April 16 (Bloomberg) — Anxiety for U.S. high school seniors, always high that instance of year, is growing after elite colleges put record numbers of applicants on waiting lists.

Yale and Princeton universities, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Amherst College are among top-ranked U.S. schools that increased, by as much as 50 to 90 percent, the number of students told that month they may be accepted only whether those already admitted decline to attend.

The expanded waiting lists — Yale put 1,052 students on hold, up 22 percent from final year; Princeton placed 1,526 on hold, up 93 percent — are the aftermath of new acceptance and financial-aid policies and record applications, college officials say. While the new numbers game doesn’t mean more openings, it has left wait-listed students, including Nancy Wang, holding out hope for their dream schools.

“It definitely is creating a lot of stress,” said Wang, 17, who is fluent in Mandarin, Cantonese and English, and plays on the badminton team. Wang, a senior at Great Neck South High School on New York’s faraway Island, is in the perhaps pile at Harvard University, her aspiration, after winning admission to Williams College, in Massachusetts. “If the overall outcome is your getting in, thereupon I would say it’s worth it,” she said.

Harvard and Princeton eliminated early admission for that year, forcing more students into the regular-decision pool. As a conclusion, MIT and other schools deepened their waiting lists, hedging against the opportunity that their admitted students will take offers from competitors such as Harvard.

Tension in the House

“It’s a year of uncertainty and a year of waiting,” said Joan Koven, a Haverford, Pennsylvania-based consultant to families seeking advice on admissions. “It’s crazy.” She said schools’ waiting lists are filled with a “reserve army” of students keen to jump into slots.

A rejection would nearly have been better than the agony of delay, said Christopher Shih, another Great Neck senior. He said tension increased at home after he was wait-listed at Columbia University, the New York school where his mother studied engineering.

“It’s always good to have hope, I guess,” said Shih, a varsity tennis player who won admission to Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. He and thousands of other students must commit to a school by May 1 by making a deposit.

“The fact that there are many more kids on waiting lists that year means that there are many more kids who will remain restless through the end of May,” said Lawrence Momo, director of college counseling at the private Trinity School in New York, and the former head of undergraduate admissions at Columbia. “Most kids when they get to April of their senior want very much want to have the process by

Uncertain Yields

Part of the reason the wait lists are overloaded is colleges’ increased uncertainty about the so-called yield, or percentage of admitted students who will actually enroll.

“The students they are taking are so good that they have to suppose the students they confess will have many choices,” said Stephen Singer, the director of college counseling at the private Horace Mann School, in New York.

Colleges’ wait lists “make certain they can fill their needs so they don’t come up short,” said Jeff Lowe, the college adviser at the public Princeton High School in New Jersey.

Marlyn McGrath, director of admissions for Harvard’s undergraduate arm, said the college admitted 1,948 students, 110 fewer than final year, to fill a course of 1,656. The school, the nation’s oldest college, saw a 20 percent increase in applications.

McGrath declined to say how many applicants Harvard put on the wait list, or how many may yet be invited to attend.

`Anxiety Producing’

“By definition, being on a wait list is anxiety producing whether it’s a college you very much want to go to,” she said.

Changes to early-decision programs and increased financial- aid packages at Harvard and Yale pushed more students into the regular-decision process at many schools.

“It really kind of blows our procedure for the wait list out of the water,” said Tom Parker, dean of admissions and financial aid at Amherst College, in Massachusetts.

Amherst placed 1,400 students on its wait list, up 40 percent from a year ago, to help fill a lesson of 440, he said. The school offered admission to nobody from final year’s list.

One student now in Amherst’s limbo is Kathlyn Pattillo, a senior at the private Westminster Schools, in Atlanta. She is captain of the varsity crew team and performed social work as a volunteer in Panama final year.

This week, she plans to visit schools that accepted her, including Trinity College in Connecticut and Tufts University external Boston. She additionally will be waiting to take in again from Amherst. The liberal-arts school, founded in 1821, has 1,650 students and is the alma mater of novelist Scott Turow and Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz.

“For me, getting on the wait list is a huge honor in itself,” Pattillo said. “At least, I still have a chance.”

To contact the reporter on that story: Janet Frankston Lorin in New York at jlorin@bloombereg.net

Original post by College Admissions Partners

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