Colleges Increase Wait Lists

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. The usage of Wait Lists varies from year to year, based on their strategy of how many students to accept, as well as the percentage of admitted students who choose to attend. The wait list has become a way for colleges to offset the uncertainty of predicting yield.

For instance, Cornell University placed almost 10,000 students on a Wait List from 2009-2011, and didn’t accept one student in 2012.

 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.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.

Most colleges have not yet released statistics from 2012, though Harvard reports admitting 46 students from its wait list.