<p>almostover, I wrote a detailed blog post about the wait list last year that you may find helpful: [Oberlin</a> Blogs | Blog Entry: “Demystifying the Waitlist”](<a href=“http://blogs.oberlin.edu/applying/selection_process/demystifying_th.shtml]Oberlin”>http://blogs.oberlin.edu/applying/selection_process/demystifying_th.shtml)
As to the number of students on the wait list, the problem is that the number of students accepting positions on the wait list tends to vary widely from year to year. Last year, we did end up with 717 students accepting positions, which is quite large. The year before, when we offered spots on the wait list to a similar number of students, we only had about 350 students who chose to stay on the wait list. I don’t know how many students will end up accepting positions on the wait list this year, but we do try to keep our wait list reasonable.</p>