Many applicants to the most selective university programs share high grades, high test scores, solid recommendations and generous doses of community service and volunteer activities. Yet, if they want to set themselves apart from the pool of exceptional students, a significant research experience in STEM or the social sciences helps.
To most students one of the most seemingly useless tasks is writing a letter to a school asking to be placed on its wait list.
Most students consider an assignment to the wait list virtually a rejection, but like many things in the college admissions world, it depends on the circumstances surrounding the wait list.
Being waitlisted is often compared to an indefinite purgatory. You linger with the hope that sometime after early May, after the SIRs (statement of intent to register), deposits, and yields (how many offered admission are actually coming) are totaled, that the admissions office just might pull your number out of the hat. Yet, there are no rules on when or even if such an offer is coming. Some offers are made mere days before classes begin; most often they aren’t. That is what makes being waitlisted so unnerving.
Do you want to find out how many students transferred to Cornell University last year? Or, how many students received financial aid (institutional and government grants) at Pomona College, and how much each actually got? Or, do you want to find out the real student to faculty ratio at Dartmouth? If you do there are two places to go to answer many of these questions accurately and efficiently: College Navigator is one (and it has been profiled by me often. If you haven’t had a chance, you really need to go to its website and take a look at some of the schools you have under consideration. (http://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/). This is one example of our tax dollars well-spent; it’s truly a veritable goldmine of valuable college information.
The other tool of equal utility is the Common Data Set (CDS), and it is in today’s spotlight.
