Student agony grows along with top colleges' wait lists
Like jittery investors scrambling to hedge their bets, selective colleges and universities are placing far more applicants than usual on their waiting lists this spring as a safeguard against an unusually murky admissions season. But while the policy gives colleges some peace of mind, it plunges students into an admissions purgatory that could string out the stressful selection process for weeks to come.
Colleges have typically been able to estimate the percentage of accepted students who will enroll in the fall with a fair degree of confidence. This year, several factors have conspired to thwart their projections: a shaky economy, record numbers of applications, and sweeping financial aid expansions that make it harder to predict what colleges middle-class families will choose.
Faced with so many variables, colleges are wait-listing more students to fine-tune the numbers and makeup of their incoming freshman class. Lengthening the waiting list creates a crucial buffer of students in a year of deep uncertainty about how many will eventually show up, college officials say.
"Students are applying to more colleges because they are worried about not getting in, and colleges are wait-listing more because they are worried about how many will come," said Brad MacGowan, a longtime college counselor at Newton North High School. "They feed off each other."
As a result, both colleges and applicants are muddling through an admission season in which many conventional assumptions have been thrown into question.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has wait-listed 739 applicants, up nearly 50 percent from last year. Northeastern University has wait-listed 1,400, a 17 percent increase, while the University of Vermont has wait-listed more than 3,000, a 22 percent rise. Dartmouth will wait-list 1,500, up 15 percent. The increases are roughly in line with the rise in the number of applications.
Typically, selective schools accept a very small portion of wait-listed students. Those wait-listed will usually not find out whether they have been accepted until at least May, when colleges receive word from initially accepted applicants on whether they will attend. In some cases, the process extends into the summer.
Echoing concerns at other schools that have seen sharp increases in applications, Kristin Tichenor, vice president for enrollment management at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, said student interest has become increasingly difficult to pin down.
The school, which has seen applications surge 72 percent over the past three years, plans to wait-list more than 800 students and, for the first time, will allow entering students to begin college next spring because of the potential wait-list implications.
"It's nerve-racking trying to determine how many students will take you up on the offer," said Tichenor. "My counterparts and I are on pins and needles, so there's something of a hedging of the bets."
That leaves students dangling.
"It's a tough time," Cheng Ji, a Newton North senior, acknowledged with a sigh. He has been accepted at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, but is holding out hope that he will land at Northeastern, where he has been wait-listed.
"I really hope they accept me," he said. "I told them I will definitely go if they do."
Financial factors are complicating the outlook. Students find out about financial aid packages shortly after learning of their acceptance, and the slumping economy is likely to force more families to base college decisions on cost. At the same time, many families will find it easier to afford high-priced institutions, as many selective colleges reduce or eliminate loans and sweeten financial aid packages.
"It's always tricky to predict, but this is probably the trickiest year yet, because the landscape has shifted so radically," said Dick Nesbitt, director of admissions at Williams College.
For colleges, "it's like picking the brackets in college basketball," Nesbitt said. "You might think you're being scientific, but then you get blindsided."
Williams, which received more than 7,500 applications for a class of 538, will accept about 100 more students than last year, but will not significantly increase its waiting list beyond last year's 500 students, Nesbitt said.
Further muddying the admissions cycle is the continuing rise in the number of applications that students submit to highly selective schools, to boost their chances for an acceptance. This risk-hedging strategy makes it harder for colleges to predict where students will wind up, which in turn prompts the schools to protect their interests by wait-listing more students.
"We really don't know what's going to happen," said Stuart Schmill, MIT's admissions dean.
The end of early admission at Harvard and Princeton is also altering predictions of where the nation's top students will ultimately attend.
Adam Goldberg, a college planner based in Braintree, said the swirl of variables and the increased competition among students and schools have intensified an already stressful process.
"You have this perfect storm going on," he said. "It creates this chaotic scenario that manifests itself in much greater anxiety on both sides."
Colleges have long used the waiting list as a way to round out their incoming classes after students have responded to admission offers in early May. It is also the point at which many schools select students to meet certain demographic goals.
Selecting students who have already expressed a strong interest in attending also helps boost what colleges call their yield, a key measure of desirability and standing that refers to the proportion of students who accept a college's offer of admission.
Still, college officials are cautioning wait-listed students that it is too early to tell whether any of them will ultimately get in. Most students hop off waiting lists at some point in favor of a definite offer at another school, but some stay on and will rescind an acceptance elsewhere if they are eventually chosen at their first choice.
Almost 80 percent of highly selective institutions use waiting lists, and while most enroll relatively few students from them, such lists provide a comfort zone to make sure classes are not underenrolled.
Colleges say they do not use the waiting list lightly and are sympathetic to the stress it causes students. They say they are fielding many inquiries from counselors and students about the deferred applicant's chances of acceptance, but cannot give them much guidance until after the May 1 response deadline.
"It can be very disappointing for them," said Susan Wertheimer, interim admission dean at the University of Vermont.
All the uncertainty can benefit some students. Some schools are admitting more applicants because they expect a smaller proportion to attend.
But MacGowan of Newton North cautioned against false hope.
"You have to proceed as if you're not going to be taken off the wait-list," he said. "You can't rely on it, psychologically or practically." 
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