how do waitlists work?

[jcdoc107]

For example, if Miami had sixty withdrawals post May 15 will they accept sixty students within the first week or does this process take place over several weeks/months?

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[mikedc813]

i'm not 100% on this, but what makes sense is that shortly after a school hears of someone turning them down they go to the next person on the waitlist and this process continues until the class remains full.

i'm in at usf and this is precisely what happened with me.

 

[patzan]

most schools will overshoot their class size with original acceptance offers, anticipating a certain number to withdraw based on past experience, so the number will likely be much less than 60.

 

[willthatsall]

I think a cool idea for a med school would be they were so good that they only let people apply if they planned on going there. Kind of like early decision, if you get in, you must go. It would make it kind of exclusive and trendy. And you could make it so it only costs like 10k a year so everyone would want to go. Ok, that's not that good of an idea, but I just thought of it.

 

[MoosePilot]

Ok, so they accept more than their class size, expecting people to drop out, like an airline with overbooking.

An airline will end up not letting people board. Do schools just expand their planned size if they end up with fewer students declining their offer?

 

[willthatsall]

Ok, so they accept more than their class size, expecting people to drop out, like an airline with overbooking.

An airline will end up not letting people board. Do schools just expand their planned size if they end up with fewer students declining their offer?

Definitely...I don't think a Med School would ever take back an acceptance. I would think that would open them up for not only bad publicity, but likely a law suit. But they have a lot of data when they make their decisions, so they pretty much know what to expect every year.

 

[patzan]

Definitely...I don't think a Med School would ever take back an acceptance. I would think that would open them up for not only bad publicity, but likely a law suit. But they have a lot of data when they make their decisions, so they pretty much know what to expect every year.

They may ask people to defer a year, but if they don't get any takers, they just have a little larger class size. But through past experience, they pretty much know how many people will drop.

 

[Mr Reddly]

I noticed that in 2001, UCI had 94 students instead of the normal 92.
hmm....