<p>Why do universities have waitlists?</p>
<p>The waitlist is insurance for a school. When they admit students in March and early April, they have no idea how many students will accept their offer of admission. Though certainly most admission offices do multiple regressions, and analyze historical data to ‘guess’ how many students will accept and hope that that number is near the ‘target’ class size. </p>
<p>For some schools the ‘target’ class size can fluctuate a lot. If a school does not guarantee housing, for instance, the target can sway a few hundred people either way. A school like Columbia that has limited housing options usually cannot overenroll students. It would have no where to put them. So Columbia (and most highly selective schools - 50-100 total schools fill this bill) purposefully underenroll. </p>
<p>For example, if Columbia’s target class is 1425 students, when it admits 2429 students, it is more than likely hoping to have only 1400-1425 students come. Whatever the remainder they can fill with students on the waitlist.</p>
<p>Is there a rank to this wait list?</p>
<p>Some schools - less selective schools - rank their waitlist. If they admitted 1000 students, and you were number 1001, if they go to the waitlist, you are in! </p>
<p>Columbia and highly selective schools do not rank. Why? they also use the waitlist to fill in the gaps that they might have. What if the baseball team lost that recruit that went to another school? What if there are not enough science majors? What if we could use more women in engineering? That one student admitted from Alaska didn’t come, what about admitting someone from there.</p>
<p>When Columbia, and schools like it, go to the waitlist, they are weighing ALL these questions, and looking at data, and decide to admit students that fill gaps.</p>
<p>Why is this hard for you, as a student on the waitlist? You don’t know what gaps need to be filled, so it is very hard to know how good or bad a chance you have to be admitted off the waitlist.</p>
<p>Then, why am I on the waitlist</p>
<p>Because you’re awesome. You’re smart, you have everything you possibly could do in high school, but in the committee process (that highly selective schools use) it was not quite clear that you really stood out. </p>
<p>Students on the waitlist, therefore, share a lot of the same qualities as people who are admitted. There is a great variety in terms of what you do, where you come from, what you could add to campus. Some students may have been so close to admission, but the feeling was something was missing. Schools also use the waitlist to shore up their admission statistics (in case they admit you) so students that perhaps are boring, but are very high testers or have won big awards may be on the waitlist because if admitted they may improve the average of the school.</p>
<p>How many students are on the waitlist?</p>
<p>This is something I will be vague about. I know Columbia doesn’t release this information, I have learned of it privately through friends, but in the end if Columbia doesn’t want to alarm people, it is not my role to do so. I am going to purposefully use small numbers to explain.</p>
<p>The biggest issue with the waitlist is that not all students will accept a spot on the waitlist. If you are waitlisted at Columbia, but admitted to the school of your dreams, you probably will tell Columbia no thanks. </p>
<p>So let’s say Columbia has admitted its class, it has 1400 students enrolled and wants to admit 25 more people. Within that group of 25, the baseball team really needs a new starting pitcher, the orchestral director would love a new oboist, the alumni office is really pushing for 5 legacies, the science committee would like 10 more scientists, the engineering dean would like 5 more female engineers, and the college dean would like 3 more students that come from poor backgrounds. </p>
<p>Let’s just think about that one baseball player. To admit that player you have to not only consider all the starting pitchers that the coach recruited, you have to consider that a fair number may have chosen to attend another school. So instead of putting 1 student on the waitlist, you may indeed put 2 or 3. But you also have to consider that that baseball player has to compliment the Academic Index of the team so that it is within one standard deviation of the class median. So you can’t just rely on 2 or 3 students to fit that bill, you need probably closer to 5-6 students different students on the waitlist just to fill that one spot. </p>
<p>Baseball is an extreme example, but the idea being that the waitlist has to have depth, and it has to be able to still remain strong even after most students choose not to attend.</p>
<p>I will let you guess how ‘big’ the waitlist is. The point is, for a school like Columbia that doesn’t rank its waitlist, if it is small then there is a chance that they can’t use the waitlist as insurance.</p>