Vanderbil Waitlist

[applyingnotfun]

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Anyone have a feel for about how many applicants are eventually accepted off of Vanderbilt's waitlist? According to USNEWS stats from last year, Vanderbilt will accept about 280 students total this year. So, does anyone know about how many of those 280 students will be taken from the waitlist as opposed to being accepted outright?

Also, is it proper to get in touch with the admissions office at a school where you've been waitlisted to ask what kind of chance you have of being admitted? Thanks for the help.

 

[Bones2008]

280 - (# in class) = # taken off waitlist

 

[applyingnotfun]

well i guess now that i think about it, that does make sense. thanks bones.

I guess now the question is, does anyone have any idea how big Vanderbilt's waiting list is? it looks like they will be accepting about 150-200 of us off the waiting list in May and throughout the summer.

 

[taehong81]

280-(# of class)=# of people taking of the waitlist, does not make sense to me or am I just not understanding this. Vanderbilt accept 280 acceptance because they know that some people will not come. That number will drop as people withdraw and if that number drops under 104 (I think that is this year's first class size) then they will start taking people from the waitlist until their first year spots are all filled. I have a friend who is a first year now at vandy med school and he said that about 5-10 got off the waitlist last year. I am on the waitlist now and probably won't get in off the waitlist.

 

[applyingnotfun]

i don't think that is how med school works. i believe that they accept the exact number of students they want, which in this case is 104, throughout the year. then as students decline, they go to the waitlist and start accepting people off the waitlist. in this way there is no guess work, they will end up with the exact number of students that they want each year. if they accepted 280 every year, they might end up with 150 students wanting to come one year, and 50 wanting to come another year. this is how college admissions work, but not med school (at least I think, and hope).

 

[applyingnotfun]

bump

 

[Yogi Bear]

280 - (# in class) = # taken off waitlist

there's currently 104 in our first year class here....a couple were accepted from previous year (i think 2) and a couple who were accepted in 2003 cycle deferred.

i'd say the number off of the waitlist is definitely NOT 280-104 = 176!!! that's a ridiculous number. what happens is that the adcom accepts more people whenever students withdraw, and also may (i'm unsure) accept more than 104 students intially. that said, i do know of a few classmates who got off the waitlist (it's not something were really talk about).

 

[calebho501]

Let's say they accepted 270 people in regular decision, and 176 of them decided to go elsewhere, so now only 94 people left. So the school will need 10 people from Waitlist to make it up to 104.

Essentially, you can't predict the number of people accepted based on the simple formula.

 

[applyingnotfun]

ok, let's again say that they accept 270 people in regular decision, except this time 176 decide to attend. now the school is screwed. therefore, it does seem that in regular decision they only accept a little more than the 104 class size that they want to end with. this way they can be sure that no more than 104 will decide to attend, at which point they can go through the waitlist one at a time until they find enough people to get an exact class of 104. it is no coincidence that all med schools have the exact same number of students in each class, whereas colleges have varying numbers each year depending on how many kids decide to attend. they use two very different admissions processes. and let's not forget, when they do start accepting off the waitlist not every person is going to decide to attend at this point either. i don't know. it's confusing. i would say there is no way that they can accept more than 200 kids regular decision for fear of having too big of a class. then they accept some more kids off the waitlist some of whom come and some of whom don't until they have the exact 104 that they want. that's just my reasoning.

 

[calebho501]

Actually I do think they accept >200 for regular decision, and the 270 is just an eg., not an absolute number.

See even for a good school like Vanderbilt, people can choose elsewhere because of location or the cheaper tuition at their state school. Plus Vanderbilt has rolling admission, so people do withdraw their acceptance throughout the year. They just know about how many people to accept based on past year's experience.

I heard that Northwestern accepted more people than its regular class through regular decision either last year or in a recent year. It was lucky than enough people withdraw or defer their acceptances over summer (Get accepted to other schools through waitlist or defer a year). So it's possible to accept too many people.