The Waitlist: What Is It, And How Can I Get Off It?

When it comes time for college applicants to open emails and check their admissions results, their nerves are understandably on edge. Will there be acceptance or rejection waiting for them on the other side? There is a third option, however: the waitlist, which, to many nervous students, may seem like an even more worrying result. “What about my application wasn’t enough for my dream college?” they may wonder. “Why didn’t they outright reject me? Do I still have a chance to get in?” Students may even wish they had just gotten rejected—it would be a clearer answer. 

But the waitlist doesn’t have to be a source of so much confusion. Here’s some information to help you better understand what the waitlist actually means:

What is the waitlist, exactly, and how does it differ from a deferral?

If a student is placed on a college’s waitlist, the student has essentially been placed in a kind of “application limbo”; the student does not currently have a place in the incoming class, but still retains a small chance of being accepted later in the application season. It’s important to know that being placed on a waitlist is not the same as being deferred. Being deferred means that your application will be reconsidered in a later application pool (e.g. a deferred Early Action application will be reconsidered along with the later Regular Decision applicants instead) or upon submission of other information (e.g. test scores). The applications of waitlisted students,, on the other hand, have been fully evaluated, and simply await a future chance of being accepted.

Why do colleges waitlist so many students?

1. To control the admit rate. Colleges are very concerned with their admit rate, especially prestigious schools who pride themselves in their selectivity, and the waitlist is the perfect buffer for them to use so that they can better manage the number of incoming freshmen. If not enough students accept a college’s offer of admission, then the college can then pull in some students on standby from the waitlist; if too many students accept their spot in a college’s incoming class, the college can avoid overflowing its class size by not accepting any students from their waitlist. This flexibility means colleges are highly motivated to put many qualified students on the waitlist rather than outright accept or reject them.

2. Because colleges don’t have enough space to admit more students. Colleges receive applications from thousands of high school students, and they cannot feasibly accept every qualified student they evaluate, even if those students completely meet their standards. Whether this is because there are simply too many students of similar caliber, or because there are students who are even more qualified who the colleges decide to prioritize, colleges without enough space for an otherwise would-be-accepted applicant often waitlist qualified students so as to avoid outright rejecting them and sending the wrong signal that the college found the student unsatisfactory.

3. To soften the blow of what would otherwise be a rejection. Sometimes, the waitlisted student’s worst fear is unfortunately true: colleges evaluate applicants and don’t find them a good fit for their incoming class, but place them on the waitlist anyway. This can be a strategic choice to avoid a harsh delivery of the bad news; for example, if an applicant is from a high school that has rarely produced applicants in the past, the college may use the waitlist so as to not discourage students from that same high school from applying in the future. 

4. To maximize yield rate. Colleges highly prioritize yield rate, or the percentage of students who actually end up accepting a college’s offer of admission. Yield rate suffers when accepted students turn down a college’s offer, and so colleges end up wary of students who apply to their institutions as a backup plan or as one of many other desired schools. This is one of the primary reasons for many qualified students’ placement on the waitlist; colleges may reason that their offer of admission would only be one of many others from similar (or even more prestigious) institutions, and if the qualified student appears disinterested in the college, the admissions office may assume that the applicant is unlikely to enroll even in the case of acceptance. (Luckily, students in this situation are also more likely to be accepted from the waitlist, should they continue to show interest in the college.)

What has the waitlist looked like this past application season (2020-2021)?

With the pandemic and changing application policies, this year has been a pivotal one for college applications. For one, the number of applications sent to colleges skyrocketed this application cycle; nearly 6 million first-year college applications were sent through the Common Application platform, 11% more than were sent last year. In the face of this influx of applications, college admit rates plummeted. Harvard’s admit rate, for example, dropped from last year’s 5% to an even more selective 3.4%.

What does this mean for the waitlist, then? Well, with lower admit rates comes larger waitlists, too. Colleges across the nation received thousands more applications this admissions cycle—for some, even tens of thousands more—and this meant colleges were even more uncertain about regulating incoming class size and yield rate. The natural solution, then, was to push even more applicants to the growing waitlist. A longer waitlist, then, meant even lower chances of successfully being pulled from it. In other words, this past application season, students across the world were both more likely to be waitlisted and less likely to be accepted from their waitlisted spot.

So what should waitlisted students do?

1. Take your spot on the waitlist. First things first: the email students receive, informing them of their waitlisted status, will often ask them to confirm if they would like to stay on the waitlist—make sure you do just that! 

2. Check with the school regarding supplemental materials they may want to see from waitlisted students, e.g. better grades and more letters of recommendation, and also take note of what the school specifically does not want to see. Some colleges may even request that you send no additional application materials, and if so, you will definitely want to avoid submitting any further information.

3. Write a letter to communicate sustained interest. This letter should make it very clear that you are indeed still highly interested in your college of choice, and that the college is in fact a top choice for you. This letter also gives you a chance to communicate any new information (again, if the college expresses that they want to hear about new information), including awards, honors, or updates to projects you had been working on. 

4. Take a few deep breaths and relax. It may be very stressful to find out that you’ve been waitlisted, and given the uncertainty of it, such a reaction is understandable. However, after the above steps, you’ve done all that you can do to communicate your interest in the school and increase your chances of getting in. Don’t try to continuously contact the school for updates on your application; you’ve done your best, and stressing about it further won’t help your chances. Relax, be proud of what you’ve done, and don’t let a waitlist placement distract you from the results of your other applications!

The waitlist may be worrying, and this year’s waitlist prospects even more so; however, with the above information and tips, you’ll be well-equipped to understand the elusive waitlist further, and to boost your own chances of getting accepted from the waitlist as well.