With the delay of the FAFSA, and the continued increase in applications this year, it appears that many students are being waitlisted, offered pathways or 1-2 semesters abroad. What is the groups take on whether schools will be pulling from their waitlists more (or the same) than the last couple of years? Will those coming off the waitlist hear later than past years since some schools have pushed decision day to mid-May or June 1?
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It’s hard to predict.
If I were to speculate, I think that there will be much more double depositing which will lead to greater summer melt (due to fafsa delay/pushed enrollment dates). Depending how large the enrolled class and level of summer melt at a given school, some could go to waitlists more than typical (if there is a thing as typical wrt waitlists).
I expect things are going to go later into the summer as well. But again, who knows?!
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I suspect students will hear later - especially as more and more schools delay decision day (past May 1). Some schools will truly not know their enrollments until their deadline passes.
I suspect Wait List yields are low - i don’t know but suspect because most kids will have moved on and found a roommate etc at their now intended school. And later notifications won’t help the cause of the school. I suspect if they do go to the WL, they’ll have to go deeper as their WL yield will be even lower than normal due to the lateness.
Good luck.
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Personally not looking to move off the waitlists…but curious given some of the odd outcomes this year.
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I think one issue with waitlists are - they are unpredictable. Last year, as an example, Va Tech let no one off but the year before 4 figures.
The reality with a waitlist is - a student has been rejected. The school has decided not to admit them.
However, only because schools cannot assure their yield, they use WL as a hedge, an insurance policy, in the instance that not enough accepted students take their offer.
So no one should, in my opinion, plan to get off a wait list. They should sign up but then move on - and if it pops up later, it’s lucky. But it shouldn’t be expected.
I have no idea how it will work this year, of course, but given many schools are pushing back the May 1 decision timeline, I’m not sure how they could then work their wait list at an earlier timeframe - unless they panic about under enrollment from early trends.
Good luck.
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These things are so complicated when thinking at the system level. Like, RD yields even at very valued colleges can be pretty low, and so in theory if an individual college ended up admitting fewer people ED, and fewer people RD, and its yields stayed the same, and its enrollment target stayed the same, it would need to pull more people from the waitlist.
But . . . what if everyone did that at the same time? Then probably RD yields system-wide would go up, and maybe there would not be more need to pull from the waitlist.
So it does feel to me like there are a lot of moving parts this cycle (and I personally think the Supreme Court decision could be one of the leading factors along with the FAFSA delay). But I think we will have to wait and see what happens as a result on a system level, let alone an individual college level.
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The school has decided not to admit them…yet…because they are waiting to see if their class fills. Anyone on a waitlist (in my opinion) has met the bar for admission…or they would have been rejected outright.
Having said that, there is that saying…love the school that loves you back…so students on waitlists should look at their acceptances.
I know more than a handful of kids who were accepted off of waitlists in August to their top choice colleges and accepted that admission. All had chosen colleges to attend (and would have been fine if the waitlist hadn’t worked out).
I do think this year, there will be some delays in everything including waitlist movement.
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And remember, there ARE colleges that start to draw from their waitlists even before the date to commit (who knows what that is this year??!). It happens.
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I heard on a podcast that last year (if I remember correctly) NYU pulled from their waitlist on the same day they released RD. Are there others where this happened?
For two schools a close friend with the “same” stats/hs of DS24 got acceptances, where DS got waitlisted. On the third, DS24 was accepted, the friend sent to a pathway. However, one applied Engineering, the other Business, so obviously different #s based on discipline. Point being, on a different day or month or reader, these could have been flipped. So while it’s best to move on if a student gets waitlisted, I do believe that those who are waitlisted are capable of doing the work at a school, else would have been denied.
As for VT, a couple of the southern schools over admitted in the last years, perhaps not used to their new popularity. Will be interesting to see if they better judged their yields this year, especially as some (UTK) started doing direct admit for some instate students.
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IMO because of the FAFSA delay and low FAFSA filing rates, I expect some predictive analytic models are going to WAY off. I also expect the various higher ed consultants are adjusting said models right now to reflect these issues, forecasting higher summer melt, etc.
For some schools a lower than forecasted yield may be obvious before their matriculation date (can’t imagine many are going to stick with May 1 at this point), but I would speculate that overall, waitlist movement will be relatively later this year.
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This. And as others have said, there will likely be a lot of summer melt this year. While agreed WLs are typically a longshot and students staying on WLs should continue to focus on acceptances, WLs are more of a “we don’t have room for you at this time but we are still willing to consider you if we have room. Wait and see, but don’t count on it”. That differs greatly from a “we are not accepting you so don’t write us an appeal letter or LOCI as we have flat out declined your application” rejection. These are different messages.
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Here’s an interesting article on the admission pushback dates due to the FAFSA mess. This will affect WLs
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One more factor that I want to add is that the later the matriculation date, the more likely a school actually meets it enrollment goal or even over enrolls. Which in turn can obviously impact potential waitlist movement.
The disruption we are seeing this year is not dissimilar to the first year covid disruption in 2020…when some schools also pushed back their enrollment date. But, some didn’t, and I clearly remember a UCLA enrollment person saying there is no way they would be pushing back their enrollment date because of the risk of over-enrollment. (Note UCLA did push their enrollment date back this year to 5/15, as of right now)
So, lots of moving parts.
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I think it’s going to be the Wild West, with plenty of gossip-worthy moments on College Confidential! I think the two factors–large numbers of applications for each individual applying to selective schools, and the extension of decision dates–are going to make strange things happen with waitlists. I’m glad my D24 got into a target and a safety (that she will be happy to attend), and her one waitlist is not a hot ticket for her.
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Curious if you have insight into whether more students were waitlisted this year. I have been surprised by the number of waitlisted, vs denied, and offered Verto abroad programs with guaranteed Spring enrollment.
Also, has this Verto option been around for a while? I believe FSU has been doing something similar for years, but seems fairly new, and common now, at more state schools.
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Haven’t heard that waitlists seem bigger at this point.
Definitely have seen an uptick in programs like Jan start and first semester abroad experiences over last 5-10 years. Verto has been around awhile, have only heard good things.
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what colleges are known to do this? I know Cornell did that last year
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@Samantha_West you have to wait and see.
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South Carolina has already gone to their waitlist. I agree with thumper…just have to wait to see what happens this year. It’s really hard to predict with the FAFSA mess and such disparate enrollment deadlines.
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Thanks for posting that. I recall seeing somewhere on cc that south Carolina had already pulled from its WL but I couldn’t find it.
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