Waitlisted at private schools 6th grade

Prep School Admissions
1

Hello. My son applied to Dwight and Newark academy. We found out she was waitlisted for both. We turned down the Dwight waitlist spot as my son did not love it there so we could not justify spending the money. We took the waitlist spot at Newark academy. An inside source told me 700 plus people applied this year for 100 spots betweent all of the grades. Unfortunately, we have no connections to the school and are not a legacy.
My question is

  1. Do they just waitlist everyone instead of rejecting you outright? (Soft rejection)
  2. Do these high caliber schools generally keep a lot of people on the wait list?
    I am guessing a lot of these students also got into Delbarton and Pingry and Kent (for girls) so maybe not everyone will take the Newark spot?

Any insight would be awesome. My son is devatsted.

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Our son was also waitlisted at Newark academy for 6th grade, we found out today. I have the exact same questions - is it a signal that he was close or not? If anyone knows would be awesome to hear your insights.

Helpful to learn there were 700 applications for 100 spots, thank you for posting that.

5

I can answer this is general, but not specifically for Newark.

First, schools know that many accepted families will have options at schools they like better and will not enroll. Having done this for years, they have a good sense of how many accepted applicants will enroll. If it’s 25%, that means that to fill those 100 seats, they need to admit 400 students out of their pool of 700 to yield 100. If they have miscalculated and get only 75, they will need to have – and use – the WL for the last 25.

Likewise, not everyone offered a spot on the WL will take it. There will be kids who are offered WL spots who were accepted at schools they like better and who will decline the spot. Practically, what this means for the school is that they need to offer quite a few WL spots to have a working list that will allow them to use the WL well.

We don’t know how many students NA accepted nor how many WL offers were made unless they tell you. All you know at this point is that they will have a class of 100 and they received 700 applications.

Each school’s working WL needs to address the needs that may arise. For example, in the case above, where they needed 25 more students, they may need 25 boys to maintain gender balance. This means that the WL needs to be built for that eventuality as well as needing only girls. There may be students they love but who can attend only if financial aid becomes available as accepted students decline offers. These considerations vary by school depending on its own objectives and priorities. What this means, in a nutshell, is you can’t really know where you are on the WL.

What you can tell the school, if it’s true, is that you will 100% enroll if offered a spot. When they start taking kids from the WL, their goal is to complete the class, not to continue the uncertainty about who will enroll, so this can help.

You can reach out (a few days after decisions were reached when there’s less activity in the admissions office) to find out about timing as well.

One more thing… some schools use an extended WL all the way through the summer. Perhaps a family moves, a kid gets sick, or an enrolled student gets a late offer from a school they prefer. This creates an opening, and it will be filled from the WL.

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Thanks so much for your insight!

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We applied and waitlisted 3 years ago for the 6th grade entry point. They didn’t accept anyone off waitlist that year. We went with Pingry instead. I have seen kids getting off of the waitlist at Pingry. Also, it’s not a “list” but a “pool”. Once they have a spot opened, they will evaluate everyone in the pool again and find a match for the person who didn’t accept the spot. If they are looking for a female trumpet player, then they will offer the spot to the next female trumpet player, etc. It’s not a ranked waitlist.

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