Are Waitlists by School Tier Different?

[ivybme]

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I have been waitlisted by 5 different top 25 schools, and I was wondering if waitlist movement tends to be earlier (mid-May/early June) than later (late June/July) for these schools.

I would imagine this would happen because the top schools who pull students off the waitlist will generally affect lower tier schools the most, but I don't know if this actually happens in practice. I mostly want to know when a decision is most likely to come, if at all.

 

[tarheelpenner]

the t20 schools that I am on have a lot of WL movement within a day or two of April 30th (**historically), then accept on a 1-for-1 basis. Pretty sure this is because most t20's do ranked WL, so they know immediately who they want to pull off. But it depends on your specific school.

 

[efle]

I think it is going to vary mostly on a school-by-school basis, not a tier-by-tier one. Like even among the top schools there are some places with ranked waitlists, some without, some places that waitlist less than 100 people, some places that waitlist 500+/waitlist everybody that isn't admitted. Plus they have different yields, like I'm sure WashU has to run through many more waitlist positions than UCSF does.