Waitlisted? Advice for making your best case for an acceptance

bluebubbles
Wed, 22 Apr 2009 12:31:13 +0000

Can anyone explain to me WHY exactly schools waitlist so much? My school (Stanford) waitlisted 5% of their 30,000 applicants. That’s 1,500 people, almost their entire class size. There’s no way Stanford’s yield will never drop below 50% so why waitlist so many people? How about waitlisting just 500 or something like that? Same thing goes for schools like Wash U who are seemingly notorious waitlisters.

Do schools gain something by waitlisting a lot?