Waiting list means, You're not in
and you're not out. It's not a great place to be and it can
be a form of disappointment and slowly fading hopes about being
accepted to your most-favored school.
Waiting lists are most common at collage that always have an
excess of quality applicants. Have you ever wondered how colleges
and universities get just the right number of freshman to enroll..
Let's suppose a college has 1,000 open slots for its new freshman
class. After all the thousands of applications are reviewed
and final admission decisions have been made, perhaps 2,000
letters of acceptance are sent out. After years of practice,
this college knows that its yield is 50 percent. That means
that, historically, half of those applicants offered admission
will accept. It's a kind of natural phenomenon.
However, the college has to have a contingency plan just in
case they don't quite get their 50 percent yield. That's where
the Wait List comes in. The Wait List is made up of applicants
who were just not quite good enough to be offered outright acceptance,
but they have been judged capable of doing the college's level
of work. In fact, some Wait List students are the equal of regular
admits; there just isn't room to admit them all. If enrollment
falls short in any given year, the college goes to its Wait
List and offers admission to those student.
If you end up on a Wait List, don't hold your breath waiting
to be accepted. Sometimes--at the last minute--a formerly enrolled
student will withdraw his or her enrollment. That leaves a hole
that can be filled from the Wait List. If you're on that Wait
List, it could be you being offered admission. It's a very long
shot, though. In most cases a student who is wait listed should
pursue other colleges. There are avenues of persuasion such
as a final flurry of personal marketing or letters of appeal
from counselors or alumni, but these are usually not successful.
I hope you're not in waiting listed.
The most important thing as far as waiting list is concern
is your place, if you are among first 5 candidates then you
have a fair chance to be in that particular collage. |