Posts Tagged ‘college waitlist’
What To Do if You Are Waitlisted
Here’s this situation: You already heard that you got into your safety school. You go out to your mailbox to see if your dream school has contacted you yet. You see a letter, not a package. Your heart sinks. Rejection is on your mind. You open the letter. Your eyes dart to find the important words. “Unfortunately…” Your hearts sinks even more. Then you see that one word: waitlist.
You’ve been added to the waitlist. Now what?
The good news is that you are not rejected. Unfortunately for you, the reason why, is that they have a high rate of accepted students attending. You’ll probably need to put a deposit down on another school and accept a spot and wait. It’s a waiting game. But there are a few things (not including your parents donating a library to the school) you can do to try to maximize your chances of getting in:
Talk to the school about your chances
Contact the admissions department and ask what percentage of students get off the waitlist. This will give you some way to handicap your odds of getting in off the waitlist.
Ask about ways to get off the waitlist
Talk to the admissions office and ask them what the criteria are to get off the waitlist. Maybe your grades were fine but your extracurricular activities were not great. Is there a way you can highlight some aspects about yourself that did not come through in the application or interview?
Send a letter (BUT DON’T BE OVER THE TOP)
Send the school a one-page letter, highlighting your achievements since you applied. Maybe you kept your grades up (while most of your peers were slacking off) or were the lead in a school play. Make it clear why (with specific) reasons and how much you want to attend their university. But whatever you do, don’t sound desperate or do anything over the top.
Enlist Your College Counselor
College/Guidance counselors often have personal relationships with admissions officers developed from communicating with them over years and years. Talk to your counselor about what they think you should do to try to get off the waitlist. Maybe they know someone in the admissions office and serve as an advocate for you.
Overall, the odds of getting off waitlists are not great, but there are a few things you can do to maximize your chances. Remember, do not do anything desperate or over the top. Simply highlight yourself to the school in a tasteful and respectful manner and hope for the best.
Need something to do while you’re waiting to hear about the waitlist? Find your scholarship matches!
What’s the Difference Between Being Deferred and Waitlisted?
We’ve had some questions recently about whether there is any difference between being waitlisted and being deferred.
The answer is yes, there is.
The difference between the wait list and a deferral is small, but still important to be aware of in case you ever wind up with a letter from admissions with one of those two answers. So here’s what sets the waiting list apart from the deferral pile:
The Waitlist
If you are informed by a college that you’ve been placed on the waitlist, it means that you qualify for admission and that they like you, but that other applicants are more of a priority. It’s not the best news you can hear from the college you want to go to, but it means that there’s certainly a chance you might just wind up getting in. Here’s a sports analogy; it basically means you’re a backup player. The coach has his favorite starters, but still sees value in his bench warmers. If there are injuries and a starter has to sit out for the rest of the season, you’re in!
For a college, the waitlist is insurance so that if accepted students enroll elsewhere, they can pull other qualified people up and avoid big holes in their upcoming school year’s class. If you’re put on the waitlist at your number one school, it never hurts to remind the admissions office of your interest and to update them on any new accomplishments.
A Deferral
There are different types of deferrals, one on the student’s behalf and the other on the college’s. We’re talking about the deferral from a college today, but just so you know, a student who is accepted to a college can often defer enrollment for a certain number of years for various reasons–travel, family, personal issues, etc.
Receiving a deferral from a college means that admissions hasn’t made any decision about you, except that they haven’t outright denied your acceptance. Deferrals from acceptance are mostly relevant to students who applied to a college through Early Action or Early Decision. If you weren’t denied or accepted, your application has been deferred into the regular admissions group and will then compete with those applications. The silver lining on this cloud is that if you were deferred from Early Action or Early Admission and then you are admitted, you are no longer obligated to attend if you are accepted. If you are deferred as a regular admissions applicant, it generally means the school wants more information about you before making a final admissions decision. They might ask for your senior year grades, more test scores, letters of recommendation, etc. If they request any information, do your best to get it in as soon as possible as it will speed up the decision process.
Do you have any questions about admissions decisions? Share your story in the comment section below!
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What Happens When You Get Waitlisted?
We’ve been taking some quality time to break down your college admissions possibilities. Last time we talked about what to do if you get accepted, and today we’ll discuss the prospect of being wait- listed.
What exactly does it mean to be waitlisted? Most of the time, it means you have the academic credentials for admittance, but for one reason or another they weren’t ready to accept you. Maybe too many similar candidates applied or maybe admissions folks couldn’t tell if you were truly committed to enrolling at their school or just “window shopping”.
Whatever the reason may be that you get placed on the wait list, here’s a cold hard fact: Very few people actually move on from waiting. So, from the get-go, avoid banking on moving off the waiting list and into the accepted pile because unfortunately, the numbers are not in your favor. Wait-lists can be loooonnnngg and the probability of you being at the top of the list are slim.
If you’re waitlisted at a school that you weren’t really passionate about and you’ve been accepted to other schools, consider taking your name off of the list. If you’re on the fence or want to hold out for a better outcome, then keep your name on the waiting list and take these steps:
1. Find out what your chances probably are.
If you stay on the waiting list, get as much information as you can about where you stand. Contact the college’s admissions office to find out what kind of waiting list they have. Sometimes they have a priority list, other times it’s random. If it’s a ranked list, ask them where you’re placed on it to give you a realistic perception of your chances.
2. Let them know you want in.
It can’t hurt to let the college you’re waitlisted at know that you’re still passionate or at least interested in attending. Write the admission office a letter stressing other nonacademic factors that might sway their opinion, or any new achievements–academic or not–that you think they should know about you. Above all, make sure everything you’re telling them proves why you should be admitted to their specific school. Remind them that you really truly absolutely want to be a [insert college mascot here].
3. Request an interview.
If you haven’t had an interview with the college, now is the time for a Hail Mary. You have nothing to lose, only a chance to improve your admission chances with personal interaction. In an interview you can easily get across with your expression and thoughtful answers what is much tougher to clearly get across through a static application. If you’ve already had an interview, why not request another one to reinforce your interest in the school and let them know you’re serious. Remember, it would be silly of you to show up to an interview and not offer up much about yourself and why you want to go SPECIFICALLY to that school. Do some prep work. Practice makes…a possible chance to get off the waitlist?
4. College admissions is not a soap opera.
High school may be a big ole’ soap opera with gossip, fashion, and cliques of friends–or at least what I’ve been watching on TV–but college admissions does not need to be dramatic. You might just get waitlisted at the school you’ve had your heart set on since kindergarten, but worse things could happen. Seriously. It’s hard not to be emotionally invested in the decisions colleges make about you because it feels so personal. But try your darnedest to not let it. Even straight A students who are president of every club in their high school with 36′s on their ACT don’t always get their first choice. So take the waitlist as a compliment, because for one reason or another they weren’t ready to accept you, but they definitely weren’t ready to throw you out.
What’s your take on being wait-listed? Tell us your story in the comment section below.
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How to Deal with Getting Accepted, Waitlisted, or Rejected
Vassar College‘s little digital slip-up on their application website between 4:oo PM and 4:30 PM last Friday led dozens of early decision applicants to be wrongly informed they’d been accepted by the school when, in reality, they had not.
Isn’t there a quote or something that embodies this kind of love and loss? Something like, “Tis better to have been accepted and then…de-accepted…than ne’er to have been accepted at all….”?’
I highly doubt any of the students involved in the mix-up feel remotely happy they were accepted for a brief thirty minutes, however, there’s something we can all take from this experience: life will go on if you don’t get into your dream school.
So here’s how to cope with all the possibilities of college admissions:
Getting Accepted to Your Dream College
You might want to pinch yourself just to make sure it’s real. You might also want to wait thirty minutes to ensure the school doesn’t retract its decision by telling you about a digital mishap. Once you’ve come to terms with reality, give yourself a pat on the back, tell your family and loved ones, and try to remain humble around your friends who are still waiting to hear back from schools, or possibly even the same school. The moral of the story is to be classy about your success.
Once you’re settled in with the fact that your numero uno choice requests the honor that you to join their student body next fall, it’s time to work out the logistics. How will you pay for school? What kind of scholarships and/or merit aid were you offered? You have until May 1 to make a decision. In the meantime, finish up that FAFSA schtuff, and take your time to weight your options. If you can afford the school, and you know it’s the right place for your higher education, then let the school know you’re enrolling, and let the other colleges you’ve applied to know that you will not be enrolling. This is good karmic measure because the earlier you let other colleges know you will not be enrolling, the sooner they can open up another spot for a student on their waiting list.
Getting Accepted to Two or More Colleges
Not everybody has a dream school. So if you get accepted into multiple schools and are not sure which one you’ll enroll at, the best idea is to visit campus. Sit in on a couple classes, check out the dorm life, the dining halls, and peruse around campus for the overall vibe. Another great way to narrow down your choices is to compare prices. If one school is offering you more money, see if the other schools that accepted you are willing to match offers.
Being Waitlisted
The waitlist is the purgatory of college admissions. You’re not in, but you’re not flat-out rejected either. So what do you do when you get waitlisted? If you want to ride out the possibility of being accepted to the school, send in your waitlist confirmation card. You can also contact the college to let them know you’re still very interested in the college so you can stay on their radar. Earn any new good grades, awards, or improved test scores? Let the college know about your success. If you’re super serious about getting accepted, you can even implore the folks who wrote your college recommendations to contact the college and reinforce their faith in you. Still, there’s no guarantee, but always better to put in some effort than live with regret.
Getting Rejected
Okay. Hear me out: worse things could happen. Getting a rejection letter is not the end of the world. You might never know why a college didn’t find you to be the right fit for their school, but you will move on and get a great college education. So what do you do when you get rejected? Take about 24 hours to mope and feel bad for yourself, and then move on. That’s it! If you hold a rejection letter too close to your heart, you’ll hinder your growth at the college you do wind up going to. Plus, you’ll forget about it soon enough anyways 
Have you heard back from a school yet? Share your story in the comment section below!
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Should You Wait on that College Waiting List?
Getting wait-listed can be perceived as a positive thing for some hopeful students. To them, it means their dream school has not out-right denied them, and that’s a good thing. They don’t see through to the fact that college admissions comes down to a game of supply and demand.
The New York Times recently reported some surprising numbers regarding college waiting lists that might make you wish you were just flat-out denied. The article mentions how Duke has a waiting list of 3,382 applicants. That is almost twice the size of the incoming freshman class.
And Duke isn’t alone. Lots of Ivy League and upper-tier schools are increasing the size of their waiting lists. Some reasons behind this might be due to uncertainty due to the economy–students who may have been able to afford a university with Duke’s tuition years before might not be able to now–and also that college-bound students are applying to far more schools than they were before. A high school senior today might apply to 15 colleges. The world of college admissions is a whirlwind of uncertainty.
So is it worth the wait?
If you decide to stay put on the waiting list past May 1st, you will lose registration deposits at other colleges you were accepted to. But, the possibility of enrollment at your dream college might be worth that to you. The waiting list might be 3,382 applicants long now, but by May 1st, perhaps a thousands students will decide to enroll at schools that have said “yes” to them, giving you a better probability of getting in to the school that’s told you “maybe”.
Still, if students take their names off of a waiting list, it isn’t necessarily the case that you move up the list. Actually, chances are, there really isn’t a numeric order to a waiting list. Schools want to fill voids in their freshman class. It can get as specific as a freshman class needing an alto saxophonist or more English majors or more students from North Dakota.
You might fit what the college needs, you might not.
Is waiting on the waiting list worth it to you? Comment and let us know!
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