58% of schools admitted 10% or less from their waitlist.
This post was originally published on the College Kickstart blog.
Are you on the waitlist at one of your top choices? Are you wondering what the odds are that you’ll move from waitlist to admitted?
At College Kickstart, we track and hunt down a myriad of admission statistics and we’d like to share some analysis we did about waitlists.
We looked at 160 private and public institutions and in summary here’s what we found:
- On average, 17 percent of students accepting a place on a waitlist were admitted
- 58 percent of the schools admitted 10 percent or less of the students accepting a place on the wait list last year
- 41 percent of the schools admitted 5 percent or less
- 12 percent admitted no one
There are several factors driving the low rates, including the size of the waitlist (often very large), and how well a school anticipates its admissions yield.
A closer look at waitlist stats
For your reference, here’s a list of 2015-16 waitlist statistics for several popular private and public schools, along with notification dates and links for more detail if available.
Source: College Kickstart LLC
| Institution | Waitlist Offered | Waitlist Accepted | Waitlist Admitted | Admit Rate | Notification Date | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American | 2,778 | 269 | 8 | 3% | by 5/15 | Complete as of 5/5 |
| Amherst | 1,398 | 643 | 33 | 5% | ||
| Barnard | 1,195 | 130 | 6 | 5% | beginning 5/15 | |
| Bates | 1,535 | 671 | 11 | 2% | by 8/1 (typically early May – late June) | |
| Boston College | 7,072 | 3,897 | 351 | 9% | by 7/1 | Emails sent 5/20, 5/13 |
| Boston University | 4,381 | 2,214 | 4 | 0% | Closed as of 5/13 (none offered) | |
| Bowdoin | by 7/31 | |||||
| Brandeis | 1,553 | 595 | 25 | 4% | ||
| Brown | 192 | by early June | Small number of spaces available, offered through early June | |||
| Bryn Mawr | 872 | 427 | 0 | 0% | ||
| Bucknell | 2,427 | 922 | 59 | 6% | ||
| Caltech | 615 | 429 | 0 | 0% | ||
| Carleton | 1,350 | 442 | 16 | 4% | ||
| Carnegie Mellon | 5,526 | 2,835 | 4 | 0% | by 6/1 | |
| Claremont McKenna | 919 | 453 | 75 | 17% | ||
| Colby | 1,497 | 634 | 42 | 7% | ||
| Colgate | 1,896 | 913 | 49 | 5% | by 8/1 | |
| College of William & Mary | 3,552 | 1,676 | 187 | 11% | status mid-June, decision by 8/1 | First round of calls made, will likely continue to contact applicants on rolling basis through early-to-mid June |
| Colorado College | 1,119 | 232 | 24 | 10% | most by mid-May, some as late as June | |
| Columbia | by 6/30 | |||||
| Cornell | 3,583 | 2,231 | 81 | 4% | after 5/1 | |
| Dartmouth | 1,852 | 963 | 129 | 13% | mid-May to 7/1 | |
| Duke | 92 | |||||
| Emory | 3,809 | 1,910 | 45 | 2% | by 6/1 | |
| Franklin and Marshall | 1,385 | 411 | 76 | 18% | end of April to end of May | |
| George Washington | 3,827 | 1,354 | 62 | 5% | ||
| Georgetown | 2,188 | 1,301 | 141 | 11% | by 5/15 | |
| Georgia Tech | 3,397 | 2,031 | 38 | 2% | by 6/1 | |
| Hamilton | 958 | 365 | 47 | 13% | ||
| Harvard | 40-50 estimated | |||||
| Harvey Mudd | 534 | 354 | 11 | 3% | ||
| Haverford | 883 | 354 | 12 | 3% | ||
| Johns Hopkins | 2,752 | 1,747 | 187 | 11% | ||
| Kenyon | 2,876 | 998 | 17 | 2% | early May to mid-July | |
| Lewis & Clark | 775 | 221 | 1 | 0% | late April to mid-May | |
| Macalester | 350 | 177 | 0 | 0% | ||
| Middlebury | 1,304 | 530 | 33 | 6% | early May to mid-June | |
| MIT | 652 | 575 | 52 | 9% | by mid-May | Complete as of 5/11 (26 admitted) |
| NYU | Active but filled at several programs | Active as of 5/16 (110 admitted to date). Filled at CAS, CPLS, GLSP, Gallatin, Nursing, Social Work, Stern, Tandon and Abu Dhabi | ||||
| Northwestern | 2,614 | 1,452 | 43 | 3% | ||
| Oberlin | 1,126 | 459 | 86 | 19% | ||
| Occidental | 705 | 359 | 26 | 7% | ||
| Pitzer | 1,021 | 895 | 23 | 3% | by 7/15 | |
| Pomona | 842 | 492 | 38 | 8% | early to mid-May | |
| Princeton | 1,206 | 857 | 39 | 5% | ||
| Rice | 2,237 | 1,659 | 127 | 8% | by 7/1 | |
| Scripps | 641 | 284 | 0 | 0% | beginning mid-May | |
| Smith | 773 | 398 | 132 | 33% | ||
| Stanford | 1,256 | 927 | 0 | 0% | update mid-May, finalized by 7/1 | |
| Swarthmore | 26 | |||||
| Tufts | by early June | |||||
| Tulane | 3,413 | 921 | 0 | 0% | by 6/1 | Complete (none offered) |
| UC Berkeley | 3,760 | 2,445 | 1,340 | 55% | ||
| UC Davis | 9,033 | 2,733 | 2,030 | 74% | by 6/1 | |
| UC Irvine | 7,361 | 4,035 | 131 | 3% | ||
| UCLA | 5,006 | 2,910 | 278 | 10% | ||
| UC Riverside | 6,231 | 3,737 | 2,770 | 74% | ||
| UCSD | 2 waves complete (5/6, 5/11) | |||||
| UCSB | 5,006 | 2,910 | 278 | 10% | by 6/30 | |
| UChicago | early summer | |||||
| University of Georgia | 921 | 584 | 144 | 25% | most between 5/15 and 6/15 | Complete as of 5/11 (~100 admitted, 95% for Spring) |
| University of Illinois – Urbana-Champaign | 3,008 | 1,875 | 1,015 | 54% | by early June | |
| UMass Amherst | 5,450 | 1,278 | 26 | 2% | beginning mid-May | |
| University of Michigan | 14,960 | 4,512 | 90 | 2% | mid-June | |
| UNC – Chapel Hill | 3,144 | 1,513 | 78 | 5% | by 6/30 | First wave offered 5/6 (55 admitted) |
| University of Notre Dame | 1,602 | 869 | 0 | 0% | mid-May to late June | |
| University of Pennsylvania | 2,474 | 1,438 | 90 | 6% | ||
| University of Richmond | 4,070 | 1,547 | 151 | 10% | 5/1 – 6/30 | |
| University of Virginia | 4,547 | 2,081 | 402 | 19% | 5/7 – 6/30 | Active as of 5/3 |
| Vanderbilt | 188 | After 5/1 | Active as of 5/16 | |||
| Vassar | 1,017 | 485 | 10 | 2% | early May to 7/1 | |
| Virginia Tech | 2,118 | 1,544 | 0 | 0% | by 7/1 | |
| Wellesley | 1,404 | 843 | 30 | 4% | 3rd week in May to 6/30 | |
| Wesleyan | 1,877 | 884 | 12 | 1% | by 6/30 | |
| Whitman | 872 | 370 | 67 | 18% | ||
| Williams | 1,603 | 573 | 53 | 9% | ||
| Yale | 1,098 | 713 |
You can check out the class of 2020 early admission results from College Kickstart here.
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