General waitlist movement for 2008

[Aesculapius]

I've got a friend, with a pretty strong application, that is currently waitlisted at 3 schools with no acceptances. As the due date of May 15th is approaching, for anyone in the know, does it seem like 2008 will be a year with a good deal of waitlist movement generally? It does seem that this year has been particularly competitive. Any scuttlebutt would be nice.

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[Margaux1985]

I've got a friend, with a pretty strong application, that is currently waitlisted at 3 schools with no acceptances. As the due date of May 15th is approaching, for anyone in the know, does it seem like 2008 will be a year with a good deal of waitlist movement generally? It does seem that this year has been particularly competitive. Any scuttlebutt would be nice.

I'd think that the waitlist movement in general is the same from year to year for all medical schools combined, after all, schools interview and accept the same number of people every year (I've heard that as many as 8000 additional seats, or half the matriculating class, become available after May 15th as a result of all the multiple acceptance people withdrawing -though this is speculation). So yes there tend to be a lot of waitlist movement after May 15 although this varies for individual schools. Some schools literally have 60% of their class coming off the waitlist, whereas others tend to never draw people off of their waitlist. It really depends on which school your friend was waitlisted at. I think that he/she would have the same chance of being accepted off the waitlist in 2008 as in 2007 or 2003 since the number of applicants that a school interviews and waitlists tend to stay constant.

 

[Phillyborn]

I'm not sure I agree. I think schools plan on similar trends as far as how many people they will need to pull off of the waitlist to fill the class, but individually there is variation from year to year. While the number of seats available stays relatively constant, the number of qualified applicants varies. So school A is banking on X% of their class being so great that they are accepted somewhere else and decide to go there instead. That is why schools accept more people than they have spots for, insurance that their class will be filled up (the waitlist is more like reserves if they fall short). If there are an overabundance of qualified applicants, there is less of this sorting out, and thus less waitlist movement.
That being said, last year there were a number of schools which over accepted and had to offer accepted students all sorts of incentives to defer for a year. How that translates to this year is probably yet to be seen. It COULD mean that schools are a bit more gun shy and over accepted to a smaller degree, leaving more room for waitlist movement... Or it could mean that we'll see the trend of little waitlist movement continue for 2008.