So Many Students Got Waitlisted in 2022: But What are Their Odds? We’ve Crunched the Data! Historical Trends & Predictions

More students appear to be waitlisted in 2022 from competitive colleges than ever before. But does that mean you have better odds of getting off that waitlist?

Not necessarily. With test optional policies, data reveals that in 2021 (and 2022) students are applying in droves to competitive universities. More applicants means more rejections, and in the absence of test scores, colleges are looking at more candidates that qualify by the numbers. And what are waitlists full of? Qualified candidates.

We compiled waitlist data from 2017-2021 (see full chart below) to help us understand what’s historical trends might offer in the way of predictions for this year. Though we can’t be sure, we anticipate that competitive universities received similarly high numbers of applicants as they did in 2021. Emphasizing the odds historically of a waitlist admission (from 2017-2019, as well as waitlist behavior in 2021, we’ll predict the best and worst bets among top ~50 ranked colleges and universities in terms of moving from waitlisted to admitted.

DISCLAIMER: THIS IS SPECULATIVE. THESE PREDICTIONS ARE BASED ON THE DATA IN THE CHART BELOW AS WELL AS OTHER POTENTIAL FACTORS (i.e. TRENDS / CURRENT EVENTS). WAITLIST ODDS ARE EXTREMELY VOLATILE AND SUBJECT TO ANOMALIES.

1. No Waitlist Data– But Send a LOCI

Some schools do not publicize their waitlist data, but they are still known to accept a number of students on their waitlist. Why would schools hide this data? Schools that often highly leverage their waitlist to protect their yield would rather not publicize that fact. Yield is the percentage of students that are offered a spot at a university and actually go, and a metric that plays into college rankings. If colleges waitlist strong candidates who they don’t think will attend their school, their yield stays high. By using a waitlist and only admitting students who acept a position on that list, schools can avoid making offers to those unlikely to attend.

Columbia, Johns Hopkins, U Chicago, NYU (New York University), and Harvard all have failed to release full waitlist data over the past five years. If you’re waitlisted at one of these colleges, particularly Columbia, NYU, and UChicago, we recommend sending a LOCI (Letter of Continued Interest) or fully utilizing the space available in your waitlist acceptance form based on our experience in the field.

If you are interested in how to write a LOCI you can check out our video, as well as this podcast episode which features Brooke as a guest.

2. Schools With No Waitlist

Some schools do not have a waitlist at all. These include USC and the University of Florida. USC maintains spring admit programs and a transfer program instead of a waitlist, and may offer some students who accept deferred admission or the transfer program a spot earlier if space becomes available.

3. Not Happening: Schools With Less than a 1% Predicted Chance

Several schools historically have not admitted more than a small handful of students off the waitlist. At these universities, the average chance of being admitted off the waitlist (2020 excepted) is under 1%: MIT, Yale, Dartmouth, UT Austin, and Tulane.

4. Slim Chance: Schools with a 1-5% Predicted Chance

Some schools may occasionally admit a few people off the waitlist, but others years they’re really not admitting anybody. Given historical data, we would predict a 1-5% chance of admission off the waitlist at Cal Tech, Brown, Cornell, Rice, Georgetown, Michigan, Carnegie Mellon, UVA, Tufts, UNC, William & Mary, Boston University, Brandeis, University of Illinois, and Purdue. Some of these colleges may increasingly use other tools, such as deferred admission offers or guaranteed transfer programs, to offer spots at their colleges to students who are on the fringe of admission.

5. Some Hope: Schools with a 4-15% Predicted Chance

At these colleges, your chances of admission off the waitlist may vary year to year, but will likely be between 4-15%: Princeton, Stanford, U Penn, Wash U, Emory, Notre Dame, UCLA, UC Berkeley*, UC Santa Barbara, Rochester, Georgia Tech, Case Western, University of Georgia, Lehigh, Ohio State, Pepperdine, Villanova, Penn State, and Indiana University. (*Predicted based on current news cycle pressure and 2021 data. Previous years had significantly higher waitlist admit rates, however).

6. Decent Chance: Schools Above 15% Predicted Chance

These are a small list of schools that readily utilize their waitlist. We highly recommend students consider writing a LOCI to such institutions: Duke, Vanderbilt, University of Washington – Seattle, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Fordham, and Baylor.

Keep in mind that you probably won’t hear if you are off the waitlist until after May 1st. You may need to put a deposit down for a schools by May 2nd. Some colleges, particularly those protecting yield, may offer students a spot off the waitlist earlier than May 1, so you might want to wait on your deposit until it’s due (this is one of the few times I encourage procrastination!) Understand, however, that playing the waitlist game means that you may lose your first deposit, or even be notified in late summer.

Waitlist Data 2017-2021

Data sourced from official school websites, press releases, articles in university affiliated publications, and preferably, when available, Common Data Sets, except one UCLA statistic sourced from the LA Times. Data from schools with partially available data may be accurate as of date of the report but not according to Common Data Set numbers not yet released at the time of this blog’s publication.

** Includes deferred students from 2020 pool
*Number of students in admitted class who were admitted from the waitlist or after regular decisions were released; estimated based on available data (i.e. from discrepancies in reported number of admitted students in March/April press releases vs. later or most recently available data reports)