Does Waitlist Mean Rejection – In 30% of Cases The Answer is YES

Getting waitlisted from a college means being put in between an acceptance and a rejection. You have neither gained admission nor been denied acceptance. However, the waitlist always turns into either an acceptance or rejection.

The college/university will follow up at a later date and inform the student on whether they were accepted or not. 

If you were waitlisted read this article till the end before accepting the offer from the college.

I will explain how to find out how high your chances are, how to put yourself in the best position to be accepted, and how to cope with rejection.

But first, let’s look at some interesting facts.

5 Interesting Facts About College Waitlists

I collected the information about the top 318 colleges – the list came from Princeton Review.

Only 198 colleges presented waitlist data in the form of CDS (Common Data Set), so all stats below are based on the data from those institutions.

26 Colleges Admit No One off the Waitlist

Most colleges that do not accept anyone from their lists are very selective.

I think you wouldn’t be surprised to see Princeton and MIT among them.

The worst thing about this is that so many students accept a place on the waiting list without realizing that they have zero chance of getting admitted.

But why do colleges do that? Why do they waitlist students without the intention of admitting them later?

There is a phenomenon called soft denial: some admission officers want to soften the blow of being rejected. They think that being waitlisted is better than being rejected.

But the fact is that in the case of colleges that accept 0 students, waitlist means denied acceptance.

So, if your dream college is in the list below, you better move on and not hope of being admitted later:

If you are wondering why colleges use wait lists, then there are 3 main reasons:

• Gauging demonstrated interest. Basically, applicants are given a choice to either continue on the waitlist or pull their application. If you accept your spot, you are essentially showing the college that you are very interested in them. Consider it a final test to ensure you’re serious about attending the school. 

• The college likes you, but they want to see how many accepted students enroll. Schools have a limited number of students they can support (in terms of housing, financial aid, class size, etc.), so if the number of students who decide to enroll is lower than the college projects, they start accepting students off the waitlist. 

• Yield Protection. Yield is the ratio of students who enrolled to the students accepted. The higher the yield, the more prestigious the college. Accepting students off the waitlist helps increase the school’s yield.

34 Colleges Accept Less than 1% of Students

The next list is marginally better – universities that accept less than 1% of applicants.

For example, Carnegie Mellon University offered 8,986 spots, and 4,652 students accepted the waitlist offer. However, only 43 students were admitted later, which corresponds to the acceptance rate of 0.92%.

While 1% is better than 0, the reality is that you will most likely be rejected if you were waitlisted by these colleges:

If you add 26 colleges that accept no one and 34 that accept less than 1%, the number of colleges that recruit to reject amounts to 30%.

63% of Top Colleges Accept Less Than 10% Off Waitlist

Here’s the distribution of admit rates for the top colleges in our research.

As you can see from the chart above, the majority of colleges, around 63% (or 126 of 198) accept less than 10% of students off their waitlists.

8 Universities Accept Everyone

While the odds of getting in are not high, there is still hope for some students.

We found 8 colleges that accept everyone who agrees to get on the waitlist:

Only 5 Colleges Rank Candidates

Most students believe that there the waitlist is ordered and someone ranked #10 has higher chances than someone ranked #100.

In most cases, this is not true.

How do colleges decide who will be admitted eventually?

As a general rule, colleges have a certain number of spots to fill for the upcoming class.

After the May 1st deadline, they are able to see exactly how many students choose to enroll.

If there are spots still available, then they look at the waitlist. 

Another important factor regarding available spaces is a certain college/major falling short of students.

It’s not only a general number that the university expects to have, but also professors and other faculty expecting a certain number of students to take their class.

Let me explain with an example:

Northwestern University has six colleges: Weinberg College of Arts & Sciences, McCormick College of Engineering, School of Communication, Medill School of Journalism, School of Education & Social Policy, and Bienen School of Music.

Within these schools, you have different majors as well. 

Let’s say that there are plenty of people in all but one college: the McCormick College of Engineering.

Admissions officers would then look at the waitlist and decide amongst students who applied with an intended major that is found in the McCormick College of Engineering. 

And since admissions do not know who will matriculate, they don’t need to rank students in their pool.

Except for these colleges:

The following is a table with waitlist statistics for 198 top colleges: use search to see your chances of being admitted:

Is Being Waitlisted Bad or Good

As explained above, in most cases, being waitlisted does not mean being admitted or rejected, so it is neither bad nor good.

On the other hand, your chances of being admitted are slim (less than 10% in 63% of colleges).

If this is your dream college, I understand that you want to do anything to turn the decision to yes, but usually it’s best to start thinking about spending next year in one of the universities that accepted you.

Still, if you want to accept the waitlist offer, let me give you some tips.

First, do not accept the offer immediately. Normally, you have a deadline by which you need to decide whether you get on the list or not.

However, if you wait a day or two, your decision will come across as thoughtful as opposed to a knee-jerk reaction.

Second, be sure to provide updates about your awards and achievements that happen before the final decisions come out. On the other hand, if there is nothing worth noting happens during this time, it is ok not to bug admissions.

Difference between waitlist and deferred

In both cases, the college is unsure about the final decision, but with deferred, there are two scenarios:

1) you applied early to the school, and they push you into the regular pool

2) they want you to send more information in before they make their decision

For those who aren’t familiar with applying early to a college, it is exactly as it sounds. Regular application deadlines are usually in the beginning of January, but early application deadlines are sometime in November.

There are two kinds of early applications: early decision (ED) and early action (EA). ED is binding, which means you agree to go to the college if accepted, whereas EA is not. Decisions for early applicants come out sometime in December, so students who apply early can get into a college before some people have even submitted their application(s). 

Anyways, a college, instead of rejecting an early applicant, can push them into the regular application pool.

Most of the time, they want to see your grades for that semester, but they can also ask for things such as additional recommendation letters. 

Can you accept multiple waitlist offers?

You are allowed to accept multiple waitlist offers, but there are a few things to keep in mind when deciding if you should accept a waitlist and how many waitlists to accept. 

National Decision Day is on May 1st, and that’s when you decide which college to accept. When you do make your decision, you have to submit a deposit of usually a few hundred dollars.

You make the deposit to secure your spot in the college, but you aren’t officially enrolled. 

Waitlist decisions come AFTER the May 1st deadline.

The deposit mentioned above doesn’t mean you’re enrolled. If you were to put a deposit down for a school but then decide to go to another school after they accepted you off the waitlist, you lose the money you put into the deposit. 

So make sure you secure a deposit at another school even if you truly want to wait for that waitlist decision. 

When do waitlist results come out?

Waitlist decisions come after the National Decision Day (May 1st) deadline, however, there is no national waitlist decision day.

Your waitlist decision can come out a couple of weeks after the May 1st deadline or a couple of months after the deadline.