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Working With Wait Lists

September 23, 2011, 11:00 am

By Beckie Supiano

Wait lists are an important, but little-understood part of the admissions process, says Phil Trout, a college counselor at Minnetonka High School, who is one of the presenters on a panel devoted to the topic at the NACAC meeting on Friday. In a guest post, Mr. Trout shares his perspective on what wait lists mean for students and for colleges.

In July 2010, I was having lunch with three other high-school counselors and the dean of admission at a highly-selective Midwestern university.  He told us that earlier that morning, he had offered admission to a young woman who had been “high on their wait list” for more than two months.  The student immediately accepted her opportunity to attend this university.

The dean was excited that this student was so excited.

Everyone was happy!

But I was stunned. To be honest, I was surprised to discover that this university was acting on its wait list so late in the summer.

I couldn’t help but wonder about the emotional strain that must have taken place for this girl throughout the admissions process.  And when I learned that she had been an early-action candidate, I knew that her emotional connection to, and relationship with, this university had been operating at a fairly-intense level since the beginning of her senior year – more than ten months ago.

My sense is that the wait list is one of the least-studied (and perhaps least-analyzed) parts of the college-admissions process.  Within my group of colleagues on the secondary side, I have friends who are experts at athletic recruitment, writing a winning essay, advising the undocumented student, and getting into an Ivy League school.  But I don’t have a colleague who is “the wait list guy.”

The months of March and April are such an emotional roller coaster for those of us in high schools, with high-pressure conversations and high-energy demands as we help our students find the match.  By the time May 1 arrives, we want to take a much-deserved break.

At my school, we have seniors every year who are really in love with a college that wait listed them, and they want desperately to do everything they can to get admitted.

For those students, being placed on a wait list is usually a “win, win, lose, lose” situation:

  • They did not get rejected: “There is still hope that I will be admitted!”
  • They have even more time and opportunity to “show them the love” by demonstrating to admissions officials their strong desire to attend.
  • They have to move forward with the deposit and enrollment process at another institution. They have to “wear the colors” of a college that is perhaps their second (or third) choice school.
  • They are not in control of the outcome or the timetable.

For colleges, the wait-list world can be a “win, win, win, lose, lose” scenario:

  • They still have a chance to enroll a student they really, really want!
  • They can ‘massage’ their yield percentage by not offering acceptance right away to a student they suspect might go elsewhere.
  • The wait list offers a safeguard against enrollment loss caused by summer melt.
  • They could lose students who are accepted off of the wait list but see it as beneath them (what we call “wait list fatigue”).
  • Once a college goes to their wait list, that news is passed like wild fire amongst the high-school counselor world – “Did you hear who went to their wait list today?” Colleges will start hearing from every high school with a student on the list.

Still it’s better for colleges to be working through the wait list than to be included in the NACAC Space Available publication in May. After all, filling the class without outside help is a point of pride.

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  • rebek56

    Thanks, Rob. For three years, I received release time to run an office, which left me with four courses, 100+ students, administrative responsibilities, and no clerical help. My work week occasionally shaded over to 70 hours, and the load took a toll on my health. When I requested a return to full-time faculty status (a request which, fortunately, was granted), the dean asked, “But what will you do if you?”  It is not only outsiders who need to be educated about what is involved in teaching five courses well.

  • grward

    Yes, let’s be honest about this new iteration of the mania for “growth”. When I hear something along the lines of “grow or die”, it just tells me that the speaker knows nothing about biology and simply likes to use biological metaphors to mask their lack of understanding. Most of what admin people call growth is not actually a model of development and maturation but actually a model of neoplasia threatening to become cancerous malignancy if it’s not stopped. I would advise everyone, when they hear such questions or phrases, to turn around and challenge the speaker to rephrase the statement or question in a way that doesn’t imply the risk of uncontrolled proliferation but simply states that full maturation hasn’t yet been completed. Say “you feel that some parts of this institution haven’t yet developed fully into a mature form. Which ones are they? If this is true, then there may be possible gains in productivity. If they are fully mature, then increasing productivity will just be overproliferation with the risk of becoming malignant and eventually killing the host.” Nothing will change, of course, but it’s fun to see the confused look on their faces as they try to figure out what just happened. According to the shallow dogma to which they prescribe, growth is always good: no one’s supposed to be against it.

  • MChag12

     It would be nice if this were somewhere else other than the Chronicle of Higher Education.  Preaching to the converted doesn’t actually do much, and I don’t need to be told that my workload isn’t fair.  I already know that.  We need more emphasis on educating the public on exactly what is involved in education, from primary school up.  We especially need to educated those legislators who think that professors sit around drinking Sherry and waiting for the summer to come so they can escape to their beach houses and throw dinner parties.  Even statistics on the number of faculty who teach in the summer, thereby foregoing anything called a vacation, would be good to have at hand.  

  • robjenkins

    It’s not just faculty who read The Chronicle–and not everyone who reads it is aleady ”converted.”

    More to the point, there’s nothing to stop you from e-mailing this post to anyone you wish, including journalists, legislators, and administrators and board members at your institution. You can also post links to it on various blogs and websites. And you can say similar things in whatever venues are available to you. I would encourage you to do all of the above.

    I’m using the platform I have; to reach other audiences, I need help from readers like you. 

    Rob

  • bugochem

    That’s called nepotism.  I have been a candidate in at LEAST two (that I know about) searches that were that way – they already planned to hire a trailing spouse and the whole search was a facade/ruse.  I was told that another job I applied for was nepotism of a different kind – a pre-selected friend of someone for a USDA job.  Pretty disgusting if you ask me. What ever happened to merit and competition? 

  • bugochem

    Sense of entitlement – you mean like tenure? 

  • bugochem

    What would be the harm in mandating feedback, other than simply to miff some egos who don’t like to be told what to do?

  • solidagojuncea

    Federal mining laws will probably allow Mr. Loomis to lease mineral rights under the sculpture and wipe it out in his search for more coal.  

  • dmoser5

    FULL DISCLOSURE (Sort of . . .) — I have a close affiliation with Pronghorn University (I say that tongue-in-cheek because there are more pronghorn antelopes in the area than students, total. Yes, we see them in town on the way to the local Big Box Store).

    First up, I have serious concerns about the leap of faith that is being made to connect the mountain pine bark beetle infestation that is inexorably devastating the surrounding forests here with the coal industry that admittedly does provide much to the economy of the state. Quite simply, either Chris Drury has been misquoted or misinformed (he could have come to my office; we spent the last year helping with a project by one of the University’s Bristol Scholar’s—he did a photo-reportage, with audio interviews, of the people bearing the impact of the pine beetle infestation and nary a lump of coal insight).
    Second, I am deeply saddened to see the rush to judgement on the part of the Wyoming Mining Association in their condemnation of this project. @chronicle-3d4cf264a045538cf252e719e74b68f5:disqus has nailed it quite well in saying that this is an opportunity for debate and education, all the way around (especially if I am right about #1 above!).This campus desperately needs such opportunities for open debate; we have learned nothing from the debacle here last year if we do not take this one. 

    Or perhaps Peter Garrett was right after all and “And nothing’s as precious, as a hole in the ground . . .”

  • thedoctorisin

    I don’t buy your premise regarding academic freedom.  It does not mean you can ride roughshod over opposing viewpoints.  It appears that Chris Drury was made aware of several facts regarding the pine beetle epidemic and chose to ignore them.  Academic freedom requires intellectual honesty.

  • raza_khan

    Unfortunately, most universities have acted like a business… When they have number of “applicants” (see I did not use the word students) on the wait list,  they can literally hold them by a fish wire till they make the decisions….

    Once the demand goes down, the colleges go running here and there recruiting these applicants..

    Now, you wonder why I refrained from using the work students!!  :)

    Raza

    __________________________

    Dr. Raza Khan

    Chemistry faculty

    Dr.Raza.Khan@gmail.com

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