Waitlist Admission Rates

Monday, September 25, 2023

Waitlisted Heres What to do Next

For waitlisted students, it can be hard to judge just how much of a chance they have of getting accepted off the waitlist. Data around waitlist acceptances can be scarce, especially as waitlists at top colleges grow and more and more schools become less transparent about their admissions statistics. The college counselors at IvyWise, however, have dug into the data and have some insight into waitlist admission rates. 

What Are My Chances of Getting Off the Waitlist?

According to recent data from the National Association of College Admissions Counseling, colleges on average admit 20% of students off the waitlist. At the most selective institutions, that figure was 7%. In reality, since waitlist decisions can come as late as weeks before the start of the fall semester, families usually don’t have a good sense of how many students are admitted off waitlists each year. 

Recent Waitlist Admission Rates

Waitlist admission rates can vary from school to school and even year to year, especially as colleges have seen record-breaking application numbers over the past few years. Here is a list of colleges and universities and their waitlist admit rates for the Class of 2026: the most recent, complete data that schools currently have available. 

 SchoolWaitlistedAccepted from WaitlistWaitlist Acceptance Rate
American University2,086884.22%
Amherst College902363.99%
Babson College1,28600.00%
Barnard College1,597664.13%
Bates College1,26400.00%
Bowdoin CollegeUnknown10Unknown
Boston University5,89930.05%
Brown UniversityUnknown15Unknown
Bucknell University1,544100.65%
Caltech167137.78%
Carleton College591305.08%
Carnegie Mellon University4,652430.92%
Case Western Reserve University6,0564367.20%
Claremont McKenna College538112.04%
Colgate University2,14600.00%
Colorado College19321.04%
Columbia UniversityDoes not release waitlist dataUnknownUnknown
Cornell University5,5312604.70%
Dartmouth College1,785412.30%
Davidson CollegeUnknownUnknownUnknown
Emory University – Emory Campus3,3881073.16%
Georgia Tech4,903410.84%
George Washington University2,01410.05%
Georgetown University1,804402.22%
Grinnell College1,426584.07%
Hamilton College1,56800.00%
Harvard UniversityUnknown36Unknown
Harvey Mudd College419174.06%
Haverford College1,067 70.66%
Howard University2,93100.00%
Johns Hopkins University2,35800.00%
Lehigh University2,499933.72%
Massachusetts Institute of Technology76300.00%
Miami University – Ohio37625768.35%
Middlebury College2,215 120.54%
New York UniversityDoes not release waitlist dataUnknownUnknown
Northwestern UniversityUnknown83Unknown
Olin College of Engineering482858.33%
Pepperdine University98700.00%
Pitzer College27110.36%
Pomona College614132.12%
Princeton University1,34800.00%
Reed College1,675764.54%
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute 1,1292 0.18%
Rice University3,11200.00%
Santa Clara University2,46780.32%
Sarah Lawrence College436327.34%
Smith College1,132373.27%
Stanford University45781.75%
Swarthmore CollegeUnknown00.00%
Trinity University603498.13%
Tufts University1,32818313.78%
Tulane University2,27130.13%
UCLA11,1693673.29%
University of California – Berkeley4,655440.95%
University of California – IrvineDoes not release waitlist dataUnknownUnknown
University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill5,392383 7.10%
University of Pennsylvania2,5081475.86%
University of Richmond65400.00%
University of VirginiaUnknown6Unknown
Vanderbilt UniversityUnknown221Unknown
Vassar College638325.02%
Wake Forest UniversityDoes not release waitlist dataUnknownUnknown
Washington and Lee University1,029111.10%
Washington University in St. Louis3,4471684.87%
Wellesley College1,304443.37%
Wesleyan University1,557815.20%
William and Mary2,04240.20%
Williams College85000.00%
Yale University78091.15%

Not getting into your top-choice or “dream” school can be a big disappointment, but it can narrow the pool and allow you to focus on the other great schools where you were admitted. That said, a sense of uncertainty can come into play when you’re waitlisted, especially with enrollment deadlines right around the corner. At IvyWise we offer Waitlist Consultation services to help you decide what steps to take next to have the best chances of admission and decide where to enroll.

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