Are Waitlists at Top-Tier Colleges Worthwhile?

Last year, we posted a piece that advised students on things they could do to demonstrate their continued interest in a top-tier college that had offered them waitlist status instead of admission. However, the actions that we recommended would place additional demands on a student’s time during the busiest part of their admissions campaign, and the impact produced would be marginal. So the question arises… is being waitlisted worth your effort, even in the case of your dream school?

The best way to handicap your odds of ultimate acceptance from a waitlist is to review the history of that school regarding waitlisted applicants. Schools usually follow a steady pattern year after year, although flip-flops occasionally occur when an admissions office has erred significantly in the forecast of its yield rate (the percentage of admitted students who will accept the offer and matriculate in the fall). However, since students can’t predict the pending yield status of a school while they’re waitlisted, history is the only guide.

The graphic below is an overview of the odds of being admitted from a waitlist:

This sample of waitlist statistics from 160 private and public institutions yielded the following key metrics, which are not particularly encouraging:

• On average, 17% of students accepting a place on a waitlist were admitted.
• 58% of schools admitted 10% or less of students on their waitlist last year.
• 41% of the schools admitted 5% or less from their waitlist.
• 12% of schools did not admit any students from their waitlist.

Let’s review a few Ivy League and other top-tier institution’s waitlist programs to see how waitlisted students have fared lately. Stanford, the most selective university in the U.S., admitted only seven from its waitlist in 2014 and none from a list of 927 in 2015. No waitlisted students were admitted at Bryn Mawr, Dickinson, Lehigh, and Tulane colleges. They had little success at Carnegie Mellon (four) and Duke (nine).

The University of Michigan’s waitlist invitations grew extraordinarily high last year because its application volume had recently spiked. Surging volume increased uncertainty and the University’s yield rate was expected to fluctuate. About 4,500 students accepted spots on Michigan’s waitlist — the equivalent of 75% of the school’s freshman class size. However, their forecasted yield rate proved fairly accurate and they admitted only 2% of the students on their waitlist.

Harvard uses waitlists but reveals nothing about them. Yale disclosed that it invited 1,324 applicants to its list in 2014, about the same size as its entering class, but declined to reveal how many were admitted.

Case Western Reserve University assesses admissions at higher-ranked private schools such as Northwestern, Chicago, Carnegie Mellon, and Emory. Those schools have, in the past, drawn admitted students away from Case Western. To ensure that the University achieves its freshman class goal of 1,250 students, Case Western keeps a large waitlist and uses it aggressively. The school invited more than 9,000 applicants to its wait list in 2015 and 5,119 of them accepted. The University offered admission to 518 of those students. Not all accepted, but the school met its enrollment goal through its waitlist management process.

The Table below shows the waitlist results for selected institutions, including many of the most selective colleges and universities in the U.S., for the 2015-2016 admissions year. Some top-tier schools are missing because they either don’t maintain a waitlist or they don’t report results. Some institutions report some results but not others, as indicated by “n/a”.Bottom of Form

Table: Waitlist Results for Selected Institutions for 2015-2106

Institution	Waitlist Offers	Waitlist Size	Waitlist Admits	Class Size
Amherst	1,398	643	33	477
Barnard	1,195	130	6	635
Bates	1,535	671	11	517
Brandeis	1,553	595	25	802
Brown	n/a	n/a	192	1,615
Bryn Mawr	872	427	0	385
Bucknell	2,427	922	59	938
Caltech	n/a	n/a	n/a	241
Carleton	1,350	442	16	491
Carnegie Mellon	5,526	2,835	4	1,575
Case Western Reserve	9,446	5,119	518	1,259
Centre	183	42	19	379
Claremont McKenna	919	453	75	343
Colgate	1,896	913	49	773
College of the Holy Cross	1,307	494	8	738
Colorado College	1,119	232	24	583
Connecticut College	1,306	637	61	482
Cornell University	3,583	2,231	81	3,180
Dartmouth	1,852	963	129	1,116
Dickinson	848	261	0	731
Duke	n/a	n/a	9	1,745
Emory	3,809	1,910	45	1,357
Furman	208	51	14	672
George Washington	3,827	1,354	62	2,589
Georgia Tech	3,397	2,031	38	3,089
Gettysburg	768	n/a	n/a	699
Grinnell	1,224	474	18	442
Hamilton	958	365	47	473
Harvey Mudd	534	354	11	214
Haverford	883	354	12	346
Johns Hopkins	2,752	1,747	187	1,299
Kenyon	2,876	998	17	492
Lafayette	1,532	428	3	672
Lehigh	4,232	1,847	0	1,261
Macalester	350	177	0	583
Middlebury	1,304	530	33	589
Mount Holyoke	785	459	7	532
Northwestern	2,614	1,452	43	2,018
Oberlin	1,126	459	86	778
Occidental	705	359	26	517
Ohio State	1,556	304	304	7,023
Penn State	1,473	1,473	1,445	7,626
Pitzer	1,021	895	23	267
Pomona	842	492	38	400
Princeton	1,206	857	39	1,319
Purdue	1,728	1,713	643	6,812
Rensselaer Polytechnic	4,087	2,203	57	1,379
Rhodes	1,290	277	45	562
Rice	2,237	1,659	127	969
Sewanee	1,039	202	21	469
Skidmore	1,742	378	13	686
Smith	773	398	132	609
St. Olaf	729	150	113	763
Stanford	1,256	927	0	1,720
Tulane	3,413	921	0	1,719
Union	1,167	626	64	568
Univ. of Cal. at Berkeley	3,760	2,445	1,340	5,550
Univ. of California at Davis	9,033	2,733	2,030	5,369
Univ. of California at Irvine	7,361	4,035	131	5,756
Univ. of Cal. at Santa Barbara	5,006	2,910	278	4,459
University of Maryland	500	500	0	3,937
Univ. of Mass. at Amherst	5,450	1,278	26	4,661
University of Miami	5,563	1,295	73	2,080
University of Michigan	14,960	4,512	90	6,071
Univ. of North Carolina	3,144	1,513	78	4,076
Univ. of Pennsylvania	2,474	1,438	90	2,435
University of Richmond	4,070	1,547	151	807
University of Texas	1,634	1,168	362	7,743
University of Virginia	4,547	2,081	402	3,685
Vanderbilt University	n/a	n/a	188	1,607
Washington and Lee	1,983	764	193	454
Wellesley	1,404	843	30	595
Wesleyan	1,877	884	12	787
Whitman	872	370	67	364
William & Mary	3,552	1,676	187	1,518
Williams	1,603	573	53	551
Worcester Polytechnic	2,472	1,373	41	1,093
Yale	1,324	n/a	n/a	n/a

Source: The Washington Post – Responses to Common Data Set questionnaire by admissions officials

The best thing to do if you’re offered waitlist status by your first choice school is to obtain the advice of your IvySelect college admissions consultant. Together, we will consider acceptance offers that you may have received from the other 12 or 13 schools to which you have applied. Since we’ve already determined that you’d be happy at any one of the schools that you applied to, you may be advised to send a deposit to the most appealing of them by May 1^st  and to plan on attending that school in the fall. Then, if you’re admitted to your dream school from its waitlist, we can consider your options again at that point. Using this approach, you’ll cover all bases and have no regrets come fall.