People who are accepted have strong applications that get them in after their interview. They are more likely to get accepted to more than one school. I have run into many of them during my interviews. Hypothetically speaking, if one of these people holds three acceptances, then this person is one of the 150 or 200 acceptances offered by each of those schools (assuming each school offers acceptances twice the size of their class). After May 15, when this person is forced to narrow acceptances to only one schools, two other schools get an open spot, so one person has opened up two spots and each in a different school. Its like a small domino effect for every accepted person. As I said before, people with acceptances before May 15 are more likely to have multiple acceptances and hold on to them until May, so its at least imaginable that a lot of spots will open up after May 15th. On the other hand, if you are waitlisted, you are good enough for that school, but there are stronger applicants that have applied with you, so they hold you on the back burner. In my opinion and using only logic, if your waitlists are at the top 20 schools, there will be less movement because already accepted applicants will not give up their spots. If, however, your waitlists are at schools that are not peoples top choices, then you will have better chances of getting accepted from the waitlist.
Lastly, although it feels like there are a lot of people on this forum, we form a small part of the application pool (at the moment there are 248 people on); therefore, we can not form any reasonable conclusions based on what happens to people at this forum.
My logic may be flawed. Do correct me if Im wrong.
