A long time ago, when the admissions process was young, colleges and universities realized that the sooner they could get a student to commit to absolutely, positively coming to their schools, the sooner they could:
-
Help the student make a smooth academic and social transition into the community of scholars, and
-
Begin spending that student’s tuition.
There was a time, or so I’m told, when institutions would try to get students to commit earlier and earlier, sometimes using positive incentives (“commit now, and you’ll get the best housing, the best classes and we’ll give you a puppy”) or even threats (“commit now or we’ll stick you in the worst housing on campus, give you the worst class schedule and we’ll kick this puppy”). This led to the GREAT TREATY OF ADMISSIONS, in which all the colleges and universities agreed to give students until May 1 to make their decisions and not use incentives or threats -- except in cases where they can be sneaky enough to get away with it.
Apart from there not actually being any such treaty*, giving admitted students time to make up their minds about which schools to attend seems like a very reasonable and prudent thing for colleges and universities to do. That all goes out the window, however, for students on the waitlist.
A high school counselor launched a heated online debate recently when she complained about a college admitting one of her students from the waitlist and then requiring an IMMEDIATE commitment. Factions quickly formed on the subject.
Team A (motto: college would be a lot more fun for us if it weren’t for all these pesky students) noted that most colleges and universities require students to respond to waitlist offers with an agreement that, should the applicant be admitted from the waitlist, he or she will celebrate joyously and immediately commit, so the requirement for immediate response shouldn’t be a surprise.
Team B (motto: students rule, colleges drool) argued that even students with the best of intentions have to do some soul searching once admissions offers are received and that teenagers may have trouble making up their minds quickly. Later, more savvy members of team B noted that most waitlisted students go ahead and confirm somewhere else while waiting to hear from any school that waitlisted them and might be waitlisted by more than one school. As a result, a well-meaning student can find him or herself committed to one school when admitted from the waitlist at one (or two or three) others.
From my seat, this is a tough call. On the one hand, if I’m going to make offers to students on our waitlist, I need to know about their commitments as soon as possible so I can decide whether to offer the opportunity to others. On the other hand, it seems terribly unrealistic to encourage students to commit to other institutions by only offering them the waitlist, give them time to accept that decision and even get excited about it, and then give them only hours or days to shift gears when I make my offer.
While we’re on the subject, the growth of waitlists themselves is particularly troubling, with many schools keeping more than a thousand applicants on the hook until well into summer -- more on that soon.
Be seeing you.
*Note: The May 1 deadline, however it was decided, is part of the National Association for College Admission Counseling’s Principals of Good Practice. This bears many similarities to modern treaties, as it is really complicated and, since it’s pretty much unenforceable, relies on the goodwill of the member colleges and universities for compliance.
About Andrew Flagel