The Annual Waitlist / Waiting Pool Reality Check Thread

[Anonymous]

Agree. If you know you’re not going to attend a school, go ahead and tell them. But, it’s not going to change their yield calculations nor have them “go to the waiting pool” as so many incorrectly think.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes, agree with all this AND if you know you are turning down a school, it really is just best practice to let a school know as soon as you have made that decision. Like anything, admissions offices are competing with other schools and an uncertain local economy. It is not a perfect science. The sooner they have this information, the faster they would potentially look at their wait-pool. It isn't as helpful when people wait until the final day for no real reason.

They will only look at the wait pool when all the results are in and they know where they are against their projected yield.

They don't keep a running tally. That's just additional work.

Seems like it would be easy enough to keep a running tally - I would bet most admissions software platforms will do this for them. If things are trending towards needing to dip into the pool you might do it sooner to get an offer out better candidate (and give them 12-24 hours to accept).
That said, I also expect that these software platforms are really good at predicting yield based on past data and characteristics of who offers went out to (sibling, legacy, 1st choice indicated, etc) which is why schools rarely need to dip into the wait list/pool.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes, agree with all this AND if you know you are turning down a school, it really is just best practice to let a school know as soon as you have made that decision. Like anything, admissions offices are competing with other schools and an uncertain local economy. It is not a perfect science. The sooner they have this information, the faster they would potentially look at their wait-pool. It isn't as helpful when people wait until the final day for no real reason.

They will only look at the wait pool when all the results are in and they know where they are against their projected yield.

They don't keep a running tally. That's just additional work.

Seems like it would be easy enough to keep a running tally - I would bet most admissions software platforms will do this for them. If things are trending towards needing to dip into the pool you might do it sooner to get an offer out better candidate (and give them 12-24 hours to accept).
That said, I also expect that these software platforms are really good at predicting yield based on past data and characteristics of who offers went out to (sibling, legacy, 1st choice indicated, etc) which is why schools rarely need to dip into the wait list/pool.

In these busy offices with small staffs they have to follow a process to be efficient. When they get the acceptances of admissions offers back, they'll understand it there is a need to go to the WL AND just what attributes they are looking for in the WL.

You are on the right point. Waitlists are a pain for them to administer because you have to extend offers of admittance and then see if they are accepted before offering more acceptances. You cannot overbook the class.

So there's a lot of pressure to get the yield percentage as close to reality as possible. That's one of the reasons they like to know where else candidates applied so they can get an idea of the competition.

They not only have years of data. They have a subjective feel based on years of experience.

[Anonymous]

Except the number of students that they need to pull from the wait pool is usually either zero or in the low single digits. It may be manual, but it doesn’t happen often. And after all, for the schools that waitlist nearly all denied applicants, they have plenty of options to find the quarterback, tuba player or national champion of tiddly winks.

[Anonymous]

Every year, someone want to know “who is declining spots so they know if the wait pool will move.” Please see page 1 of this thread.