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Dirty Secrets of College Waitlists
Sweets don’t work
“We always have people bringing us cookies and cakes. It’s terrible for my waistline and it doesn’t work. One young woman sent a box of red and gray M&Ms, some stamped with her name, some with ‘Wants UGA.’ They’re still on my desk, but I don’t even remember her name…We did let her into our January class, but she was not too pleased about that. Her mother called to complain.” — Nancy McDuff, director of admissions at the University of Georgia
Neither do pineapples
"We get the pineapples from Hawaii and the cookies and candy. One girl had a petition signed by the mayor and everyone in her town. She even had the dean of Swarthmore sign it when she came on a campus tour. It was clever. Those things don't get you in, but they put you on our radar.
“But they can backfire. We heard about one guy who was writing [online] about how badly he wanted to go to Swarthmore, but he was waitlisted. He was saying some pretty nasty things about us. He also said we shouldn't have listened to his teachers' recommendations, which were, in fact, glowing. It was anonymous, but he said where he lived and we'd only put one boy on the waitlist from that state, so we knew who it was. So we just didn't want to go there. You have to be careful what you put on the Internet. We don't go looking, but we can't ignore it when we hear about it." – Jim Bock, Swarthmore College
Pen a tune
“I always tell students that, at this stage of the game, a gimmick won't hurt. It's go-for-broke time. I know one student who sent admissions folks a photo of himself in front of the gates of a rival college, adding a clever caption about what his fate would be if he moldered on the waitlist. An aspiring composer [could] write an ‘Ode to Oberlin’ or a budding poet pen ‘The Ballad of Barnard.’ Yet you have to be aware that what tickles the fancy of one admissions officer may make a colleague barf.” — College Confidential counselor Sally Rubenstone, a former admissions officer at Smith College
No, really, pen a tune
“We had a student years ago who used the music of our alma mater and wrote new words telling us why we should admit them. Creative and cute, but not over the top.” — Jean Jordan, director of admissions at Emory University
Don’t repeat yourself
“One of our applicants when I was at Penn wrote his essay on baking popovers, and one day he showed up at the office with a batch of freshly baked popovers. We all thought it was fairly ingenious— until we heard through the grapevine he did the same thing at Princeton.” — Karen Crowley, consultant for College Coach, a national education-consulting firm, and former admissions officer at the University of Pennsylvania
Make up your mind
“We offered a spot to a student off the waitlist a few years ago only to find he’d made deposits at two other Ivy League schools before May 1 as placeholders. Before May 1, double deposits are unethical and illegal. It’s also stupid. We ended up rescinding our offer, and I heard the other schools did as well.” — former Ivy League admissions officer
Get psyched about where you did get in
“For day one, I tell kids to be excited about the schools they did get into. They applied to those schools for some reason in the first place, and that school thought they’d be a good fit. It also puts you in a better bargaining position if another offer does come around.” — Brad MacGowan, college counselor at Massachusetts’ Newton North High School
And don’t count on the waitlist
“I can’t stress this enough to families: Put a deposit in at some school before May 1. Yes, more and more are willing to walk away from that money if a better offer comes in, but we hear terrible stories all the time about kids who ended up with nowhere to go in the fall.” — Brian Hazlett, director of recruitment at Binghamton University
Kathleen Kingsbury is a writer based in New York. She's a contributor to Time magazine, where she has covered business, health and education since 2005.
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Lloyd Grove is editor at large for The Daily Beast. He is also a frequent contributor to New York magazine and was a contributing editor for Condé Nast Portfolio. He wrote a gossip column for the New York Daily News from 2003 to 2006. Prior to that, he wrote the Reliable Source column for the Washington Post, where he spent 23 years covering politics, the media, and other subjects.
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Jacob Bernstein is a senior reporter at The Daily Beast. Previously, he was a features writer at WWD and W Magazine. He has also written for New York magazine, Paper, and The Huffington Post.
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Jeff Madrick is a contributor to the New York Review of Books and a former economics columnist for the New York Times. He is editor of Challenge Magazine, visiting professor of humanities at Cooper Union, and senior fellow at the New School's Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis. He is the author of Taking America, The End of Affluence (Random House) and The Case for Big Government.
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Kathleen Kingsbury covers education for The Daily Beast. She also contributes to Time magazine, where she has covered business, health and education since 2005.
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Kathleen Kingsbury covers education for The Daily Beast. She also contributes to Time magazine, where she has covered business, health and education since 2005.
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Kathleen Kingsbury covers education for The Daily Beast. She also contributes to Time magazine, where she has covered business, health and education since 2005.
If our exclusive private K-12 school, which has always had 10 applicants for every slot is any indication, these losers who love sticking it to achievers are going to learn to beg this year. Our school is begging parents to talk up the school. Letters went out two weeks ago and for the first time the school "will continue to accept applications until all slots are filled".
Unlike the "best" list the writer had last week, in which only one college west of Chicago was snobbishly included, this column works. I would recommend the writer since she now has an audience beyond the New York Sophisticate market (the kind that use summer as a verb) that she be like the Internet and be more democratic and less fascist in her thinking about how higher education is for all who can achieve.
For my son going into college this year, we used a new company called "My College Agent". They provided us with a to-do list and whatever assistance we needed in all aspects. Highly recommended as I did not understand all the requirements or angles to use.
College have again fooled students and parents alike with their "select" policies. The college system (more like business) has made students feel that if they do not get into certain schools they will somehow not have a good career or success. The truth is a History degree from Harvard is just about as useless as the one from the local State school. The name recognition can be good for certain degrees like Law or Medicine but the best lesson future students can learn is it depends on personal drive and initiative to be successful in life. And most school don't teach useful life lessons, rather life experience is the best teacher. But I suppose most people will learn when they get that useless degree from Harvard or Yale and can't find a job.....
"but we hear terrible stories all the time about kids who ended up with nowhere to go in the fall."
Nowhere to go? That's ridiculous. Success depends on the person and not the school you go to. Take a semester at a tech and transfer!
I LOVE Larry from Kansas-----"summering as a verb"-----crack me up! I've got six children in private schools in a large city-----we are getting ready to tackle colleges, and yes, its daunting, but it will all work out. Failure and rejection make people better across the board. Its not cancer, and there are bigger fish to fry. Larry from Kansas should be making a living writing!
I am surprised that people still think a fancy college education will get them everything. It doesn't. I had one, so did the husband, but it doesn't mean a young woman or man will get a better job, or even that after graduation a student can find a job. I'm teaching my son to follow me, I make more money in the arts than I did in a medical career. My college education is nothing more than a memory now.
Get straight A's and UC Davis or Tufts as a freshman and apply to Stanford as a sophomore. I have two friends who did exactly that and were admitted, graduating with honors three years later. Did they get a better education? Probably not, but Stanford produces a great alumni magazine.
Larry from Kansas seems bitter for being from a boring state. Can't blame him.
Tina:
When Daily Beast first appeared, I thought you had an open-mind about public policy issues. Now I detect a bias to the right. Your stories are tinged with a critical edge towards the efforts of the Obama administration. Or am I wrong?
Don't want to get wait-listed at one of the 'best' schools? Have parents with money. A multi-million dollar donation will assure anyone of admission to any university in the country.
I'm glad that I'm soon to be leaving university than trying to get into it. Although I don't think that high school students in Canada are in a similar position.
The school of Hard Knocks is free (if you can survive).......
Well,well,seems like Washington U in St. Louis has quite the wait-list rep...2 of my 3 children & this year, my niece were wait-listed at WU[we are consistent, although,not huge contributors to the Medical school!] the truth is "St. Louis kids"
don't fit their demographic, but, they are great marketing genius's to wait list 10.000 whew! Fact is my children went to the schools where they were wanted & appreciated a real winning combo...save the expense & prestige for grad school or not!@#$
Thank you daily beast! I am currently a high school student in Maryland. I have been excepted to Chatham, Campbell, LeMoyne, Shepherd, and Ohio University. However, I am on the waiting list for Temple University, which happens to be my top choice. I want to go there so badly it's unreal.
I had planed to write them and discribe my eager ambition to become a Temple student. I would like to major in film. I have several film-projects I have made in the past two years, some of which are pretty well done (not trying to brag).Should I submit one with a letter?
yes, yes! do it! good luck, i'm in the same position -- wait listed from my top choice :( but it's not the end of the world, don't worry!
just read your entry. My son, also a high school senior, wants to make films.
He applied and was accepted into LeMoyne, Hobart and William Smith Colleges, Suny Cortland, St. John Fisher, and Rochester Institute of Technology. He chose RIT as they have an outstanding film program, although he was accepted into the New Media Interactive Design program. He is hoping to transfer to film and animation after ,as he says, "kick butt his first year". Keep your chin up. There are more than a few ways to get to where you are dreaming of going. work hard!
I've been waitlisted at Columbia and it's my number 1 choice. I don't have any updates to my grades since I applied. I was thinking of contacting them to let them know I'm still interested and they're my top choice. Is this a good idea? If so, who should I contact? Is email better than a snail mail? Any suggestions?
Just a clarification about Columbia. I am on the wait list for grad school.
Thank you.
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