Waitlist or Deferred? Here's the Best Way Forward.

The waitlist. You’re not quite in the school, but you’re not rejected either. It’s when you have your foot in the door (though it may feel like it’s just a finger) but you haven’t yet managed to pry the door open.

So, you were put on the waitlist. Does it mean that you’re not a strong candidate? Of course not! You were placed on the waitlist because you ARE a strong enough candidate to get in, but the college just – for whatever reason – didn’t have room for you.

There are many reasons that you may have been placed on the waitlist:

• There may have been a single flaw in an otherwise quite strong application. For example, maybe you have one D on your transcript that isn’t adequately explained, or you have fewer extracurricular activities than most admitted applicants.

• They didn’t think that you’d accept an offer of admission. Maybe they didn’t think their school would be a good fit for you or maybe they thought you were too STRONG a candidate and would get into (and go to) a higher-tier school.

• You didn’t stand out. This doesn’t mean that you’re not special. (Because you ARE special!) It just means that your application failed to convey your uniqueness.

• The thing or things that make you unique don’t match the school’s “institutional needs.”

Particularly for this last one, there’s not much that you could have done differently. For example, if the band’s oboe player is graduating, they’ll preferentially select a student who plays the oboe. There’s no way that you can know about this going in and nothing that you could have done about it.

What to do if you’re waitlisted or deferred

If you got on the waitlist, you were NOT rejected. You were only waitlisted. (And congratulations – that really IS an accomplishment!) The term “waitlist” means that you’re waiting for someone that the college has admitted to decline the offer. But there are a number of things you can do that will increase your chances of turning your waitlist spot into an offer of admission.

Now that you’re on the waitlist you are competing only against the other waitlisted students – to make sure that, when a spot opens up, YOU are the student selected to fill it.

What you can (and SHOULD) do next:

• Decide if that really is your top-choice school. If it’s not, then settle back, and allow the waitlist spots to be filled by students who are truly dying to attend that university.

• If it is your top choice, and you’d definitely attend if accepted, write the college’s admissions team a “letter of continued interest.”

The letter of continued interest can drastically boost your chances of acceptance

Perhaps, at this point, you’re thinking: “I’ve spent the last couple months, even the last year, writing all sorts of application letters to all sorts of colleges. Do I really need to write another one?” The answer is yes, you do. Let’s look at the statistics from some top universities. Carnegie Mellon University takes only 4% of students off its waitlist. Princeton takes 5%. The University of Pennsylvania takes 8%, and Vanderbilt University takes a mere 4%.

However, there’s a positive spin that can be put on all of this. College waitlists aren’t ranked, which means that there’s no numbering. (In other words, college admissions teams do NOT take people off of the waitlist in any set order; there’s no, “Okay, we have three spots, so that’s Joe, Nick, and Susie. Beth was in spot #4, so no luck for her!”) When a student refuses an offer of admission, the entire pool of waitlisted applicants is re-examined. The good side? This means that, as a waitlisted applicant expressing continued interest, you can dramatically increase your chances of being chosen.

How to write that letter?

You want your letter of continued interest to be a joy to read. It shouldn’t feel like drudgery, and shouldn’t be a repeat of the numerics of your application but should include information about .

Here’s how NOT to do it!

Dear Stanford, I would like to remind you that my GPA is 3.97, which is ABOVE your average of 3.69 (according to PREPSCHOLAR.COM), and you also didn’t know when I applied that I won the presidential medal of fitness, which is really hard to do while keeping up a stellar GPA like 3.97, but I did it so that’s why you should definitely take me off the waitlist. Taylor.

Okay, what’s wrong with this letter. Maybe the real question is: what ISN’T wrong with this letter? Aside from the bad grammar (misused capitalization, a long, run-on sentence, etc.), this letter of continued interest does nothing to explain why Taylor was a good fit for the university that the admissions office might have overlooked.

Don’t repeat things like your GPA; they’ve already seen that. Your letter should  highlight your personality so that the admissions team is convinced that you’re a good fit for this school. Here’s an example of a superior version from the same student:

Dear Marcel Hite and Stanford Admissions Team,

Stanford is a school of leaders and entrepreneurs, and I worry that my application failed to highlight my own entrepreneurial spirit. From a young age, I’ve been on a quest to maximize my own physique, and I’ve developed my own workout regimen that I follow religiously. I’d love to carry this forward as a Stanford student, and help others attain the discipline and focus that I’ve worked to master.

It was a rocky start, with me slowly learning to balance classwork and gym work (a failure that resulted in that “D” in chemistry in my sophomore year), but I’ve come a long way since then. I mentioned my bodybuilding regime in my application essay, but what I couldn’t mention (because I didn’t know it then!) was that, after I submitted my application, I was awarded the Presidential Medal of Fitness! For me, it proves the efficacy of the training regimen I’ve developed. If I’m admitted to Stanford, I would join or even spearhead a bodybuilding club where I can share what I’ve learned, to help students like myself make the most out of our physical bodies.

Thank you for offering me a spot on the waitlist at such an incredible school! I would be honored to be offered admission to Stanford, where I could use my entrepreneurial spirit to form a league of like-minded students who seek to perfect ourselves through bodybuilding’s rigor and focus.

Taylor M.

What’s the difference? The second letter of continued interest does several things that are key in these sorts of letters:

• Taylor looked up the admissions officer for their region (Contra Costa County).

Not every school will have this information available, but many of them will. This is easy to do and these data are often publicly available online. Go the extra mile.

• You want the admissions team to know that you’re academically capable of success at their school. Taylor mentions how they’ve learned to balance coursework and extracurriculars.

• If there are any discrepancies in your coursework, try to address them. Taylor addresses the “D” they got in sophomore year as part of the process of learning to balance class work and gym work.

• You should also emphasize (and mean it!) that you WILL accept a spot if offered one. Colleges want to fill their incoming class, and being someone who guarantees you’ll attend will up your chances of being selected. Taylor makes sure to reassure the admissions team that Stanford is their top choice.

• You should mention any new items on your resume or anything that you continued from the previous semester that may help you stand out. In Taylor’s case, the “Presidential Medal of Fitness” was additional information that is important to mention. 

• And thank them for offering you a spot on the waitlist! The little courtesies can go a long way!

Does the perfect letter of continued interest guarantee a student acceptance off the waitlist? Unfortunately, no; nothing can guarantee you acceptance. However, it will boost your chances well upwards of the published admissions rates of five or eight percent. A good letter of continued interest tells that admissions team that you’re still very serious about their school, demonstrates that you ARE, in fact, an excellent candidate (and that you’d make an excellent addition to the incoming class) and it will make your name shine out in their minds when a spot opens.

Nothing can guarantee you acceptance off the waitlist. But a well-written letter of continued interest can give you the best shot of getting off of the waitlist and into the school of your dreams.