Why the Waitlist

        As students receive their admissions decisions from colleges this fall, some of those will result in students being waitlisted. Waitlists have somewhat of a nefarious reputation in college admissions, especially from the high school perspective, so let’s take a deep dive into why they exist and what they mean to colleges.

To the college, a waitlist is a valuable tool. A college’s admit class, or their freshmen class, is at the core of everything they do. Colleges have targets they must hit within their freshmen class that are crucial to their budgeting and other considerations. The problem is that it is extraordinarily difficult for a college to pinpoint what will happen in the admissions cycle.

Let’s say, for example, that last year a college received 20,000 applications. They can probably expect about that same number again next year, but what happens if the football team goes hot or cold in the fall? Or, if there just happens to be a spike or dip in their applicants? 18,000 applications or 22,000 applications instead of 20,000 can be very significant. Further, even if a college does receive about the same number of applicants and admits their regular percentage of those, they still can’t be sure how many of those students will actually decide to attend.

I recently had a college admissions rep tell me that if a class ends up being just 1.5% larger than they anticipate, they’ll face a housing crisis. If their class is 1.5% too small, they’ll face a $2,000,000 budget shortfall (this was someone from an extremely small college so this was a significant number for the)

The solution to this for the college is the waitlist. I’m not so sure about that word though–”waitlist”. The word implies some order or rank and there’s usually no such thing on college admission waitlists. We would probably all do better if we used the word “waitpool”.

Here’s why. So, a college is going to do its best to hit its admissions target, but as the admissions cycle churns on, it might turn to the waitlist to ensure it nails its target. However, the student who has the highest SAT score or grades might not be the first one in. A college is more likely to go run some demographics within the waitlist (or waitpool). They might say, for example, “We’re low on out-of-state commitments, we haven’t hit our target for the College of Engineering, and we’re a little off balance on girls and boys”. So, out-of-state girls majoring in engineering, all get an invite off the waitlist. If a college is in really bad shape, this group might even get an impressive aid package so they can be more certain they hit their target.. 

To many, this can seem unfair because it can mean some less qualified students receive admission offers that others don’t. Colleges don’t have a lot of options though. After all, budgeting is always extremely important and if you build your university around XYZ, it’s not very easy to suddenly see a freshmen class that represents ABC.