Having gone through this last year as well, I don't think this is correct at all. (That's not to say the situation is any better than a waitlist.)
We know there is an initial screening stage done by NDSEG to weed out candidates before the DOD sees the applications. I think this stage is mostly formulaic and is the easy stage to make it through. Then it gets to the DOD where they take a much closer look at each candidates. This stage is not formulaic and is more of a holistic process. This is the tough stage.
The most likely scenario I have heard is that the "maybe" email means you have made it past the first stage into the hands of the DOD. The fact that some acceptances have gone out means that one or more branches have gotten back to NDSEG with their selections. In other words, it's not a waitlist and NDSEG is truly waiting to hear back from the DOD.
But this is not an optimistic scenario. I'm guessing the first stage filter doesn't weed out that many applicants. Assume half. If you knew you made it past the first stage filter and no DOD branches had gotten back with acceptances then the chance of award given this information would be double the normal NDSEG rate (10%), so 20%. In other words, there are ~1000 applicants competing for 200 spots. Now assume a branch of DOD has gotten back with their choices and they took up 200/3 ~= 66 spots. Then we have (1000-66) candidates competing for 200-66 spots so that puts us at a 15% chance of success. If on the other hand, 2 branches have gotten back then we're looking at (1000-133) candidates competing for 200-133 spots or a 8% chance of success.
Obviously these numbers are rough, but they give an order of magnitude idea of what this "maybe" email means for your chances and it's not something to get your hopes up about. The fact that only one person reported receiving a fellowship from the legions of maybes list last year corroborates these ballpark numbers
