Chances after waitlist

[ppappui]

First of all, congratulations to those of you who have been accepted this cycle You guys all earned it and deserve every single one of those for your hard work.

I have just been placed on a wait list for one of the schools I interviewed and am wondering what the chances are after wait lists. Do I need to wait till after May 15th to figure out what is going on, or will there be movement before that? Thanks for your input

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[mdhopeful65]

same. worst feeling ever.

 

[tiedyeddog]

Do I need to wait till after May 15th to figure out what is going on, or will there be movement before that? Thanks for your input

It doesn't hurt to figure out how waitlists work for various schools. It might help if you do get acceptances to other schools but still have interest in the schools that waitlisted you.

Waitlists really depends on the schools. For most schools you don't see significant movement until after may 15th. Many of the schools I applied to did not rank waitlists until after that. Some will give you a hard position (you are number x out of x people, we normally pull off the waitlist to place x, on average), some break you into tiers(high, middle, low priority where they normally take all high priority), and some don't tell you anything. All of this really depends on how many people end up declining acceptances by May 15th. For example, my school overaccepted last year and not enough people declined acceptances, so the school took almost no one(if anyone) off the waitlist and actually had 50 people too many in the class. Before that year they did go into the waitlist, It happens, you never now what is going to occur but can guess based on the past.

Some schools pull heavily off the waitlist. I know traditionally some "mid-tier" schools might take half a class off the waitlist. Some schools take 1-10 people, at max.

You can, which I advise you to do both:
a. call the school and ask about average amount of people taken off the waitlist and how ranking is done.
b. look up the 2010-2011 and 2009-2010 class threads for the schools you want to know about and see how waitlist movement has occurred in the past.

 

[flatearth22]

They might have just waitlisted you as a form of yield protect. They find out in March what schools have accepted you and if you get accepted to better schools they might not grant you an offer since you will likely turn it down. On the other hand if you have no offers they could accept you as you would have to take their offer.

 

[ppappui]

They might have just waitlisted you as a form of yield protect. They find out in March what schools have accepted you and if you get accepted to better schools they might not grant you an offer since you will likely turn it down. On the other hand if you have no offers they could accept you as you would have to take their offer.

Interesting. So schools know where you got accepted to by March?

 

[tiedyeddog]

They find out in March what schools have accepted you and if you get accepted to better schools they might not grant you an offer since you will likely turn it down.

I might be mistaken, but I am pretty sure medical schools cannot see where you have been accepted to other medical schools until after May 15th.

 

[kexy]

They might have just waitlisted you as a form of yield protect. They find out in March what schools have accepted you and if you get accepted to better schools they might not grant you an offer since you will likely turn it down. On the other hand if you have no offers they could accept you as you would have to take their offer.

I strongly suspect this happens, especially for public schools where you are OOS. Anyway, like tiedyeddog said, it depends on the school. Some schools will end up accepting up to 2/3rds of the waitlist, others far less. I would NOT ask this early about your rank on the waitlist, since it's not likely to be very informative. You could ask 1) whether it's ranked, or whether they do a holistic review of everyone on the WL when a spot opens up, 2) if ranked, when you might expect to hear of your rank.

Anyway, I got WL'd too, so I feel your pain.

 

[flatearth22]

I might be mistaken, but I am pretty sure medical schools cannot see where you have been accepted to other medical schools until after May 15th.

I've heard March a couple of times on here

http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=480097

 

[tiedyeddog]

I've heard March a couple of times on here

http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=480097

From what I gathered, the consensus there is that they can see where you've been accepted at after they've accepted you. Meaning, they don't know where you've been accepted if they only have you waitlisted. This means they can't try to game you and they will accept the "best" applicants off their list, not the ones most likely to accept an acceptance.

But, I'm pretty sure the march 15th date is just for schools to turn in to the AAMC who they've accepted. The AAMC doesn't give the list of schools that have accepted you to each medical school until after May 15th. Schools can then enforce the having only one acceptance per applicant rule by rescinding acceptances for multiple acceptance holders.

Edit: the AAMC traffic rules aren't clear about what other medical schools can see... LizzyM is probably going to have to answer this one.

 

[searun]

Many applicants are accepted from waitlists. A substantial percentage of students at some med schools (OHSU for example) are accepted from the waitlist. The percentage is much lower at other schools (Harvard for example). It really is school dependant.

OP, you can probably do some research and get some idea of typical waitlist movement at the school where you have been waitlisted. If you really want to attend this school, consider sending a letter of intent.

There usually is significant waitlist movement during the month of May.

 

[LizzyM]

What a school can see is not available to me as an adcom... I think only the dean has access to that information. If we have made an offer, the dean knows by about March 15 what other offers that applicant has. After May 15, they know where the people we've made offers to have chosen to matriculat and where our waitlisters have offers. In the summer, with some work, we can see where any applicant to our school in the past cycle ended up.

Frankly, I haven't seen that it matters.

There are people who have no decision at this time but who will get one in the late Winter and those who are truly "waitlisted" and for whom any movement will come in mid-Spring or Summer if at all.