Dirty Secrets of College Waitlists

[babylonsister]

Dirty Secrets of College Waitlists

by Kathleen Kingsbury


As acceptance letters hit mailboxes, record numbers of students could be stuck in waitlist limbo. In a Daily Beast exclusive, admissions officers dish about the tricks of getting in off the list—and why you shouldn’t send cookies.

The waitlist. It’s the fate that awaits hundreds of thousands of high school seniors this week as they open college admissions letters. The bad news? As few as 15 percent will make it off the waitlist at the most selective schools, and waitlists are likely to be longer this spring than ever before.

“We always have the parents who want to buy us a Mercedes or pay our mortgages. Usually we’d laugh them off, but money is tight this year. I’m telling my staff, send them directly to the development office.”

The prospect of waiting even longer for a final answer can drive students—and their parents—to desperate acts. “I had one mother last year who called me every single day for two months, sometimes multiple times a day,” says an admissions officer at an Ivy League school. “I finally had to say, ‘Your son is not getting in and you may wish to seek psychiatric help for yourself.’” (Jump to the next page for more quotes and stories from admissions officers)

But this may also be the year waitlisted students have the best shot ever of getting in… if they’re smart about it, since more students may turn down their top choices. As the economy continues to spiral downward, admissions officers say they have little sense of what to expect in terms of waitlist activity over the next two months.

That’s because this waitlist season appears to be shaping up to mimic last year’s—a spring that totally baffled admissions departments nationwide. Several factors made the admissions cycle volatile: the high school class of 2008 numbered nearly 3.4 million, the largest in U.S. history; there was a swell of kids submitting eight or more college applications; and Princeton, University of Virginia and Harvard got rid of early admissions. Add in the precarious economy, and dozens of colleges overestimated their “yield”— the percentage of admitted students who ultimately enrolled.

“It got harder to separate the very committed from the applicants just window-shopping,” Barmak Nassirian, associate executive director of the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers. “Schools hedged their bets by upping the number of applicants they put on the waitlist.”

more...

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-03-30/dirty-secrets-of-college-waitlists/full/

[JPZenger]

1. Best Buys among public colleges

Here's an interesting comparison of "best buys" among public colleges. It looks at average net costs for both in-state and out-of-state students vs. sticker prices.

http://content.kiplinger.com/tools/colleges/pubcollege.php#8998