Notre Dame is a fantastic school, with a robust culture and great programs in engineering, business, and the humanities. If you’ve been waitlisted by ND, we’re sure this was not the outcome you were hoping for, but that doesn’t mean you’re done for. Take some time to have the feelings we’re pretty sure you’re having, but then come back here for some action items.
Waitlist decisions are, as a rule, not good news. They aren’t the worst news you can get from a college, which would be a rejection, but if you’re reading this post you are either disappointed by a waitlist decision from Vanderbilt or trying to plan ahead just in case the next time you open up your email you have a waitlist decision waiting for you. In this post, we’ll prepare you for what comes next, and how to improve your chances of getting into Vanderbilt off of the waitlist.
Carnegie Mellon (CMU) is an amazing STEM school with a reputation for being innovative, friendly, and full of motivated students. Getting waitlisted from a school that awesome is hard, and we’re sure you’re feeling bummed about it. While that’s totally valid, and we encourage you to take a few days to process, we want you to know you’re not out of the game yet.
If you were waitlisted by Mich, that’s disappointing — but it shouldn’t be devastating. The University of Michigan is now one of the most sought after state-school acceptances in the country, and for good reason. The university is fabulous, and widely respected. As a state school, they highly prioritize in-state students and so the acceptance statistics for Mich are pretty misleading if you are from outside of the state of Michigan. It’s been reported that the in-state acceptance rate for Mich is as high as 40%, while the published overall acceptance rate for the Fall of 2023 was 17.9%, which tells us that the out-of-state acceptance rate is much lower than that. So, it’s hard to get into Mich. It’s easier to get onto the waitlist. That same year, for first years beginning in the fall of 2023, they offered a spot on the waitlist to more than 30% of applicants. That’s pretty crazy.
We get it – your Big City Big Dreams moment has been waitlisted, and you’re feeling bummed out. NYU has gotten increasingly competitive over the last decade and shows no signs of slowing down, and the increased demand means less spots for tons of deserving kids. Getting waitlisted doesn’t mean you’re out of contention, and there are things you can do to to help you get off the waitlist and into Washington Square Park.
If you are reading this, you were either waitlisted by the University of Chicago or are very committed to planning ahead. Either way, we’ve got you. In this post, we’ll give you the tools you need to charge a successful future in college, with or without the University of Chicago — but hopefully with if you play the waitlist right.
The University of Texas at Austin, or UT Austin, has become an extremely popular university for students around the country, and globally, not simply in Texas. As a Texas state school, though, the university prioritizes applicants who are residents of the state. As a result, there are far more applicants, and especially out-of-state applicants, than UT Austin can admit. In this post, we’re going to break down what you need to do if you recently received a waitlist offer from UT Austin, and what else you need to do to close out your college admissions experience strong.
If you are reading this, you were probably waitlisted by Brown. Receiving a waitlist decision is a bummer, but it’s also a situation you can make the most off. Whereas a rejection is a closed door, being offered a spot on a waiting list is more like being stopped right before the threshold. You aren’t through, and you may never get through, but the chance is still there. The key, of course, is to not leave it up to chance.
If you were waitlisted by Cornell, you aren’t alone. Cornell offers a wild number of applicants, 12% in 2023, a spot on the waitlist. Out of 8,282 students offered a spot on the waitlist in 2023, 6,166 accepted that offer. This is twice as many students as they expect to enroll in the first-year class. We can’t quite understand what the purpose is of having such a deep waitlist, but it is what Cornell has done for years. Ultimately, for Fall 2023, 362, or 5.9% of students on the waitlist were accepted.
Dartmouth is the crunchy Ivy, they even have their own forest! And if you’re here, you’ve been waitlisted from Dartmouth and their forest, too. We know that you might be feeling super bummed about this, so we want you to take a few days to feel how you feel and come back ready to go. Because we have some action items for you.
Columbia is a competitive school – you know this, of course. Last cycle, Columbia accepted 3.85% of students, down slightly from 3.9%. We only know this because of data published in the school paper, because Columbia does not fill out the Common Data Set (CDS). And because they don’t fill out the CDS, we also don’t know the exact numbers around their waitlist data. We do know, from looking at their peer schools and past experience, that their waitlist acceptance rate is probably around, or less than, 4%. Don’t fear, though, we’ve helped lots of students get off the waitlist and into Columbia.
If you’ve been waitlisted by Duke, it’s totally normal to have some feelings about it. You might be feeling disappointment, frustration, maybe even a little hope. All of that is completely fair and valid. Take some time to process; it’s important to be in the right mindset for what comes next. Once you’re ready, we’ll walk you through the steps to give yourself the best possible shot at getting off the waitlist. So take a day or two, regroup, and we’ll be here to guide you.
If you are on the receiving end of a waitlist offer by Stanford, you aren’t alone. We know that isn’t exactly reassuring, but with a first-year acceptance rate of only 4% nothing about Stanford is reassuring. But that doesn’t mean that you should give up all hope of moving into a dorm at Stanford in a few months. Before we get into what comes next, let’s look at the numbers.
Getting into Yale is hard, as you’ve experienced. Yale had a 3.7% overall first-year acceptance rate in 2024 after receiving the largest pool of applications ever in Yale history — and 10% larger than the previous year.
If you were waitlisted by Princeton, you aren’t alone. Princeton is one of the most sought-after admissions in the country, with an acceptance rate, most recently, of only 4.5%. Like most colleges, Princeton uses a waitlist as a way of ensuring the first-year class is filled. If their yield rate, or the number of accepted students who enroll, is lower than predicted, they can pull from the waitlist to fill the class. Princeton is in such high demand, though, that the waitlist isn’t heavily used. That doesn’t mean that they don’t use the waitlist at all, though.
Harvard: there’s not much new we can say about this school. It’s maybe the most famous school in the world, and it’s also one of the most competitive. Last cycle, Harvard had a 3.6% acceptance rate, which is just so incredibly low. If you’ve been waitlisted by Harvard, we know you’re now worried about whatever the waitlist acceptance might be like. You also might feel a little rejected or sad, and that’s totally okay. Take a day or two to be sad, and then come right back here for some action items.