Waitlisted, no interview

[menalta17]

Hey guys, this is my first time on this forum so...be nice to me, please lol Two hours ago I received an email from one of the programs I applied to and it said I was waitlisted and they would follow up if a first round selected interviewee rejected their invite. I'm not too keen to the program as I am to the others I applied to but bc I'm assuming my options may be low in February I kind of want to get at least one interview.  How often do waitlistees gets invited to interview? I would think most people would accept the offer, especially this early on. Also, does being waitlisted like this only count for interviews or will it still be possible to get an interview months later? Thank you ahead of time if anyone knows the answer!

[fuzzylogician]

It's entirely impossible to answer your question. It depends on so many unknowns. You can try and search the Results portion of the board for acceptances and interview invites to this program to see if/how many late invitations went out. Beyond that, it's possible that they'll hang onto their waitlisted pool for quite long, until they have a finalized list of admitted students, or not. It's possible that everyone will accept their invitation, or not. Not having a crystal ball, none of us can predict the future. My best advice is to write back, thank the school for the good news, and ask for some additional information: say you know they can't make any promises, but could they tell you, on average, how many students get admitted off the waitlist in the past several years, and when you could expect to get an update. 

[menalta17]

20 minutes ago, fuzzylogician said:

It's entirely impossible to answer your question. It depends on so many unknowns. You can try and search the Results portion of the board for acceptances and interview invites to this program to see if/how many late invitations went out. Beyond that, it's possible that they'll hang onto their waitlisted pool for quite long, until they have a finalized list of admitted students, or not. It's possible that everyone will accept their invitation, or not. Not having a crystal ball, none of us can predict the future. My best advice is to write back, thank the school for the good news, and ask for some additional information: say you know they can't make any promises, but could they tell you, on average, how many students get admitted off the waitlist in the past several years, and when you could expect to get an update. 

Thank you for the advice. I've already CC'd my POI and the program in a thank you. I liked your idea of being upfront and asking but I wish I asked this question earlier to include that in my email because now I don't want to scare them by sending another email asking 'what are my chances or getting an interview?' lol

[LolJustAdmitMe]

I’m in almost the same position, except it’s with my top choice. I’m hoping 6 of their invitees get invited to interview at Harvard(or somewhere nice) that same weekend and turn my choice down. I have no idea where I am on the list so hopefully a crap ton of people decide they’d rather be elsewhere. Good luck to us, btw!

[Warelin]

On 12/29/2017 at 7:41 AM, LolJustAdmitMe said:

I’m in almost the same position, except it’s with my top choice. I’m hoping 6 of their invitees get invited to interview at Harvard(or somewhere nice) that same weekend and turn my choice down. I have no idea where I am on the list so hopefully a crap ton of people decide they’d rather be elsewhere. Good luck to us, btw!

If they've sent out all admission results, the grad admissions coordinator for your program might be able to tell you what position you are on the waitlist. He/She may even be able to tell you about the probability that you have of it converting to an acceptance based on results from the previous years.

[LolJustAdmitMe]

17 hours ago, Warelin said:

If they've sent out all admission results, the grad admissions coordinator for your program might be able to tell you what position you are on the waitlist. He/She may even be able to tell you about the probability that you have of it converting to an acceptance based on results from the previous years.

That’s a great idea and I’d love to ask but do you think I’ll come off ass annoying if I send an email asking almost 18 days later? And, I’m not even sure of how to ask that without sounding like a nuancance. Basically I don’t want to annoy them w/my optimism lol