More colleges are using Wait Lists than in previous years, due to the increased number of applications as well as growing unpredictability about students’ decisions of which college to attend. Many colleges vary their usage of Wait Lists from year to year, based on their strategy of how many students to accept, as well as the “yield,” or the percentage of admitted students who choose to attend.
For instance, Princeton decided not to offer acceptance to any of its 1472 Wait-Listed students in 2012. In the past four years, Princeton has accepted between 19 and 159 students from the Wait List. Cornell University placed almost 10,000 students on a Wait List from 2009-2011, and didn’t accept one student. Lee Melvin, Cornell’s Associate Vice Provost for Enrollment said that wait-listing is a “valuable enrollment management tool and should be strategically designed to assure we can achieve the institutional enrollment goal.”
According to NACAC’s 2011 State of College Admission report, 48% of institutions used a wait list for fall 2010, up from 39% the previous year. “Colleges, despite the embarrassment of riches in the number of applications, continue to find it more difficult to determine who’s actually attending,” says David Hawkins, NACAC’s director of public policy and research. The wait list has become a way for colleges to offset the uncertainty of predicting yield.
It is important for applicants on a wait list to be realistic about their chances. Although being placed on a wait list is more hopeful than being denied from a school, only 28% of wait listed students on average in 2010 were admitted, and the most selective colleges only admit 11% of students off the wait list on average. In 2010, Duke offered 3,382 students a place on their wait list, but only 60 applicants were ultimately admitted from that list. Of the 996 students who Yale wait-listed last year, only 103 of them were accepted. This year, Yale’s wait list holds 1,001 hopeful applicants and Princeton’s holds 1,472.
The chart below presents a sampling of colleges’ Wait List stats for the Class of 2014 (based on the most recently published data from US News & World Report). Most colleges have not yet released statistics from 2012, though Harvard reports admitting 46 students from its wait list.
|
College/University |
Waitlist (Y/N) |
# Applicants placed on WL |
# Applicants accepting WL placement |
# Students accepted from WL |
% Students accepted from WL |
| Brown University |
Y |
1,550 |
600 |
32 |
2.1% |
| Cornell University |
Y |
2,551 |
1,483 |
0 |
0% |
| Dartmouth College |
Y |
1,745 |
1,027 |
25 |
1.4% |
| Emory University |
Y |
2,515 |
1,091 |
62 |
2.5% |
| Georgetown University |
Y |
1,784 |
1,035 |
45 |
2.5% |
| New York University |
Y |
2,627 |
1,513 |
119 |
4.5% |
| Northwestern University |
Y |
3,204 |
1,476 |
26 |
.8% |
| Skidmore College |
Y |
1,456 |
1,113 |
1 |
0% |
| University of Pennsylvania |
Y |
1,451 |
1,002 |
164 |
11.3% |
| University of Virginia |
Y |
3,744 |
2,112 |
301 |
8% |
| Vanderbilt University |
Y |
5,023 |
1,733 |
323 |
6.4% |
| Yale University |
Y |
932 |
575 |
98 |
10.5% |
|
College/University |
Waitlist (Y/N) |
# Applicants placed on WL |
# Applicants accepting WL placement |
# Students accepted from WL |
% Students accepted from WL |
| Brown University |
Y |
1,550 |
600 |
32 |
2.1% |
| Columbia University |
Y |
NR |
NR |
NR |
NR |
| Cornell University |
Y |
2,551 |
1,483 |
0 |
0% |
| Dartmouth College |
Y |
1,745 |
1,027 |
25 |
1.4% |
| Duke University |
Y |
NR |
NR |
NR |
NR |
| Emory University |
Y |
2,515 |
1,091 |
62 |
2.5% |
| Georgetown University |
Y |
1,784 |
1,035 |
45 |
2.5% |
| Harvard University |
Y |
NR |
NR |
NR |
NR |
| New York University |
Y |
2,627 |
1,513 |
119 |
4.5% |
| Northwestern University |
Y |
3,204 |
1,476 |
26 |
.8% |
| Princeton University |
Y |
NR |
NR |
NR |
NR |
| Skidmore College |
Y |
1,456 |
1,113 |
1 |
0% |
| Tufts University |
Y |
NR |
NR |
NR |
NR |
| University of Pennsylvania |
Y |
1,451 |
1,002 |
164 |
11.3% |
| University of Southern California |
N |
0 |
0 |
0 |
N/A |
| University of Virginia |
Y |
3,744 |
2,112 |
301 |
8% |
| Vanderbilt University |
Y |
5,023 |
1,733 |
323 |
6.4% |
| Washington University at St. Louis |
Y |
NR |
NR |
NR |
NR |
| Yale University |
Y |
932 |
575 |
98 |
10.5% |