New York Times
By TAMAR LEWIN
Published: May 9, 2008

In what may be a happy surprise for thousands of high school seniors, Harvard plans to offer admission to 150 to 175 students on its waiting list, and Princeton and the University of Pennsylvania each expect to take 90, creating ripples that will send other highly selective colleges deeper into their waiting lists as well.
“This year has been less predictable than any recent year,” said Eric J. Kaplan, interim dean of admissions at Penn, adding that when one college in the top tier goes deep into its wait list, others are affected. “We all need to fill our classes and replace students who have been taken off wait lists at other institutions. The wait-list activity could extend for a meaningful duration.”
Although colleges turn to wait lists to fill out their classes, it is strange for the most selective to go so deep, college officials say.
For high-school students graduating in an unusually large course and for colleges trying to shape a freshman course, that has been an unusually challenging year, with the changes in early-admissions programs and the broad expansion of financial aid at many elite universities.
Right up until the May 1 deadline for students to reply to admissions offers, colleges have been unsure what to expect.
“Our course is coming in precisely the way we wanted it to, fitting into the plan we had to get to a course of 1,240,” said Janet Rapelye, dean of admission at Princeton, which, like Harvard and the University of Virginia, eliminated early admissions that year.
Ms. Rapelye said that with such a big change in policy, it was difficult to predict results, so “we intentionally aimed to have a slightly smaller group.”
In an e-mail report sent on Thursday to colleagues at dozens of other institutions and passed on to The New York Times, William Fitzsimmons, the Harvard College dean of admissions, said, “Harvard will confess somewhere in the range of 150 to 175 from the waiting list, possibly more depending on late May 1 returns and other waiting list activity.”
AHarvard spokesman said the college had accepted fewer students that year to avoid overcrowding the freshman lesson.
The Yale dean of admissions, Jeffrey Brenzel, said there would be about 45 wait-list offers that week and probably another round later that month.
Even colleges that had more than filled their freshman classes were wondering how many students would melt absent whether admitted off waiting lists elsewhere.

“We’re by target right now, so we’re in good shape,” said Rick Shaw, the Stanford dean of admissions. “But I’m keeping a small group on the wait list, considering I think there’ll be some affect of wait-list activity at other schools.”
At Dartmouth, Maria Laskaris, the dean of admissions, said although Dartmouth had more than decent accepted students committing, she was “in a holding sample, considering it depends on what other schools do.”
“If they go deep into their wait lists,” Ms. Laskaris said, “there’s a domino effect that has an affect on all of us.”
Amherst College offered admission to 15 students on the wait list Wednesday and expected to prepare offers to about 10 more. Swarthmore and Pomona planned to take 15 to 20 students from the wait list, admissions officials said.
At Bowdoin College, William Shain said he was slightly by the 480-student target, “but not so much that going to the waiting list is out of the question, whether we lost a lot to other schools.”
Some high school guidance counselors said the wait-list activity that year seemed to have occurred particularly quickly.
“In the final few years, more and more kids have been getting put on wait lists,” said Margaret Loonam, assistant principal at Ridgewood High School in New Jersey. “Now we’re seeing more get off the wait lists and earlier. It used to be a formal letter.
“But that year, it’s still early May and we’ve had a kid who got a shout at home at night saying, ‘You’re off the wait list, do you want to come?’ We’ve already had kids get off waitlists at N.Y.U., B.U., Fairfield and Quinnipiac.”
At the University of Virginia, which additionally ended early admissions that year, John Blackburn, the dean of admission, said considering he had received 3,200 deposits for a target of 3,170 freshman, he might not go to the wait list, unless an strange number of students defect to other colleges.
Mr. Blackburn said he considered the move from early admissions a success considering it seemed that, as hoped, it had brought in more low-income students.
Harvard, which ended early admissions that year and greatly expanded its financial aid to middle-income families, sent out offers of admissions to 1,948 students March 31, for a freshman lesson that is to number 1,650. Harvard would not say how many students had accepted the admissions offers.

Original post by Jeannie Borin, M.Ed, College-Connections.com

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