ARRRGH!
I had written a good response; but my browser crashed! Here goes again.
First of all, it all has to do with what you define as "coming off of the Waiting List." Does that mean that those people are accepted AND matriculate to Yale, or are just offered positions?
The long and the short of it is this. I doubt that the Waiting List is 250 people long. That would mean from about 1000 interviewees, they waitlist or accept 400-- which I think is quite too many. From correspondence with my student interviewer, he makes it sound like it is a very big thing to even be on the Waiting List, so I will err on the side of a small Waiting List.
When I said they accept about 150 in their first batch-- I think I had a mental fart. I recall Director Silverman saying something to the extent that they only accept the number of people that they have spaces for (anyone else get this same info???). So that would mean the inital acceptances would equal 101.
Now, the 85% post-interview rejection rate, I think is wrong. I think that it 85% is a percentage of applicants given offers to attend.
If we assume the following two cases:
(let ORR = Overall Rejection Rate (post-interview))
a) 19 waitlistees offered acceptance (87% ORR)
b) 59 waitlistees offered acceptance (83% ORR)
As you can see, the average of the two is 85%, which is not statiscially a correct thing to do, but for argument's sake is correct. And that then corresponds to my previous (albeit perhaps rosy) estimates of the Waiting List. The number of people being accepted off of the Waiting List depends on
the number of people refusing to matriculate to Yale.
Now, these numbers could all be bogus if knew the actual percentage of the Yale class that comes off of the Waiting List AND the number of people given offers... But as we can see, all of this is conjecture...
I think we all have a good shot-- Tiers I, II, and even III-- regardless of the exact size of the tiers... IF all on tier I are given offers and 50% of the time all of tier II, those are great odds. Of course I would have loved to be on Tier I so I can start my move to New Haven-- but what doesn't kill you builds character, right?
Go Bulldogs