Waiting on a College Wait List? Don't Hold Your Breath

It’s that time of year again.  College acceptances are bringing shouts of joy. But if your kid gets a rejection letter, you’re going to have to deal with some disappointment and maybe some drama.  Moms and dads, you need to be the grown-ups here. Let the kids have their feelings, and even rant and rave if they need to.  Once they’ve gotten it out of their system, remind them that awesome applicants get rejected all the time: Steven Spielberg got rejected from film school at USC and UCLA. So there.

That said, having helped hundreds of families through this process, what I think is hardest to deal with is your child being put on a wait list. What does a wait list mean? Are they “just not that into you”? In fact, it’s probably more about trying to balance out a class. Maybe there were just too many accepted kids from New Jersey, or too many who chose a certain major.  You’ll never really know—and the school won’t say.

The real issue is that wait lists are far too long. They drag out the process, prevent closure, and give false hope to too many. Remember, colleges accept many more kids than they can take anyway, since some they accept will choose other schools. This “yield” is factored in, so they already have a good idea of how the class will be filled. Might an applicant get in off the wait list?  Yes, but the more selective the school the more unlikely that is.  Also, bear in mind that when a school goes to its wait list it is hunting for a specific demographic it is lacking once its initial acceptees reply: tuba players, earth science majors, kids from Oregon—it all depends.  There is no meritocratic “pecking order” to the waitlist.

If your child is waitlisted, get the facts. Visit the College Board Big Future site and search for admissions statistics. Princeton offered 1,395 applicants spots on the wait list last year, and took 33. Over 5,000 were offered a place on Boston University’s wait list, and 70 were enrolled.

There’s always hope, and the standard advice to accept a place on the list and send in any new and impressive accomplishments is fine IF you and your child also remain realistic.  Choose another school and move on. If the wait list opens—and that might not be until mid or even late summer (I had a client get in off a wait list after they had already moved into another school’s dorm!)—see if that school is as alluring as it once seemed. 

FROM:  ARLENE'S ADMISSIONS Fair Haven, NJ

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