Probability of acceptance from waitlist?

[sellian]

Hello everyone, I am an international applicant to a Masters program (I only applied for one because it is in a city I have visited and really want to live in - and I was really just testing the waters). I had an interview via Skype at the start of February, only about 5 days after applications closed, and it went very well in my opinion, so I felt pretty good about that. After not hearing anything for about a month, I woke up to an email saying that I had been waitlisted. I was pretty disappointed, because I thought the interview went pretty well. My American friends told me it isn't a good sign and it just means more waiting. I sent an email asking for clarification on how waitlists work (I have never encountered a waitlist system in Australia), if I was able to know where I was on the waitlist or if I needed to submit any other material, and it has been almost two weeks without a reply. This has disheartened me further. What is the probability of being accepted to a program when you have been waitlisted? Is it really just a roll of the dice? The email itself was very formal, but the attached letter was more positive in tone ("pleased to inform you", "your application was of interest", etc) so that does make me more hopeful. It also said they would contact me in the next few weeks if they were able to offer me a spot - does that mean they won't tell me if I don't get in, and I will just have to find out from their portal that I've been rejected? I'm not trying to get my hopes up, though - but when you're applying from overseas there is just so many variables to consider and things to organize, and my anxiety has been off the charts the last few months. It'd be nice to know whether I got it or not so I can start planning or move on. Thanks in advance for any advice!

[sellian]

I just realized I've posted this in the wrong place... oops, sorry! Can an admin please move to the appropriate place? Thanks!!

[sellian]

Bump, anyone?

[TakeruK]

I'll try to be helpful, but I'm afraid it might not be what you want to hear.

19 hours ago, sellian said:

the attached letter was more positive in tone ("pleased to inform you", "your application was of interest", etc) so that does make me more hopeful. 

This is typical phrasing for North American schools to use no matter what the outcome. (Well, they won't use "pleased to inform you" that you were rejected). But for accepted, waitlisted and rejected candidates, most of these formal letters will include phrases such as "your application was of interest" or "your application was strong" etc. So I would not read anything into phrases like this from North American schools.

19 hours ago, sellian said:

 I sent an email asking for clarification on how waitlists work (I have never encountered a waitlist system in Australia), if I was able to know where I was on the waitlist or if I needed to submit any other material, and it has been almost two weeks without a reply. This has disheartened me further. What is the probability of being accepted to a program when you have been waitlisted? Is it really just a roll of the dice? 

I am not surprised that you did not receive a response. Most schools won't answer these types of questions. It isn't a problem that you asked though, after all, you're from a different system and you don't know what they mean by waitlist. The probability of being accepted from a waitlist can range from almost 0% to almost certainly, depending on how the program does waitlists. This is why you are unlikely to get a response, because your waitlist notification likely came from the Graduate School, not the department and the Graduate School has no idea how its departments runs their waitlists. But even if you got the notification from the department, they may not be willing to describe their procedure in detail or they might not even know themselves (see below). Since your post said that they will tell you in a few weeks, then they probably figured that they won't answer and will just tell you in a few weeks.

Although each program will have its own variation, the general process for accepting students is:

- School determines how many spots it has for the year (let's say it's 10 spots in this example).

- School has to choose how many offers to make initially. There are two main strategies:
1) Use past data to make an educated guess on the number of offers will be accepted by students. Maybe in past years, 50% of offers are accepted and they are okay with deviating a little bit from the "10 new students" target, so they might end up making somewhere between 15 and 20 offers at first. 
2) Be very conservative and only make as many offers as they are willing to spend (e.g. if their margin is really only 1 student, they might just make 11 offers initially).

Strategy 1 allows them to make more offers sooner, which allows them to have a higher chance of getting students they want more (e.g. in this model their 15th ranked student gets an offer right away). The risk is that they might get 15 new students! Strategy 2 allows them to ensure they never exceed their capacity but risks losing higher quality students as some of their offers will inevitably get declined. That is, by the time they hear about the declined offers, the 15th ranked student may have got offers elsewhere, so their final class might be a few of their top students and then other students they initially ranked much lower.

Of course, there is all the choices in between these two extremes. Which strategy the school uses will depend on how likely you are to get admitted from the waitlist. If it's Strategy 1, then it might be quite unlikely to get an offer. In Strategy 1, the waitlist is basically a backup in case they have more than normal amount of offers being declined. So, they won't automatically make offers from the waitlist if a person declines their offer. They would wait until a larger than expected number of students decline before they start admitting from the waitlist.

If it's Strategy 2, then your chances of getting an offer from the waitlist is much higher. If they use a ranked waitlist and they were being extremely conservative (i.e. maybe only make exactly 10 offers for 10 spots), then it is almost certain that at least one person will decline. If you're at the top or near the top of the waitlist, you would have a good chance of getting in, especially since this is the only school you care about so others above you on the waitlist might choose other places instead. 

Finally, one more wrench in the system: not every school uses a ranked waitlist (so they might not be able to answer your question on your position). Instead, they might just create a pool of backup candidates to put in the waitlist. Once the admission decisions all come in and they know what their current incoming class looks like, then they might re-evaluate the waitlist pool and make offers to fill in gaps they need in terms of fit.

So, unfortunately, there is no sure answer to your question and if the school chose not to answer it for you, it doesn't mean anything. You'll just have to keep waiting and see!
 

[sellian]

That was really helpful and has made everything a lot clearer for me. Thank you very much!

[TakeruK]

19 hours ago, sellian said:

It also said they would contact me in the next few weeks if they were able to offer me a spot - does that mean they won't tell me if I don't get in, and I will just have to find out from their portal that I've been rejected?

Forgot to answer this sorry. 

Yeah, it's normal practice for schools to only inform students of positive news (or not inform rejections until much later). 

In addition, sometimes waitlists are held for much longer than you would expect. I know some students who find out in August that they have a spot in a program starting in September if they happen to still be looking/interested. You might not get an official rejection from them until the next school year begins, since they might just keep the waitlisted names as a backup in case a student changes their mind at the last minute. (One person I know got a last minute acceptance but had to defer the start date to January, so that might be more doable for moving overseas and such).

Again, sorry it's not the most positive answer. More practically, I would say since they said they would contact you "in the next few weeks" if you get a spot, and it's only been 2 weeks, I would not rule out the possibility of an offer. For your own planning purposes, you probably should pick a date where you will consider this a rejection and move on to making other plans for next September (and if something last minute comes through and you can take it, great!). Finally, "a few weeks" is extremely vague and since a lot of US programs have April 15 deadlines (even though that "convention" doesn't necessarily apply to your program), so I would suggest picking a "final date" around April 30 or something, unless you had something else pressing where you need to decide sooner.