question about post-interview placement ratios

[AthanasiusJam]

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I was just wondering how many people tend to be waitlisted after an interview as compared to the number accepted (for your average school).

For instance, if they accept about half the people interviewed, are a quarter of the people interviewed placed on the wait list, and the rest are rejected? I know it will vary from school to school but any info is more helpful than none.

Thanks.

 

[rgporter]

This is only my speculation, but it seems to make sense. Take OSU for example. They interview 600, 400 are accepted and there are spots for 200 to matriculate. This works because the majority of people accepted recieve mulitple acceptances. It seems that at a lot of schools only about half the students accepted choose to go to that school. The waitlist comes into play when a lower than expected quantity of students matriculate. i.e. they expect 50% of the acceptances to matriculate and only 40% actually do.
Seems likely they would waitlist all of the promising students they weren't sure about. They definately rank them on whatever criteria they are using for acceptances, and you have a better chance depending on where you are on the waitlist. Sometimes no one comes in off the waitlist.

 

[jlee9531]

the number accepted obviously vary for each school because they historically know what number is a good number to accept so that they dont over book.

but the OSU example is good. im pretty sure this is how schools do it for the most part.

 

[AverageMan]

The admissions dean at Tufts discussed how waitlists worked these days during his comments. He talked about a situation that arised back in the mid 90's with med schools overbooking their classes. He talked about how the AAMC can't exert any direct control over how many students a school allows to matriculate in a class, but they can use excessive class size as a reason to revoke a school's accredidation. As such, schools now lower the number of floating acceptances they have out there. They no longer use the philosophy that if they offer X acceptances, they'll have a class of X/2 (as the Tufts dean put it, schools hoping that a great plague comes through the country and wipes out half the applicants 🙂 ). First round acceptances are intentionally kept lower and greater numbers of students are drawn from the waitlists so that they don't exceed their normal class sizes these years compared to years past. So waitlists are an intentional process in the admissions process, not to make up for a lack in matriculants, but to exert greater control when you want to fill those last few seats in the class.