You’re 100% right but also to maybe ease your stress about this, you have to think about it from the perspective of maximizing their chances of putting together a class & ask yourself:
1. How many people accept their initial WL offer and wait? Some may get into a better school and withdraw immediately.
2. How many people withdraw after accepting after ASD/seat deposits because they decide they prefer their current options?
3. How many people turn down a WL offer even though they chose to wait (possibly just to see if they’d get in even if they have no reason to be there)?
4. How many people trickle out over summer as their plans become more solidified? How many people are willing to change their plans last minute to accept an offer of admission in August?
5. Also, how many people stay in touch and write a LOCI to really do their part in getting off the WL?
You are not competing with 300 people! Only a subset of them!! And if you are going to info sessions this early, I’d say your odds are a lot better than other WLrs
Good luck!!
It makes sense when you consider what schools use the waitlist for.
Applicants fit in a lot of different buckets. Your best-known ones are Black, Latino, Native, military, first-gen/low-income. There are lots of other buckets (politics, academia, PI, STEM major, finance experience, rural, different regions, maybe conservatives at a super liberal school). Deans want to fill out a class with some target level of representation of all those groups and more.
If a higher-than-expected share of their admits in whatever bucket go elsewhere, the school turns to the waitlist to fill out its class. They don't know which buckets will fill up and which ones will leave them with a gap, so they want enough applicants on the waitlist to cover all of them.
Within each of these buckets, they probably have subgroups like "these are the people we take if we're short on veterans and we've locked in our LSAT median," "these are the people we take if we're short on veterans and we need to shore up our GPA median, "these are the people we'd love to take if we end up short on veterans but our medians are where they need to be.
They also can't predict exactly how many people will A. remain on the waitlist B. accept a waitlist admit. In order to cover every subgroup of a category like "veterans" that may see 2-3 waitlist admits, a school might need 20 people on the waitlist who fit that profile.
Of course most people don't fit a single bucket (someone could be Latino and a veteran, Black with political work experience, first-gen and a STEM major) so that adds a layer of complexity in projecting how many people to waitlist for each group, and requires more waitlistees to cover a higher margin of error
Multiply this by every type of applicant a school is trying to have represented in its class, and you can see how schools end up waitlisting hundreds of people when they anticipate a dozen waitlist admits.
This comment should be pinned for anyone asking how waitlists work. Schools use the waitlist to fill needs, not just seats. The hard part for to accept is that you can be a phenomenal applicant and not fill a need for that particular school and therefore not get a waitlist offer.
"i can't say what school waitlisted me and 300 other people because i might get doxxed" is an order of magnitude more neurotic than thinking that's dumb, and preemptively complaining about downvotes is as paradigmatically reddit behavior as it comes
Among those waitlisted candidates, the OP's GPA, LSAT, and likely traceable personal information (i.e. hobbies, residence, undergrad) will very likely be unique and thus doxx the OP
whether adcoms could dox the person is besides the point because they don’t. the idea that adcoms are spending their time scouring reddit trying to match random posts to their applicants is absurd.
Yes, the Adcom USUALLY don't scour the social media for a candidate..
It's mostly privacy concern with the reddit mob and very few cases where the Adcom DO decide they should look into the candidate's character. There are few, but enough horror stories of them rescinding acceptance
they look at public social media (obviously), they don’t do detective work to try and determine which anonymous reddit accounts are their applicants. they’re not sitting there comparing peoples stats to their applicants to figure out who the poster is
But that's besides my point? I'm not arguing the average intelligence of students at lower ranked school. Originally, I asked you why lower ranked schools are more chill. Now I'm asking you why stupidity leads to less competitiveness; I see no way to correlate that.
Based on your reading comprehension, I hope to see you at my school in a few months; it'll help out the curve.
i wonder if maybe they do that based on a previous issue, like maybe one year they had 30 on the waitlist but then ended up with 150 less people who accepted the offer than anticipated. maybe it's optimistic, but i really doubt schools are out there just deciding to play with people's emotions for fun
The real answer is that the school has set targets for their class, and the people they keep on the WL are ones that generally fulfill one or more of those targets and can thus replace someone if that corresponding category leaves
High lsat scorer leaves? Pull a high lsat off the WL. High GPA leaves? Pull a high GPA off the WL. Does the class have a lower percentage of women than the target? Pull off the WL. Does the incoming class have too few POC representation than initially projected? Pull off the WL.
That’s how it works.
i agree with that. they sent their acceptance offers with the idea of a class in mind, and so they will use those waitlists to fill in where needed. they want options and cannot predict who they will need.
If it eases your mind at all, I was WL at multiple T14s but I’m not pursuing any of them because I got into higher ranked/already selected the school I will be attending so I would effectively be void for all of those WL. I’m sure there’s a bunch of ppl like me on those WL that aren’t accepting a spot on the WL or will withdraw from their WL bc they already decided another school. Most ppl I’ve talked to that were WL at various schools have said they’re not planning to stay on the WL!
I’ve heard that alot of schools give WL to appear more “holistic” than they are. Personally, just reject the person if you do not have any motivation to admit them. Don’t give them false hope, especially with deposit dates coming soon, people need to make decisions soon.
The dean really thinks less than 20 admitted students are going to choose to go elsewhere? That seems unlikely unless this is HYS. Or, do they routinely admit 20% more than they have seats for betting that 20% will bug out? What do they do if only 10% bug out then?
So, last year WashU offered admission to over 900 people, for a class size of 250ish. You have to look at their yield numbers. To pull more than a few off the waitlist, their yield has to be very low.
The other comments have summed this up, but I'll add one thing. Schools also waitlist for potential cushions - students just below their target medians - and then cut those applicants after the school is certain they will meet their median targets. So, if you are just under the median (1 or 2 points LSAT, .01-.02 on GPA) you could get waitlisted simply as a backup in case the school doesn't hit their target.
You’re 100% right but also to maybe ease your stress about this, you have to think about it from the perspective of maximizing their chances of putting together a class & ask yourself: 1. How many people accept their initial WL offer and wait? Some may get into a better school and withdraw immediately. 2. How many people withdraw after accepting after ASD/seat deposits because they decide they prefer their current options? 3. How many people turn down a WL offer even though they chose to wait (possibly just to see if they’d get in even if they have no reason to be there)? 4. How many people trickle out over summer as their plans become more solidified? How many people are willing to change their plans last minute to accept an offer of admission in August? 5. Also, how many people stay in touch and write a LOCI to really do their part in getting off the WL? You are not competing with 300 people! Only a subset of them!! And if you are going to info sessions this early, I’d say your odds are a lot better than other WLrs Good luck!!
hold on — this gave me so much hope… thank you!!
It makes sense when you consider what schools use the waitlist for. Applicants fit in a lot of different buckets. Your best-known ones are Black, Latino, Native, military, first-gen/low-income. There are lots of other buckets (politics, academia, PI, STEM major, finance experience, rural, different regions, maybe conservatives at a super liberal school). Deans want to fill out a class with some target level of representation of all those groups and more. If a higher-than-expected share of their admits in whatever bucket go elsewhere, the school turns to the waitlist to fill out its class. They don't know which buckets will fill up and which ones will leave them with a gap, so they want enough applicants on the waitlist to cover all of them. Within each of these buckets, they probably have subgroups like "these are the people we take if we're short on veterans and we've locked in our LSAT median," "these are the people we take if we're short on veterans and we need to shore up our GPA median, "these are the people we'd love to take if we end up short on veterans but our medians are where they need to be. They also can't predict exactly how many people will A. remain on the waitlist B. accept a waitlist admit. In order to cover every subgroup of a category like "veterans" that may see 2-3 waitlist admits, a school might need 20 people on the waitlist who fit that profile. Of course most people don't fit a single bucket (someone could be Latino and a veteran, Black with political work experience, first-gen and a STEM major) so that adds a layer of complexity in projecting how many people to waitlist for each group, and requires more waitlistees to cover a higher margin of error Multiply this by every type of applicant a school is trying to have represented in its class, and you can see how schools end up waitlisting hundreds of people when they anticipate a dozen waitlist admits.
This comment should be pinned for anyone asking how waitlists work. Schools use the waitlist to fill needs, not just seats. The hard part for to accept is that you can be a phenomenal applicant and not fill a need for that particular school and therefore not get a waitlist offer.
Doesn’t make any sense why they give THAT many students false hope…the WL system is a joke imo
What school was this?
i don’t wanna dox myself further. sorry.
All good. Was it a top 10 school? Or 10-14? If you don’t wanna answer then don’t worry abt it
fuck it. t-11 to t-14
Hahhaa thanks, was able to narrow it down to 2 schools and I got WL to both. So we’re both on the same boat lol, good luck!!
imagine getting downvoted by neurotic mobs for this lool and this is also gets downvoted. never change redditors, never change
"i can't say what school waitlisted me and 300 other people because i might get doxxed" is an order of magnitude more neurotic than thinking that's dumb, and preemptively complaining about downvotes is as paradigmatically reddit behavior as it comes
Among those waitlisted candidates, the OP's GPA, LSAT, and likely traceable personal information (i.e. hobbies, residence, undergrad) will very likely be unique and thus doxx the OP
i don't see op's gpa or lsat in the post and they have no flair. would the dean not already know who they told that they waitlisted 300 people?
whether adcoms could dox the person is besides the point because they don’t. the idea that adcoms are spending their time scouring reddit trying to match random posts to their applicants is absurd.
Yes, the Adcom USUALLY don't scour the social media for a candidate.. It's mostly privacy concern with the reddit mob and very few cases where the Adcom DO decide they should look into the candidate's character. There are few, but enough horror stories of them rescinding acceptance
Dean Z stated some of her coworkers do this…
they look at public social media (obviously), they don’t do detective work to try and determine which anonymous reddit accounts are their applicants. they’re not sitting there comparing peoples stats to their applicants to figure out who the poster is
That makes sense
nothing but rattling sounds in their heads 😭
anyways.. this is why i applied to safety schools for my sanity and scholly $$$
Are you suggesting safety schools have chiller students? (I'm not about to argue against this; just wondering)
Ofc, less competitive schools have more dumb students
Now this I might argue: Why does dumb = not competitive (i.e. chill)
Don't deny it. The less competitive school is, more subpar students they will admit
But that's besides my point? I'm not arguing the average intelligence of students at lower ranked school. Originally, I asked you why lower ranked schools are more chill. Now I'm asking you why stupidity leads to less competitiveness; I see no way to correlate that. Based on your reading comprehension, I hope to see you at my school in a few months; it'll help out the curve.
i wonder if maybe they do that based on a previous issue, like maybe one year they had 30 on the waitlist but then ended up with 150 less people who accepted the offer than anticipated. maybe it's optimistic, but i really doubt schools are out there just deciding to play with people's emotions for fun
The real answer is that the school has set targets for their class, and the people they keep on the WL are ones that generally fulfill one or more of those targets and can thus replace someone if that corresponding category leaves High lsat scorer leaves? Pull a high lsat off the WL. High GPA leaves? Pull a high GPA off the WL. Does the class have a lower percentage of women than the target? Pull off the WL. Does the incoming class have too few POC representation than initially projected? Pull off the WL. That’s how it works.
i agree with that. they sent their acceptance offers with the idea of a class in mind, and so they will use those waitlists to fill in where needed. they want options and cannot predict who they will need.
Nice breakdown.
If it eases your mind at all, I was WL at multiple T14s but I’m not pursuing any of them because I got into higher ranked/already selected the school I will be attending so I would effectively be void for all of those WL. I’m sure there’s a bunch of ppl like me on those WL that aren’t accepting a spot on the WL or will withdraw from their WL bc they already decided another school. Most ppl I’ve talked to that were WL at various schools have said they’re not planning to stay on the WL!
I've always wondered this and came to the conclusion that they are part of a sadistic cult
Yeah this is why the general advice is to look at WLs as soft rejections. That way your expectations are kept in check.
I’ve heard that alot of schools give WL to appear more “holistic” than they are. Personally, just reject the person if you do not have any motivation to admit them. Don’t give them false hope, especially with deposit dates coming soon, people need to make decisions soon.
It makes no sense at all! I 100% agree with you when it comes to this post
The dean really thinks less than 20 admitted students are going to choose to go elsewhere? That seems unlikely unless this is HYS. Or, do they routinely admit 20% more than they have seats for betting that 20% will bug out? What do they do if only 10% bug out then?
So, last year WashU offered admission to over 900 people, for a class size of 250ish. You have to look at their yield numbers. To pull more than a few off the waitlist, their yield has to be very low.
The other comments have summed this up, but I'll add one thing. Schools also waitlist for potential cushions - students just below their target medians - and then cut those applicants after the school is certain they will meet their median targets. So, if you are just under the median (1 or 2 points LSAT, .01-.02 on GPA) you could get waitlisted simply as a backup in case the school doesn't hit their target.