You could be on the waitlist for a few weeks or until the program start date in the summer or fall. The school sets a date for all of the accepted students to pay their deposits to save a seat in the class. Once that date is up, if an accepted student does not accept the offer and pay the deposit, the school will offer admission to the top person on their waitlist. They offer admission to people based on how many spots they have open in their class, working their way down the list until they have a full class. I was waitlisted at the three schools I applied to last year. I never heard back from two of them, and heard back from the third that I was in their top five. Personally, I thought being waitlisted was worse than being outright rejected because the wait to know what I was doing just kept getting longer. However, if you're high up on the waitlist you certainly have a good chance at getting in. So that would be a good thing. I ended up having to reapply this year, which was also not fun doing a second time.
