As many of you already know by now, the outcomes of US college applications submitted to the Regular Decision deadlines can yield three results: Accept (yay!), Deny (ugh!), and Waitlist (huh?). Many students have understandable misconceptions about what the term “waitlist” means, and what it signals for the future of their application.
Contrary to cultural expectations depending on where you live, the waitlist is not an orderly, ranked queue. We are not patiently waiting for the till at WH Smith in Waterloo Station; this is not a ‘first come, first served’ situation. Instead, think of the waitlist as more of a holding pen, like a barnyard corral with pigs, chickens, hens, goats, cows, and maybe a rogue kitten or two. Nobody is in line in front of anybody else.
As you also know, the US colleges require a deposit (to only ONE institution) by May 1st. That’s when they begin to see which students are planning on matriculating to their college in August/September. As the deposits flow in throughout April, college enrollment offices can predict, measure, gauge how their incoming freshman class is shaping up: Do we have too many women? Do we need more French majors? Do we need more students from the midwest? Some colleges may worry that the deposits are coming in too quickly and they may be overenrolled. In that case, they won’t need to use their waitlist. Other colleges see deposits coming in too slowly and worry that they may not bring in enough tuition dollars. So, they’ll turn to their waitlist to continue to mold and shape the incoming class in the way they wish (aiming for diversity in every sense of the world) while also filling beds.
So, if you’re on the waitlist, must you just wait for the fickle whims of fate to determine your future? Not necessarily. We always counsel our students to write Letters of Continued Interest (LOCI) for colleges who have waitlisted their applications, if they are truly strongly interested in attending the college and hoping to be accepted off the waitlist. If you have any new achievements or information, include it in the LOCI. Most importantly, state in no uncertain terms that you are very interested in attending, and if accepted are highly likely to accept an offer of acceptance. We even encourage students to state, “If accepted, I will definitely attend,” if that is an honest statement.
Word to the wise: sometimes waitlist offers are made via a phone call, which may seem bizarrely intimate if not archaic to today’s young people. But, it is an indication of the careful selection process the admissions offices are using when they examine the waitlist and also the immediate nature of their offer. Sometimes they will give a student a few days to consider the offer, but in general they will want an answer very soon, at times even within 24-48 hours. If you are on the waitlist for several colleges, it helps for you to have a kind of ranking in mind of which ones you would definitely accept and which you would be less likely to accept.
Colleges may pull students from their waitlists throughout May and even well into June or later in the summer, but they will usually announce when their waitlist is “closed,” meaning they have met their institutional goals for numbers and will not be taking any more students from the waitlist. That’s the end of the road for an application to that college, my friend.
Waitlist movement is very unpredictable and variable from year to year. If it happens, great! But never assume that you will win the waitlist game. Most importantly, get excited about where you deposit and focus on preparing to attend that college!
