Pioneer High

Many students frequently find themselves in the unhappy position of having been deferred or wait-listed at their first choice school. The following information should be helpful both in terms of what to do, as well as what the chances are of still being admitted in these situations.

From College Confidential.com

Accept, reject, and wait list are scenarios that run through the minds of college applicants until spring, when colleges send out their decision letters. Yet, this time of year, some early admission applicants are getting familiar with another application outcome: deferral. The jury will be out for these applicants, rolled over to the general applicant pool, until the Regular Decision general admissions cycle has run its course. Deferrals are the purgatory of Early Decision and Early Action (ED/EA) college admissions. You're not in, but you're not out. You're just hanging there, waiting for the April Regular Decision-shoe to fall. It's exquisite anguish. 

Many applicants would much rather be rejected outright so that they can just get on with things, without the unfinished business of "admit" or "deny" hanging over them. Most likely, if you've been deferred your credentials are in the ballpark for getting accepted. If they weren't, you'd be rejected. However, your application wasn't so far above average that the college wanted to give up a spot in the entering class until they could compare you to the full applicant pool. The percentages vary from college to college, but many students do get accepted after being deferred.

Deferral can signal hope, or be like a mirage in the desert, something that was never there in the first place. The circumstances surrounding the deferral are what really count here. Why do schools issue deferrals? "Sometimes, schools want to see a high school senior's first quarter or semester grades before they make a decision" on early admissions applicants, says Senior Consultant, Nadine C. Warner. Warner, a former a former assistant director of admissions at the University of Chicago, adds, "Other times they want to see if other students from the school are going to apply during the Regular Decision admissions cycle so they can compare this student with the other students."

The point is that schools want to see how an early decision applicant looks in comparison to the big picture, the general applicant pool. Admissions officers are eager to fill up first-year classes with top applicants and in the process bolster their school's prestige by attracting the most accomplished students. And, to muddy the waters even more, an ever-expanding roster of colleges now offer a second round of Early Decision--usually with a January 1 deadline. So sometimes "strategizing" includes moving on to an ED II option after being denied--or even deferred--in December by the ED I choice. (Confusing, isn't it?)

You must undertake a carefully deployed program of self-marketing to further enhance your "almost good enough" application. After all, if the colleges deferring you weren't interested in you, they would have rejected you, right? Let's take a look at what you can do to improve your chances of getting in:

Your job is twofold:

• First, you need to establish a distinguishable presence with the admissions office without becoming a pest.

• Second, you need to reveal more of yourself and your sincere passion to attend your target college.

How do you do this?

First, you need to communicate your continued interest with the admission office. This should be done by letter (and e-mail is fine, too.) In most cases, the best person to contact is the regional rep for your area of the country. Your job is to find out who this person is. Call admissions and ask for that person's name and e-mail address.

The purpose of your letter will be to:

Emphasize your ongoing interest in this college. (If you will definitely enroll if admitted, be sure to say so clearly). Explain why this college is a great match for you. Your reasons should be as specific as possible ("I have done research on the role of women in Mesopotamia and am eager to work with Professor Snurdley whose writing in this area is renowned") and not generic ("It is an excellent school, and I fell in love with the beautiful campus"). Provide updates on what you have done since you sent your application. Ideally, this list would include significant achievements ("I won a national physics contest") but, more commonly, you've been too busy with academics and applications to say much more than, "I pulled up my Calculus grade from a B- to a B+"). Once you've communicated this list to your admission rep, you can follow up with additional updates when you have more news to report. Meanwhile, think about how you can generate such news. Apply for an internship, enter a contest, and get a part-time job.

Finally, you can always consider going for broke with a “gimmick." For instance, if your application touts your talents as a budding poet, perhaps it's time to write your "Homily to Haverford” or your "Ode to Occidental." Granted, gimmicks don't often work, and there's usually a huge element of luck involved if you try them because an effort that might delight one admission official could potentially irk another. But, especially when it comes to candidates at the hyper-selective schools, where your chances aren't too hot to begin with, a carefully conceived outside-the-box approach might just be your very best shot.

From Collegewise.com

When you end up on a wait list, you’re in the twilight zone. Essentially you're on-call. Wait lists are a kind of hedge against the unpredictability of accepted students enrolling at a college. From many years of experience, colleges know rather precisely what percentage of the total number of students offered admission will enroll. That percentage is called yield.

For example, if a college is looking to admit a freshman class of 1,000 students, they may offer 2,000 students admission. That’s because they know their yield is almost always around 50 percent. If their yield were historically 25 percent, they would offer 4,000 students admission, and so forth.

Sometimes, however, the yield flies in the face of history. When more than the expected number of students enroll (exceeding historical yield), temporary housing has to be acquired and there is a strain on college resources. When fewer than expected students enroll, colleges go to their wait lists and offer admission to those who are “in waiting.” This way, the college makes certain that the incoming freshman class is the right size.

The wait list can serve other purposes. At super-selective schools, where there are many more qualified applicants than can be accommodated, applicants are wait listed as a consolation. Instead of being turned down for admission, they are put on the wait list, the implication being, “We wish we could have admitted you, but there wasn’t room.” Diplomacy lives. The likelihood of being admitted from the wait list is small. Some schools wait list 500-600 applicants. Your only chance is to undertake a heavy-duty marketing effort with the admissions office. Even then, your chances are small.

• Whether or not a campus will offer admission to students on a waitlist depends on a number of factors, including the number of students initially offered admission who accept a space by May 1 (June 1 for transfers), and campus and department enrollment goals. There is nothing that a student should or can do other than opt-in to the waitlist by the stated deadline. Any additional information submitted that was not requested by the campus will not be considered.

The process for selecting students from the waitlist varies at each campus. A campus might have enrollment goals for a particular major, leading to the admission of students who applied to that program, but not others. Or a campus might admit broadly.