Colleges That Love Waitlisting

Case Western Reserve University has a habit of waitlisting quite a few students (photo credit: Soundoftoday).

The Waitlist. After months spent waiting to hear back from colleges, it’s no fun to learn you’ve been waitlisted — stuck in college admissions limbo. Colleges have months to debate the merits of your application. They should be able to arrive at a definitive decision, right? But the reason waitlists exist is because colleges can’t predict with absolute precision their annual yields. Can they have a rough idea, based on historical data? You bet. But maybe a school’s basketball team ends up advancing to the Final Four in March Madness…when something like this happens, more students typically want to matriculate. Or maybe there was a crime that drew negative publicity to the school this year…the yield could nosedive. Who knows.

And so we read with great interest a piece up on “US News & World Report” written by Jordan Friedman. The piece is entitled “10 Colleges Where the Most Applicants Are Wait-Listed” and we just had to share it with our readers. So which college leads this pack? That would be Case Western Reserve University, a school that absolutely loves its waitlist. For the fall of 2015, Case Western placed 9,446 students on its waitlist. This figure blows away University of Richmond, which placed the third most students on a waitlist for the fall of 2015 (all data for this piece from “US News & World Report” is for fall 2015) with 4,070 students stuck in limbo. Kenyon College placed 2,876 students on its waitlist, while Marist College placed 3,645 students in limbo. Washington and Lee University placed 1,983 students on the waitlist, while Muhlenberg College put 1,690 students in limbo. Lehigh University places second on this ranking (we’re not sure that’s a good thing!) with 4,232 students placed in limbo. And it’s not like small schools can’t be among the waitlist leaders because Wellesley College put 1,404 students on its waitlist for the fall of 2015 and Bryn Mawr College put 872 students on too. That’s quite a lot!

What do you think about these waitlist figures? Should these colleges make it their mission to never again appear near the top of this ranking? Clearly it’s a strategy of these schools to keep their options open. Wouldn’t you agree? Let us know your thoughts by posting a Comment below on colleges that waitlist lots and lots of students. We look forward to hearing from  you.