We actually talked about this briefly in
Episode 4 (under the "Hold? Continued? Waitlisted? What's the difference?" section):
BF: And is that a ranked waitlist?
JH: It is not, actually. The way that we kind of operate at Pritzker is that we want to take the people who we think are the best fit for Pritzker overall and we also work very hard to build a class. We dont necessarily want to just admit the first 112 students who come our way who we think will be great doctors. Were looking to build a class that has a lot of different experiences, a lot of different strengths, hopefully different weaknesses as well, and a class that will really go well together. And so, as that class starts to form by the May 15th deadline, if there is somebody who drops out of the class, we look to the waitlist to see who else could bring that same perhaps personality, quality, experience level, range of experiences, so that those contributions are still present in the class.
MB: So typically speaking, and I know this depends totally on whether people decide to go elsewhere during the summer, but how many people do you ordinarily take off of the waitlist?
JH: It can range tremendously. Ive been here for about three years and this past year, the class that actually started orientation today, we had incredibly, incredibly slight movement in our class from the time of basically June 1st until we started class today. I would say we probably made 10 to 15 offers off of the waitlist. In previous years that Ive been here, its been as high as 30, so it really just depends on the individuals decision that people make. We certainly understand that it is very difficult and very traumatic to sit on a waitlist, and so we go with the philosophy that as transparent as we can be, the better, so we can start to let you know how were thinking and f its likely that it will be a heavy movement cycle on our waitlist. That typically, though, we dont know a lot about until July or August. There is still a lot of stability in June as people have just made their final decision, and then it tends to operate like dominoes. One person decides to change their mind and go to a different school, then that school pulls somebody off of their waitlist. That person might be coming off of our class so we need to pull somebody off of our waitlist. So honestly, when we say we have no idea, to some extent we really dont. We just need to wait and see how things happen and we can make some educated guesses based on what people tell us, but ultimately, dominoes can kind of take effect whenever during the summer.
This is over two and a half years old now, so the numbers part of this may have changed, but I'd be surprised if the waitlist decision-making process is any different now.
It doesn't answer all your questions, but hope that helps a bit in the meantime!
Ben
Thanks again, Ben!
Please Pritzker, pick me! lol
