand that.

I also know how to calculated all those: yield, acceptance rate, etc.

But how many on the wait list were offered acceptances? Is that truly just 25 in this case?

If so, how come they offered acceptances a total of 967 times to yield a total class of 283? If they only offered acceptances to 25 on the wait list, where did the other 600-plus acceptance offers go?

9

I’ll try once more. They offered admission to 967 because they want a class of between 270-290 or so (I’m guessing) and they forecast their yield to be around 29%.

Simply, 283 of 967 accepted the offer of admission. The 283 enrollment figure does include the 25 waitlist students who accepted the offer.

So think of this as just one round of admissions:

3,022 applied
967 were admitted
711 were waitlisted (but only 352 accepted the waitlist spot, the others did not accept the spot because they were going to do something else)

So, 1,344 (3,022 minus 967 minus 711) were denied.

283 of the 967 accepted admission. The other 684 students declined their admission and either went to a different school, or not to college, or to the military, or a gap year, etc.

At some point, yield was looking low for them based on the 967 acceptances, so they had to go to the waitlist to get 25 students. We don’t know how many of the 352 students who accepted a spot on the waitlist were offered admission, we only know that 25 students ultimately came off the waitlist and enrolled. So, 327 students who took a spot on the waitlist did something else…they went to a different school, etc.

10

And to add- in this example they went to their waitlist and admitted 25 students. That doesnt for sure affirm that all 25 offered an acceptance actually enrolled.

11

Oops, thanks for pointing that out, I processed that OP said 25 accepted/enrolled.

12

Do you think on the day they offer acceptances, they would offer all @ 967 acceptances that day, counting on a historic yield expectation of 29% to stay true? That seems rather risky in over-enrollment if the ideal class size for them is @283 and they offer more than 3 times that number of acceptances.

My thought was all along that they would offer acceptances to something much closer to the 283 target, and then as people decline the offers then offer the spots to the waitlisted people.

That’s why I’m wondering if it’s more, far more than just 25 offers to the wait list.

13

First, schools have a range for class size. They might be within the range after May 1st, but still go to the waitlist to balance out the class. Maybe they take men off the waitlist because more women enrolled or they add a few full pays to get the budget right.

The top limiter is generally dorm rooms. When schools have over enrollment they have to get creative and find beds.

Schools use sophisticated software to predict their yield. In non Covid years they’re very good at it.

14

The school in question does have a range, and it is usually enrolling about 280-300 per year.

If it’s true as some suggest above that they offer most of the 967 acceptances on the first day and just trust their historical yield % trend to cut it down to the right size, for a highly desirable but very small school to extend acceptance offers to about 900 applicants while the school traditionally enrolls (and thus only has dorm facilities for) less than 300 seems a bit risky, don’t you think? Especially if as you said housing limits are hard to overcome?

Even just an extra 75-80 “yes I’d love to enroll” responses will throw off their housing plans, class size plans.

15

Yes, this is what they do.

Nope.

^this is how they feel comfortable admitting 967, when they only have space for 280-300.

16

Assuming just one application round, yes they would make all the offers that their historical yield suggested they should, which in this example would be the 967. As alwaysmoving said, the colleges’ (non-pandemic) predictive analytic models are very accurate. This year, not so much…and that’s why we saw so many schools going to their waitlists before May 1.