2018-2019 Waitlist Support Thread

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OchemOficionado said:
In my (uninformed) opinion, I doubt that there will be MORE waitlist movement. In my eyes, that would only be true if the assumption that schools are waitlisting more students this cycle is true, and I'm not sure that they are. At this point in the cycle, the schools have the same information they usually have. I'm not sure that they are employing new practices if what they have done in the past has worked successfully up to this point. I anticipate that any new procedures would take effect after the point when the multi accept report was made available. That's just my guess though.
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Just adding that I have heard directly from multiple schools that they are being more conservative with offers this season because of the traffic rules and will make the majority of their acceptances off the waitlists.
 
OchemOficionado said:
In my (uninformed) opinion, I doubt that there will be MORE waitlist movement. In my eyes, that would only be true if the assumption that schools are waitlisting more students this cycle is true, and I'm not sure that they are. At this point in the cycle, the schools have the same information they usually have. I'm not sure that they are employing new practices if what they have done in the past has worked successfully up to this point. I anticipate new procedures to take effect after the point when the multi accept report was made available.
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Several schools have admitted to waitlisting more. Now yes, schools that were always accurately able to predict yield didn’t use their WL much and won’t use it much now, but schools that did make significant use of their WL in the past will certainly need to use it more. In April and beyond of last year, schools were equipped with acceptance data for all their WLd applicants, data that they used when deciding whom to accept.

edit: for the sake of an example, Emory and Duke are schools that were good yield predictors in the past, and they’ve over-accepted very proportionately. Unless they’ve said otherwise, these WL are still likely a dead end
 
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makemeadoctordoctordoctor said:
Just adding that I have heard directly from multiple schools that they are being more conservative with offers this season because of the traffic rules and will make the majority of their acceptances off the waitlists.
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Which schools told you that? That's good that they've communicated that! Welll, if they've stated that then I would expect more movement from those particular schools. Either way, AAMC still says that schools have to offer every seat by a certain date so we know they can't be too conservative.
 
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scrapy said:
Several schools have admitted to waitlisting more. Now yes, schools that were always accurately able to predict yield didn’t use their WL much and won’t use it much now, but schools that did make significant use of their WL in the past will certainly need to use it more. In April and beyond of last year, schools were equipped with acceptance data for all their WLd applicants, data that they used when deciding whom to accept.
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Thanks for the info. Which schools admitted that? Maybe we can create a running list.

I think we have to remmeber that more waitlisting does not mean they gave less acceptances than usual. May be creating a longer alt list incase they need it.
 
mmaslyanko said:
Why ? Also , what about ppl who have acceptances AND WL?
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The reason why is because now it is more likely that "trading" will happen. Let’s say Bill is accepted to school A and WL’d at school B. Bob is accepted and WL’d vice versa. Let’s say Brad has no acceptances and WL at schools A and B. School B is going down their WL and gets to Bill, who is overjoyed and says yes. School A then needs to fill a seat, and maybe they’ve got to go down the WL and hear some kids decline because those kids are swimming in acceptances, but eventually they get to Bob, who says yes because he likes school A better. In all likelihood, Brad is a weaker applicant than Bill or Bob, because he has no offers, and in the situation above, both schools A and B preferred Bill and Bob over Brad, thereby making Brad’s likelihood of admission smaller. It is not a direct trade, but is effectively one.

edit: In the past, there did exist schools that (ab?)used the MAR to pass over applicants with an acceptance(s) of an equal tier schools already, and to then offer admission to a completely non-accepted applicant.
 
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OchemOficionado said:
Thanks for the info. Which schools admitted that? Maybe we can create a running list.

I think we have to remmeber that more waitlisting does not mean they gave less acceptances than usual. May be creating a longer alt list incase they need it.
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I’ll PM you the schools.

Your second point means that those schools with bigger WL means they interviewed appreciably more people this cycle. That would be useful data to have
 
scrapy said:
The reason why is because now it is more likely that "trading" will happen. Let’s say Bill is accepted to school A and WL’d at school B. Bob is accepted and WL’d vice versa. Let’s say Brad has no acceptances and WL at schools A and B. School B is going down their WL and gets to Bob, who is overjoyed and says yes. School A then needs to fill a seat, and maybe they’ve got to go down the WL and hear some kids decline because those kids are swimming in acceptances, but eventually they get to Bill, who says yes because he likes school A better. In all likelihood, Brad is a weaker applicant than Bill or Bob, because he has no offers, and in the situation above, both schools A and B preferred Bill and Bob over Brad, thereby making Brad’s likelihood of admission smaller. It is not a direct trade, but is effectively one.
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Yeah, that does makes sense
 
scrapy said:
I’ll PM you the schools.

Your second point means that those schools with bigger WL means they interviewed appreciably more people this cycle. That would be useful data to have
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Thanks!! I'll start a running list that I will post here once we get 10+ schools and @makemeadoctordoctordoctor PMs theirs as well.

Either they interviewed more, or rejected less of those they decided to interveiw. MSAR will tell us after we all matriculate so it'll be helpful for those applying after us.
 
OchemOficionado said:
Thanks!! I'll start a running list that I will post here once we get 10+ schools and @makemeadoctordoctordoctor PMs theirs as well.

Either they interviewed more, or rejected less of those they decided to interveiw. MSAR will tell us after we all matriculate so it'll be helpful for those applying after us.
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MSAR will tell us a year after we matriculate. We are still seeing 2 year old data on there. Very soon at this time of year, we’ll see 1 year old data
 
Also forget WLs for a second. I’m pretty sure we’re gonna see a lot of poach-acceptances in August too.
 
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scrapy said:
Also forget WLs for a second. I’m pretty sure we’re gonna see a lot of poach-acceptances in August too.
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Are you planning to be poachable? LOL. My schools all start in June or July so I'm hoping to get into my top choice before I have to start.

scrapy said:
She was mistaken when she said that. Scroll down on tha thread
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LizzyM MISTAKENNNN? Lol, which thread was it? Link?
 
OchemOficionado said:
Are you planning to be poachable? LOL. My schools all start in June or July so I'm hoping to get into my top choice before I have to start.

I don’t think I will be, but it’s very little investment (other than emotional) for someone to be, especially if it’s a school they really care about.


LizzyM MISTAKENNNN? Lol, which thread was it? Link?
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edit: phone messed up the quoting code.

But also I take one thing back. It’s probably a great deal of investment to be poached. An apartment lease and a school deposit come to mind.
 
makemeadoctordoctordoctor said:
Just adding that I have heard directly from multiple schools that they are being more conservative with offers this season because of the traffic rules and will make the majority of their acceptances off the waitlists.
Click to expand...

Hmm I have some questions. Could you PM me? It won’t let me PM you
 
On another note, I’ve re-contemplated the advantages of a non-accepted person. If we ponder the matriculants in a given year, when all is said and done, it doesn’t make a difference whether someone only got in off a waitlist. Come August, a matriculant is a matriculant. With that, I think the only relative disadvantage a non-accepted will have is that they probably won’t get off the WL to their first choice, and someone who is accepted is now more likely to eventually matriculate to their first choice.

There are a finite number of seats, and 99.9% of them will be filled one way or another
 
OchemOficionado said:
In my (uninformed) opinion, I doubt that there will be MORE waitlist movement. In my eyes, that would only be true if the assumption that schools are waitlisting more students this cycle is true, and I'm not sure that they are. At this point in the cycle, the schools have the same information they usually have. I'm not sure that they are employing new practices if what they have done in the past has worked successfully up to this point. I anticipate that any new procedures would take effect after the point when the multi accept report was made available. That's just my guess though.
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I’ve been told by adcoms at multiple schools that those schools are waitlisting more students this year than usual. So at least some schools are.
 
Just put on another waitlist, my 3rd :/ . Still waiting to hear back from a couple others but damn
 
Matthew9Thirtyfive said:
I’ve been told by adcoms at multiple schools that those schools are waitlisting more students this year than usual. So at least some schools are.
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This is the only logical result of not having multiple acceptance report. It’s safer for schools to waitlist more and accept less at first than to risk not filling their class and lose out on a quarter million dollars per seat in revenue for that class.
 
futuredoc0307 said:
This is the only logical result of not having multiple acceptance report. It’s safer for schools to waitlist more and accept less at first than to risk not filling their class and lose out on a quarter million dollars per seat in revenue for that class.
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That was the exact reason I was given.
 
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instead of a list you could make a poll with the most common schools and have something like

Did you get off the waitlist at
School X
School Y
School Z
 
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futuredoc0307 said:
This is the only logical result of not having multiple acceptance report. It’s safer for schools to waitlist more and accept less at first than to risk not filling their class and lose out on a quarter million dollars per seat in revenue for that class.
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Somehow that doesn't make sense to me. After 4/30 everyone should be down to one acceptance regardless of how many seats were or weren't offered prior to then. I can see keeping a longer waitlist (ex. interviewing more people or rejecting less), but giving less acceptances and more waitlist prior to 4/30 seems off or wishful thinking for those on a waitlist, lol.
 
OchemOficionado said:
Somehow that doesn't make sense to me. After 4/30 everyone should be down to one acceptance regardless of how many seats were or weren't offered prior to then. I can see keeping a longer waitlist (ex. interviewing more people or rejecting less), but giving less acceptances and more waitlist prior to 4/30 seems off or wishful thinking for those on a waitlist, lol.
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It may not make sense but that was literally the reason I was given at all the schools I interviewed at.
 
OchemOficionado said:
Somehow that doesn't make sense to me. After 4/30 everyone should be down to one acceptance regardless of how many seats were or weren't offered prior to then. I can see keeping a longer waitlist (ex. interviewing more people or rejecting less), but giving less acceptances and more waitlist prior to 4/30 seems off or wishful thinking for those on a waitlist, lol.
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Schools probably have a number for applicant interviews that fits well with their logistics. I don’t think augmenting this number is more likely.
 
scrapy said:
Schools probably have a number for applicant interviews that fits well with their logistics. I don’t think augmenting this number is more likely.
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Ehh, I don't know if I would say it's more likely either. What I'm saying is I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around how impactful it would be to give less acceptances prior to 4/30. They have to offer at least an equal number of the seats that they have so maybe they aren't doubling this number as quickly as they used to? What are we thinking, that they're saving their spots for people on the WL with no other accepts?

I'm not an adcom so it makes sense that I don't know the ins and outs of the process, just spectulating, cuz we're all waiting anyway, haha.
 
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OchemOficionado said:
Ehh, I don't know if I would say it's more likely either. What I'm saying is I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around how impactful it would be to give less acceptances prior to 4/30. They have to offer at least an equal number of the seats that they have so maybe they aren't doubling this number as quickly as they used to? What are we thinking, that they're saving their spots for people on the WL with no other accepts?

I'm not an adcom so it makes sense that I don't know the ins and outs of the process, just spectulating, cuz we're all waiting anyway, haha.
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Honestly at this point I completely gave up on trying to understand it🙂)) I just want the movement to start
 
OchemOficionado said:
Somehow that doesn't make sense to me. After 4/30 everyone should be down to one acceptance regardless of how many seats were or weren't offered prior to then. I can see keeping a longer waitlist (ex. interviewing more people or rejecting less), but giving less acceptances and more waitlist prior to 4/30 seems off or wishful thinking for those on a waitlist, lol.
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By “less acceptance” I mean compared to previous years, not compared to class size. What if everyone you accepted wants to go to your school and you offered 1.5x the seats available? With multiple acceptance report, schools could extend more/less offers based on how many people are accepted somewhere else
 
futuredoc0307 said:
By “less acceptance” I mean compared to previous years, not compared to class size. What if everyone you accepted wants to go to your school and you offered 1.5x the seats available? With multiple acceptance report, schools could extend more/less offers based on how many people are accepted somewhere else
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Yup, but they used to get the MAR in Feb and only for accepted students and the NAR they got in April. That's the main reason I'm not convinced that schools are changing their process this early in the game. (YES, some schools have said they have, not discounting that just speaking in general)

Again, I'm just speculating.
 
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OchemOficionado said:
Yup, but they got the MAR in Feb and only for accepted students and the NAR they got in April. That's the main reason I'm not convinced that schools are changing their process this early in the game. (YES, some schools have said they have, not discounting that just speaking in general)

Again, I'm just speculating.
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Wait what lol. This whole discussion is based on the fact that schools don’t receive MAR anymore..
 
futuredoc0307 said:
Wait what lol. This whole discussion is based on the fact that schools don’t receive MAR anymore..
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They don’t receive the MAR or NAR. Them knowing they won’t receive either will cause preemptiveness, such as only accepting 1x their seat number as opposed to 1.5x or 2x. This is fairly consequential because that 1x number of people aren’t all going to say yes. Maybe they’ll do 1.2x instead, but the gist is that it’ll be less than in the past
 
futuredoc0307 said:
Wait what lol. This whole discussion is based on the fact that schools don’t receive MAR anymore..
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Yes, I'm aware. Maybe I should have been more clear that my first sentence was in reference to previous cycles. I edited it for clarity.

scrapy said:
They don’t receive the MAR or NAR. Them knowing they won’t receive either will cause preemptiveness, such as only accepting 1x their seat number as opposed to 1.5x or 2x. This is fairly consequential because that 1x number of people aren’t all going to say yes. Maybe they’ll do 1.2x instead, but the gist is that it’ll be less than in the past
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Potentially. Certainly for the handful of schools that have said this is their plan.

If it was in my hands I guess I would just extend the number of accepts we usually did and then gain more clarity after 4/30. But, we shall see. This is kinda exciting.
 
scrapy said:
On another note, I’ve re-contemplated the advantages of a non-accepted person. If we ponder the matriculants in a given year, when all is said and done, it doesn’t make a difference whether someone only got in off a waitlist. Come August, a matriculant is a matriculant. With that, I think the only relative disadvantage a non-accepted will have is that they probably won’t get off the WL to their first choice, and someone who is accepted is now more likely to eventually matriculate to their first choice.

There are a finite number of seats, and 99.9% of them will be filled one way or another
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so are you guys saying that students that don't have any acceptances and are just on a waitlist are less likely to be accepted because they look like a weaker applicant? I don't understand why it's been said that students without acceptances are less likely to be accepted off the waitlist.
 
medstar4912 said:
so are you guys saying that students that don't have any acceptances and are just on a waitlist are less likely to be accepted because they look like a weaker applicant? I don't understand why it's been said that students without acceptances are less likely to be accepted off the waitlist.
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I don’t understand either. I fully disagree. Applicants could be rejected simply for not aligning with school X’s Mission. It doesn’t mean they don’t align with school Y. If I’m hungry and there is an apple tree in front of me, I’m not starving myself or look for a different one just cuz my peers don’t like it. 😉
 
OchemOficionado said:
At this point in the cycle, the schools have the same information they usually have.
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This is absolutely not true. See @gonnif's post from last November:

"Previously there was a Multiple Acceptance Report (in February) that showed every school that accepted you only to every other school that accepted you. This was used primarily for schools to plan number of acceptances and/or depth of wait list. This was followed by National Acceptance Report (in April) which allowed every school to see where every applicant had been accepted. This was a top down approach that AMCAS collected the info and sent it out to all the schools. Neither of these reports will be issued this year."

These Multiple Acceptance Reports are not being sent anymore, so schools are completely blinded to where else you hold offers. Instead they have been receiving some aggregate data through the CYMS tool on AMCAS. Here is what @Fencer had to say about how it's been working for him so far:

"It was disappointed with the tool. There is aggregate data for how many of our accepted applicants have other acceptances, but I don't know if they are MD or MD/PhD, and I don't know who or what schools. We know that >80% of our accepted applicants have multiple acceptances (but that includes MD). Furthermore, they partition the data into in-state and out-of-state. If you have less than 5 accepted applicants for one of these categories, you are not able to know how many applicants selected Plan-to-Enroll to our program, other school, or no decision. In my case, I can see the out-of-state category but not in-state... We also are able to see that our 2/3 of the alternate pool have received an acceptance, but I don't know where. We will know if people have still more than 3 acceptances after April 15, but not who is holding more. One of my applicants had more than 6 acceptances as of now. After April 30, we know who is holding what. My bet is that we are going to delay admissions to waitlisted applicants until April 15 - May 15. As people reduce to 3 acceptances (right now 1/4 of my applicants hold more than 3 acceptances), some movement will occur."
 
The CYMS provides aggregate data regarding acceptances when you have more than 10 acceptances out there, and Plan to Enroll data when you have at least 5 accepted applicants in each category (In-state/Out-of-state). The tool was designed to improve privacy and might work well when your class is 50, 100, or 200 students. The disappointment comment (problem) is for small programs, like MD/PhD programs. For us, we only have 13 programs with more than 13 spots, and most MD/PhD programs have only 4-12 slots. The CYMS webtool is inadequate for most MD/PhD programs because the thresholds to provide information are often above our target enrollments preventing from releasing that aggregate information to us.

An additional problem for MD/PhD programs is that many of us (about half) start in June with a research rotation, much sooner than the late July/August typical start-dates for most MD programs. Our community has been providing feedback to AAMC aiming to improve this tool for next year. I suspect a very active period when accepted students are offered from the WL, and the domino effect begins as a snowball between April 15 - May 15 (small 1st week, bigger 2nd, biggest 3rd, finishing in the 4th week).
 
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klucket2 said:
This is absolutely not true. See @gonnif's post from last November:

"Previously there was a Multiple Acceptance Report (in February) that showed every school that accepted you only to every other school that accepted you. This was used primarily for schools to plan number of acceptances and/or depth of wait list. This was followed by National Acceptance Report (in April) which allowed every school to see where every applicant had been accepted. This was a top down approach that AMCAS collected the info and sent it out to all the schools. Neither of these reports will be issued this year."

These Multiple Acceptance Reports are not being sent anymore, so schools are completely blinded to where else you hold offers. Instead they have been receiving some aggregate data through the CYMS tool on AMCAS. Here is what @Fencer had to say about how it's been working for him so far:

"It was disappointed with the tool. There is aggregate data for how many of our accepted applicants have other acceptances, but I don't know if they are MD or MD/PhD, and I don't know who or what schools. We know that >80% of our accepted applicants have multiple acceptances (but that includes MD). Furthermore, they partition the data into in-state and out-of-state. If you have less than 5 accepted applicants for one of these categories, you are not able to know how many applicants selected Plan-to-Enroll to our program, other school, or no decision. In my case, I can see the out-of-state category but not in-state... We also are able to see that our 2/3 of the alternate pool have received an acceptance, but I don't know where. We will know if people have still more than 3 acceptances after April 15, but not who is holding more. One of my applicants had more than 6 acceptances as of now. After April 30, we know who is holding what. My bet is that we are going to delay admissions to waitlisted applicants until April 15 - May 15. As people reduce to 3 acceptances (right now 1/4 of my applicants hold more than 3 acceptances), some movement will occur."
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Yup, I corrected it in post 646.

OchemOficionado said:
Yup, but they used to get the MAR in Feb and only for accepted students and the NAR they got in April. That's the main reason I'm not convinced that schools are changing their process this early in the game. (YES, some schools have said they have, not discounting that just speaking in general)

Again, I'm just speculating.
Click to expand...
 
Anyone know anything about WL movement at UF? Couldn’t find a WL thread specific to this school
 
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