Waitlisted to the University of Pennsylvania’s Class of 2024? If you didn’t already earn admission off of UPenn’s waitlist on May 7th, know that we anticipate the school will turn to its waitlist again before the fall…likely even more than once. In fact, we asserted as much in an article published this week in UPenn’s newspaper, The Daily Pennsylvanian. And while UPenn’s always candid Dean of Admissions Eric Furda stated that the school doesn’t intend to admit more students off its waitlist this year than in years past, let’s just say we would be shocked if those words proved prophetic. Counter to the expectation of Dean Furda, we anticipate well more than the nine students who were admitted off last year’s waitlist will earn admission out of limbo this year to the institution.

Highly Selective Colleges Likely to Admit Record Number of Waitlisted Applicants This Year

As Pia Singh reports for The Daily Pennsylvanian in a piece entitled “While colleges struggle to fill Class of 2024, Penn has not yet increased waitlist admissions,” “Brian Taylor, managing director of New York City-based college admissions consulting firm Ivy Coach, believes private, exclusive institutions will ultimately admit more waitlisted applicants this year…Taylor said schools are especially anxious about international students possibly not being able to arrive on campus for the fall semester, and about domestic students who may choose to take a gap year instead of beginning their freshman year in an atmosphere impacted by the pandemic…’For all those Class of 2024 students who are so upset that they could be starting college online, and you know that’s not ideal, but this was the year to apply to college,” Taylor said. “We’ve had students get off waitlists who had no business getting off of these waitlists, they had no business getting into these schools. This was one of the easiest years to apply to highly selective colleges in years.'”

Students Are Generally Admitted Off Highly Selective College Waitlists in Waves

You see, students — even students based right here in the United States — may very well choose to defer their admission and take a gap year later on this spring and summer. Is UPenn going to tell them no even if it’s past the June 5, 2020 deadline to do so? Maybe. Maybe not. We suspect it would be unlikely given all the uncertainty surrounding the pandemic. Colleges like UPenn are understanding in that way, particularly since we are living in unique and uncertain times. As Singh writes, “While most highly-selective schools traditionally admit students off the waitlist in three waves, according to Taylor, both he and [Andrew] Belasco anticipate students will be taken off university waitlists through late summer months depending on their enrollment numbers. Taylor predicts universities may have to add an unexpected round of waitlist acceptances in order to fill their intended class size. ‘Is a school like Penn gonna have a vacant slot? No, Penn wants their tuition dollars, and they’re going to fill that slot with a waitlist applicant,’ he said.”