Stanford PhD Waitlist

[Albertlulu]

Hi, I am quite curious about stanford's statistics PhD waitlist system. Does anyone know if there actually are people who got waitlisted for Stanford and then received admission later on? I only saw one post from 2015 about getting off of the waitlist. I got waitlisted for Stanford this cycle and I am wondering if it is worth waiting till april as I have received admission from another great school. 

[Stat Assistant Professor]

If you really want to go there, then it is worthwhile to wait until April for waitlist movement. You could periodically check in with the Graduate Director and ask for a status about your application. It doesn't hurt, and it indicates your continued interest in their program. This won't guarantee final admission if the program has met their yield, but it does create a good impression by the Graduate Director and the admissions committee.

It's worth a short. Even among those admitted to several "top" programs, a majority of these applicants won't make their final decision until late March/early April.

[bayessays]

Your other program is not forcing you to make a decision until April 15th presumably.  I'd wait as long as possible to accept another offer, and I'd be expressing my strong interest in Stanford even after April 15th if it's your first choice, even if that means later reneging on your original decision.  The only real negative to waiting is that you are left in a state of limbo for a while and you would have to wait to sign a lease for the fall.

[Albertlulu]

Thank you all for your replies! I was just quite skeptical of my chances but I guess I should at least wait till april before I commit to a program. On that note, does anyone know of ppl who got off the waitlist and received admission for Stanford? I heard that for some schools the waitlist is quite meaningless as they normally do not use it.

[Stat Assistant Professor]

Many programs have a target number of students they want to enroll for the upcoming fall. Based on historical yield, they make more offers than they expect to accept. 

So if a department wants to admit 6-8 new PhD students and expects around 30-40% of the admittees to accept their offer, they might send out 18-20 PhD offers. Of these offers, if more than (say) 14 of them decline, then they will go to the waiting list. This scenario happens to most Statistics departments, btw. Their top ranked applicants typically have several comparable or higher-ranked programs to choose from. So most departments have the majority of their top 10 ranked applicants decline but can also get at least a few of those ranked 11-20 to accept their offer. A few applicants may still have to be pulled off of the waitlist in late March to mid April though.

I expect that the yield for Stanford Statistics is higher than at most programs, so they might not pull a lot of applicants from the waitlist. However, I would still wait until April and keep in regular touch with the Graduate Director to convey your interest. May as well wait and see what happens.

Edited February 23 by Stat Assistant Professor

[the_variational_guy]

One data point I'm having is a classmate of mine has already gotten off the waitlist of Stanford Stat Ph.D. a couple of weeks earlier (about a week after the first wave of offer/waitlist notifications). In that case I don't know whether you are simply a bit behind in the list, but there might still be some chances for you to get accepted eventually.