Being placed on a waitlist at a college is immensely unsettling, even though your application was strong enough to avoid rejection. After all, when you’re on the college waitlist, you don’t know if you’ll be admitted or not, and that alone is anxiety-inducing.
Fortunately, there are a lot of things you can do to improve your chances of being removed from a waiting list. In this post, we’ll go over how the college waitlist operates, what to do if you’ve been placed on it, and how to improve your chances of getting into your first choice college.
What Is the Waitlist for Colleges and How Does It Work?
The applicants on a college’s waitlist are those who the institution may or may not admit. These applicants, who would have been admitted had there been room, are essentially placed on hold by the college. Different applicants may be awarded a spot on the waitlist for a certain college based on school and year.
If a space on the college waitlist is offered to you, you can either accept the offer and allow your name to be put on the list, or you can decline right away if you don’t want to wait for an admissions decision or have already made up your mind to attend another school. After the deadline, when admitted students must submit their decisions to attend the college of their choice together with the non-refundable payment, applications are usually only accepted off a waitlist.
If and only if there are open spaces in their freshman class, colleges will generally start to enrol students off the waitlist. In essence, when the deadline has passed, if not enough applicants have made up their minds to enrol, the school will begin to accept applications from waitlisted students in the hopes that they will accept the offer. Acceptances from the waitlist frequently come in waves, perhaps even just before the start of the school year. Understandably, not every applicant on the waiting list will be accepted. In fact, some universities might admit just a few students or even none at all in one year!
What to do if you are waitlisted?
You must take specific actions if you’ve been waitlisted at a college in order to guarantee that you can eventually enrol in classes without any problems. Here is what you must do if you are offered a waiting spot, regardless of whether you decide to stay on it or not.
Decide What to Do About the Waitlist
Would you rather turn down the invitation and enrol somewhere else instead of continuing to wait on the college waitlist in the hopes that you’ll be accepted?
Take some time to decide if you really want to be on the waitlist for this school after receiving a waitlist invitation.
Consider the following questions for yourself:
- Is this your ideal institution?
- Is it okay with not getting a response straight away from the school and spending the summer in a state of uncertainty?
- If you get admitted off the waitlist, are you willing to risk losing money on a possibly non-refundable deposit to a different school?
Accept or reject your waitlist invitation formally
If you’ve been given a seat on the waitlist, be aware that it won’t be added to it automatically; you must formally accept the invitation in order to secure your place. Typically, this must be completed by a specific date. To find out when the deadline is, contact the school or consult your waitlist notification letter.
You will not be added to the waitlist and will have implicitly denied your seat if you don’t confirm your placement by this deadline. Be sure to let the college know if you’ve decided against being placed on the waitlist and would prefer to decline your seat.
Select a college and send in your deposit
Even if it’s not your top choice and you’re still expecting to get off the queue at the other school, you’ll need to choose a college you’ve been admitted to that you want to attend, regardless of whether you’ve opted to stay on the waitlist or not.
Go through all of the schools where you have been admitted (not waitlisted), and for each, take into account key elements like the majors it provides, the professors that teach there, the extracurriculars it offers, the campus environment, the location, etc. By visiting the campuses of the colleges you’re thinking about attending, looking at their official websites, and speaking with current or former students, you can conduct research on those institutions.
It’s time to accept your offer of admission and submit your non-refundable deposit once you’ve made your college decision, even if you’re still hoping to be admitted off the waitlist at your top choice. Your acceptance of admission and deposit must be turned in by the deadline.
Wait for the results of your waitlist
All that’s left for you to do is wait to hear about your waitlist decision after choosing an institution to attend.
There is no way to predict when you’ll hear from a college about its waitlist decisions; it might be as early as May or as late as August. You also have no way of knowing if the decision will be favourable or unfavourable!
Congratulations if you are eventually accepted off the college waitlist! You must now choose between accepting this admissions offer and withdrawing your prior acceptance, or declining this offer and going ahead with the other schools you had previously committed to attending.
Please be aware that you won’t be eligible for a return of the deposit you gave to the other school if you choose to accept the offer of admission. Not much will change if you aren’t accepted off the college waitlist. The other college you committed to attending will still be waiting for you!
Decide with Rostrum
Don’t let being waitlisted by your dream colleges destroy your confidence. Despite the fact that you may have exerted every effort to impress the admissions committee, there are occasions when you are not the best fit for a college, when there are far more candidates than there are seats available, and when lady luck is simply not on your side. Regardless, we at Rostrum are here to guide you through the most difficult times during your admission process. Our expert mentors have dealt with countless difficult scenarios and have the relevant experience to guide you through your dilemmas. Book a free consultation today.
