The Waitlist: The Thing That is Both Good and Bad

Written By Ashley Boone

by Rob Mooring

I remember going to my first training as an admissions counselor, and the topic of the waitlist came up.  Our Dean and Director told us that we need to put kids on the waitlist that would be good academic and campus fits, so that if we needed to go to it, we could pick kids out of that lineup easily.

As I was walking back to my office, my colleague said the following words:

“Don’t believe any of what you just heard.”

I had been there for only a few days, and this person was telling me to ignore my training.  They said that they thought the waitlist was cruel, and that they rarely, if ever, put kids on the waitlist, because they knew that 99% of the time, a student being put on the waitlist was just a delayed deny.  It was essentially the congeniality award for admissions.

I think what he said was true, but over time in this job, I think the opposite can be true too.  I had a student, just this year, get admitted off of the waitlist to her dream school, and everything worked out for her.  She didn’t feel any less joy in getting admitted off of the waitlist…she didn’t feel any less than.

My point is, being waitlisted by a school is complicated.  Both procedurally and emotionally.  So here are some tips to pass along to your students when they are waitlisted:

Read The Fine Print

A lot of students don’t read anything past the “we regret to inform you” part of the decision notification, but urge them to anyway.  Sometimes colleges mask a deferral, or a spring admission offer, in what seems like a deny or a waitlist decision script.  Your student doesn’t have to read the whole thing right away.  They can take a day or two to feel their feelings, but they need to keep reading.  Especially if a college asks them to provide any additional info for their file should the college go to the waitlist.  Also, most colleges require a student to accept their spot on the waitlist, and the instructions about how to do that are within the letter that’s hard to read, so make sure they read it.

Pick Somewhere Else

The obvious advice you must give students who are waiting to hear about the waitlist at a different school is to pick another school.  Often times colleges will notify waitlist students after May 1st, so you don’t want a student to miss out on another school’s admission offer while waiting on the waitlist.  So make sure your student enrolls at another school.  If they get good news from the waitlist school, great.  If they take that spot, worst case scenario, they potentially lose their deposit payment, but the colleges understand that kids get pulled off of the waitlist after they’ve already enrolled.  It’s not unethical for a student to do that whatsoever.  When I was at Pepperdine, we would lose kids to USC’s waitlist all the time.

The other thing you should really encourage your students to do is to pick another school, not only formally, but emotionally.  Just like a bad break up, encourage them to move on to greener pastures.  And if the old school reaches back out, they can make a decision, but encourage them to get pumped about the school that is equally pumped about them.

Study Section C2

One of the best resources in everything we do as college counselors is something called the Common Data Set (CDS).  It’s a massive document that colleges produce each year, and it tells you so many things about the school itself.  Not every school makes their CDS public, but most do.  To find it, simply search “(school name) common data” on your favorite search engine.

Section C of that document is all about undergraduate admission.  And section C2 reports the waitlist activity for that school.  For a student who is still optimistic about getting pulled off of a waitlist, I tell them to check section C2.  It shows three key data points: the number of students offered a spot on the waitlist, the number of students who accepted that spot, and the number of students that were admitted off of the waitlist.  I looked at a private school here in Texas, and one of my favorite private schools in California, and the difference was staggering.  The school in Texas admitted seven students off of the waitlist last year, and the school in California admitted just under 1,500!  This data can help manage a student’s expectations of getting pulled off of a waitlist.

I hope this info was helpful, and I hope your students get more admit letters (and honestly deny letters) than waitlist letters…because I know how hard the waitlist is to navigate.  But having this info and data can hopefully make the process a bit less painful!

Resources

Ashley Boone
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