10 Colleges Where the Most Applicants Are Wait-Listed
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For many college applicants, the admissions process is a waiting game -- and being placed on a waitlist just adds to the suspense.
Being offered a spot on the waitlist means there's still a chance -- though a slim one -- of being admitted if space becomes available. Applicants can accept an offer to be placed on a waitlist if they are still interested in the school, or reject the offer if not. Only those who accept are considered for final admission.
Among the 286 ranked colleges that submitted these data to U.S. News in an annual survey, the average percentage of applicants wait-listed for fall 2015 was 10.5 percent. This figure includes applicants for early decision, early action and regular decision.
[Discover three college waitlist mistakes to avoid.]
But among the 10 schools with the highest proportion of wait-listed applicants, the average percentage was significantly higher: 37.8 percent.
Case Western Reserve University in Ohio tops the list, wait-listing 41.4 percent of applicants for fall 2015. Of the 9,446 applicants who fell into this category, 5,119 accepted their spots on the waitlist, and just 518 were ultimately accepted, U.S. News data show. Of the colleges on the list, Case Western also had the highest number of both total and wait-listed applicants.
At the 10 colleges on the list, an average of 43.8 percent of applicants who were offered a place on the waitlist accepted. Of those applicants, an average of just 8.4 percent were admitted. Lehigh University and Bryn Mawr College, both in Pennsylvania, accepted no students off their waitlists for fall 2015.
Most of the schools on the list are either National Universities -- meaning that they offer a range of undergraduate majors plus master's and doctoral programs -- or National Liberal Arts Colleges, which emphasize undergraduate education and award at least half their degrees in liberal arts disciplines.
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All but two of the colleges on the list also rank within the top 50 in their categories.
Below are the 10 colleges that had the highest percentage of applicants placed on a waitlist for fall 2015. Unranked schools, which did not meet certain criteria required by U.S. News to be numerically ranked, were not considered for this report.
School (state) | Total applicants (fall 2015) | Total applicants placed on waitlist | Percentage of applicants placed on a waitlist | U.S. News rank and category |
22,807 | 9,446 | 41.4% | 37 (tie), National Universities | |
9,977 | 4,070 | 40.8% | 27 (tie), National Liberal Arts Colleges | |
7,076 | 2,876 | 40.6% | 27 (tie), National Liberal Arts Colleges | |
9,213 | 3,645 | 39.6% | 9 (tie), Regional Universities (North) | |
5,377 | 1,983 | 36.9% | 11, National Liberal Arts Colleges | |
2,814 | 1,025 | 36.4% | 59, National Liberal Arts Colleges | |
5,015 | 1,690 | 33.7% | 65 (tie), National Liberal Arts Colleges | |
12,843 | 4,232 | 33% | 44 (tie), National Universities | |
4,555 | 1,404 | 30.8% | 3, National Liberal Arts Colleges | |
2,890 | 872 | 30.2% | 31, National Liberal Arts Colleges |
Don't see your school in the top 10? Access the U.S. News College Compass to find admissions data, complete rankings and much more. School officials can access historical data and rankings, including of peer institutions, via U.S. News Academic Insights.
U.S. News surveyed more than 1,800 colleges and universities for our 2016 survey of undergraduate programs. Schools self-reported myriad data regarding their academic programs and the makeup of their student body, among other areas, making U.S. News' data the most accurate and detailed collection of college facts and figures of its kind. While U.S. News uses much of this survey data to rank schools for our annual Best Colleges rankings, the data can also be useful when examined on a smaller scale. U.S. News will now produce lists of data, separate from the overall rankings, meant to provide students and parents a means to find which schools excel, or have room to grow, in specific areas that are important to them. While the data come from the schools themselves, these lists are not related to, and have no influence over, U.S. News' rankings of Best Colleges, Best Graduate Schools or Best Online Programs. The admissions data above are correct as of Jan. 17, 2017.
Jordan Friedman is an online education editor at U.S. News. You can follow him on Twitter or email him at jfriedman@usnews.com.
