If 180 of the 360 interviewees are immediately accepted and if the other 180 are either waitlisted or rejected, most of us would like to believe that we were selectively placed on alternate status as a special group of 40. However, it makes much more sense that Penn would "double book" us on the waitlist to ensure that their entering class is full.
Accordingly, I suspect that the special group of 40 is representative of those waitlisters that have submitted their forms and have asked to be placed on the "final waitlist." The remaining 140 students were probably placed on the waitlist as well, but ultimately, they might have declined to be placed on active status due to various reasons (ie. acceptances to other first-choice schools, acceptances to their state school, laziness to relocate, reluctance to take on the financial burden of an ivy league education, etc.). Some of these students may have requested initially to be placed on the waitlist and then later after deciding to go elsewhere, they might have asked to be taken off. This would bring the "final waitlist number" down to 40. At the same time, a small number of students may have been outright rejected after poor interview performances, and this would also bring the "final waitlist number" down to 40. Doesn't matter though, cause the bottom line is that plus or minus 40 students eventually end up on the "final waitlist" when it comes time for ADCOMS to conclusively rank their students and decide which ones to accept.
As far as the seemingly random and chaotic way that interviewees have been waitlisted, I suspect that there is a method to this madness. Let's begin to speculate by asking the following question: "If there is, in fact, a systematic way that ADCOMs rank their waitlisters, why are interviewees from later interview groups waitlisted before those from earlier groups and how does this ranking process transpire?"
Possibility 1:
If the waitlist ranking system is simply based on timing and one's "spot in line," then it is possible that ADCOMS will push "higher-priority waitlisters" to the beginning of the line by waitlisting them earlier. Probably not the case, though.
Possibility 2:
If the waitlist ranking system is not based on one's "spot in line," then lower-priority waitlisters were placed earlier on the waiting list because it was a no-brainer decision that they would not accept you right away.
Possibility 3:
Maybe ADCOMs are initially interested in a certain higher-priority interviewee and take longer to decide on him/her, but they ultimately decide to waitlist him/her because a subsequent interviewee had similar stats but did better on the interview. Maybe they only needed one of you to fill their quota if such a criteria exists for them. Maybe ADCOMs were out of the office at the time you were expecting a decision to be made.
Possibility 4:
Maybe interviewees are not evaluated solely on the basis of interview day/week/month; and maybe they are evaluated alphabetically among several interview groups. This could potentially explain why
Zoolander who interviewed in Feburary received waitlist notification later than
Assman who interviewed in March. If not alphabetically evaluated, other criteria could produce similar results (date application was submitted, etc.). I suspect this possibility to have some validity because our files must be organized in some way that does not necessarily have to be by interview group. In other words, when ADCOMs sit down to evaluate our folders, the way that the pile of folders are organized in front them ultimately determines the timing of our waitlist notificaitons.
Possibilty 5:
Waitlist ranking may also be based on your overall application score (determined by GPA, DAT, extracurriculars, personal statement, work/research experience, legacy status, etc.) and your final interview grade. Ranking may begin before the interview, at the time of the interview, after the interview, or when the waitlist is reviewed; but I'm sure that the ADCOM will try to make the screening process easier and more efficient by reducing the number of steps needed and not having to spend massive amounts of time reviewing, re-reviewing, and then re-reviewing the waitlist again. In other words, there has to be some sort of point system at the time of the interview that gives them a good idea of how the students are going to be ranked; and when re-reviewing the waitlist for the final time, they probably already have some sort of idea on which students are higher-priority than others.
Possibility 6:
Waitlist ranking may also be based unofficially on age, sex, race, and location. Dental schools like to brag about their ethnic diversity, and their ability to attract students from all over the country. Some dental schools will replace female for female, asian for asian, or canadian for canadian. This quota system may not fully apply to Penn though since they are a private institution, but I'm sure they are somewhat conscious of trying to keep it diversified. In other words, they can't have a whole class full of only white males.
Here's some more food for thought:
With regards to the 40 students that have been placed on active alternate status, fast waitlist movement implies a situation where the school is relatively unpopular for that cycle. When this occurs, the bottom of the waitlist could potentially have a shot at a seat since many active waitlisters may decline their acceptances. This occurs when students are no longer interested in Penn, whether they lost hope and placed final deposits at other schools, or thought the school was too expensive, etc. In contrast, waitlist movement will be slow and nearly non-existent during popular application cycles. This scenario will occur when the top ranking students immediately claim the first ten opening seats because Penn was truly their number one school and if Penn was the only school they got into.
