Even with schools being more conservative with the # of acceptances and less applicants having multiple acceptances, I don’t understand why WL movement would be drastically different year to year. Without the MAR, schools are picking their favorite applicants. So wouldn’t top applicants have all the acceptances then? These top people can only go to 1 school and will have to drop their As at some point. Say 1 person has 10 acceptances, and still hasn’t dropped them yet. That would open up 9 spots when they do drop. Those people are also the first ones to get the call of the WL. They might wait the max # of days to accept the offer, like the above poster’s friend, and then decide to turn it down. I think there will be more movement in the next few months. We also can’t extrapolate based on what happened last year, as schools had no idea what they were doing last year when it came to PTE/CTE. Many schools over-accepted last year because of this and word on the street is that didn’t happen this year. Only time will tell what will happen though, so you may very well be right about less WL movement overall. I’m choosing to remain optimistic about more movement though since that helps me sleep better at night lol.
Agreed about not extrapolating from last year, but there is zero evidence to suggest that there is widespread holding of multiple As at this point in the cycle, since just about every school seems to be enforcing its requirement that candidates select PTE in order to keep their As, and people can only be PTE at one school. WL movement at this point is precipitated by someone holding an A dropping it when they are called off another WL, rather than people with multiple As from 4/30 holding them indefinitely and then dropping them at some random point.
I wasn't trying to predict what might happen from this point forward, but was only offering a possible explanation for why it might be less than in prior years to this point. Namely, the lack of a MAR, plus schools' experience in over accepting last year, made them more conservative with initial As this year.
You are 1,000% correct - better candidates receive more As. In an environment in which there are less As to go around, fewer top candidates will receive fewer As. That will lead to fewer multiple As being dropped, which will lead to less WL movement, which is what I think might be happening to date.
Last year people also kept speculating that a wave of WL movement would come later due to uncertainty over how the new rules were impacting movement. It turned out that a number of schools over accepted, there were not, in fact, a ton of people holding multiple As late into June and July, and the hoped for WL wave at the end never came.
Unless a lot of people are still holding a lot of As, the same will happen again, with or without schools being over enrolled. The only possible movement will come from people with As receiving another A when they are called off a WL, and then having to drop one. This will continue to occur right up until classes begin, but is likely to be a slowing trickle rather than a building wave, since, at every school, an A will eventually go to someone not already holding one, and that will be the end of the WL calls resulting from the first WL call in that chain.