Consider this scenario: you really like someone and want nothing more than to go out with this person, but you are shy about asking the person out.  If you know for sure that the person will say yes, wouldn’t you be more likely to step up and do the asking?

Colleges are in the business to find students.  Even if you don’t apply Early Decision (which you should only do if you know, without any hesitation or doubt, that there is no other place you would rather be), I believe your chances of being admitted are higher if you know that a particular school is the perfect fit for you, you communicate the reasons the fit is so good, and you decide that you would enroll if admitted. 

Life for the admissions officers is easier if they don’t have to guess who will enroll. 

My thoughts on this germinated from the following articles from the Washington Post  and the San Francisco College Admissions Examiner.

Hefty wait lists shield colleges but unsettle students

By Daniel de Vise

Washington Post Staff Writer 
Monday, May 17, 2010

This spring, some colleges in the Washington region have assembled waiting lists that rival the size of their incoming freshman classes, a measure of their uncertainty at a volatile time in higher education.

The University of Virginia has offered admission to 6,900 students and wait-listed 3,750, a group large enough to fill the 3,240 spots for the Class of 2014. The College of William and Mary placed 1,415 students on a wait list for a freshman class of about 1,400. Most of the other top national universities in the Washington area, including Georgetown, Johns Hopkins, the University of Maryland and Virginia Tech, are tending deep wait lists of their own.

The swelling of wait lists in the past two years reflects the lingering economic downturn and an increasingly cautious approach by admissions offices. The recession has made it more difficult for admissions officers to discern which admitted students are likely to attend and has sapped endowments, leaving colleges less inclined to risk tuition dollars by failing to fill their freshman classes. Competitive colleges are processing record numbers of applications, further complicating the task of predicting who will enroll.

"Last year, wait lists at most places were much more active than normal, because people had no idea what was going to happen," said Charles Deacon, dean of admissions at Georgetown. This year, colleges "are mostly not in any better shape than they were last year," he said. "But they've had more time to prepare."

Colleges create the wait list as a sort of reserve fund, available for use if the school comes up short of students at the end of the regular admission cycle. No college wants to end up underenrolled.

Nationwide, roughly one college in three employs a wait list. Its use is more common among the most selective colleges, according to a national survey by the National Association for College Admission Counseling. Roughly 30 percent of wait-listed students ultimately are admitted, although the percentage is much smaller at top colleges.

Colleges wait-list many more students than they plan to enroll, knowing that a good share will tire of the wait and commit to another school. Still, academic officials say that some wait lists are needlessly long.

"Sometimes, frankly, it's just hard to say no to so many great kids," said Greg Roberts, dean of admission at U-Va.

"I'll agree there's no scenario where we'd exhaust the wait list and still not have the class we want," said Henry Broaddus, dean of admission at William and Mary. "I think there's an appropriate national conversation to have about 'are these wait lists too big?' "

May is wait-list month, when colleges tally deposits from students who have committed by the May 1 deadline and tabulate how many more students, if any, they will need to complete their freshman classes. By the start of June, most wait-listed students will have received a polite letter of rejection or, for a lucky few, a surprise telephone call offering admission.

Urja Mittal, a senior at Montgomery Blair High School in Silver Spring, accepted an offer of admission from the University of Pennsylvania. She's on a wait list at Columbia University, which she initially favored over Penn.

Mittal, 18, is in a pickle. Since committing to Penn, she has learned a lot more about the school and its programs and has tried to convince herself "that Penn is the best." She has friends "who are getting attached to their school, and the mascot. I'm trying to do the same."

And yet, she said, "my attraction to Columbia still exists." In the unlikely event that she gets in, she said, "I think it would be a real toss-up."

Local deans say this year's admission cycle, although tricky, was somewhat easier to predict than last year's, a time of plummeting endowments and plunging stock prices. Colleges may empanel a wait list by a rough mathematical formula -- say, one wait-listed student for every two admits. They don't usually have a set number in mind.

Georgetown put 1,177 students on its wait list this year to plug holes in a class of 1,580. U-Md., which usually gets by without a wait list, revived it last year. This year's list holds nearly 1,000 students. Virginia Tech has 1,350 students wait-listed.

William and Mary's list is longer than last year's by 142 students. Wait lists at U-Va. and Virginia Tech are shorter. At Georgetown and U-Md., they are about the same length.

Admission officers counsel the wait-listed to consider the long odds and mull over other options, even as they encourage them to submit additional grade reports and letters of recommendation, just in case.

"There's no intent to peddle false hope here," Broaddus said.

Neither U-Md. nor Hopkins admitted a single student from its wait list last year. So many admitted students chose to attend Hopkins, in fact, that the university had to lease a hotel and transform it into a residence hall for the year. Hopkins officials confirmed that they have a wait list this year but would not divulge its length.

Will some students on the wait list get in? Perhaps. Georgetown admitted 175 wait-listed students last year; U-Va., 288.

Making the phone call to a student admitted from the wait list is among the most pleasant duties assigned to admission officers, somewhat akin to contacting lottery winners.

"The last people in are the most grateful," Deacon said. "They end up being the best alums."

Waiting out the waiting game: Colleges put students on hold

April 20, 2:27 PMSF College Admissions ExaminerElizabeth Stone

In an unprecedented move, Yale College waitlisted over 900 students this Spring--students who were neither accepted nor denied admission http://www.yaledailynews.org.   Duke University waitlisted over 3,000 studentshttp://www.newyorktimes.com/2010/04/14/education.  At universities across the country, tens of thousands of high school seniors are still struggling with the uncertainty of college decisions.  

Locally, San Francisco State does not put students on a wait list, but wait-listing is one approach that colleges can utilize to carefully control the number of applicants that will actually land on their campus in the Fall.  Colleges know that a large percent of students will turn down their offers, so they offer acceptances in a very conservative manner to keep enrollment consistent with their capacity. 

Villanova University's representative, Sarah Christy, provided a clear explanation of their approach to admissions-- a process which is designed to achieve a fully enrolled class.  Christy reported "{We} design the admission process to actually go to the wait list, as we do not want to be oversubscribed right from the beginning. We will not know until after the beginning of May, and closer to the middle of May, if we will be using the wait list. If we do go the wait list, it will all depend on the number of deposits we receive by major and/or college. Our goal is to complete the process by the end of June. In regard to which students get pulled from the active wait list, all factors play a role.... the main one is which major/college is desired. There is no rank to the system and all students who indicate an interest are reconsidered for the particular major.  Once we release students from the active wait list at the end of June, we will offer students the opportunity to be on a short summer list, which might go all the way until orientation begins in August. Should we need to use this short list at the end, then students are re-evaluated for any spots available" http://www1.villanova.edu.

Villanova's current data provides an example of how the process works: 
• They received approximately 14,365 applications, for an incoming class of 1,630 students.
• In order to reach their enrollment goal, they accepted around 44 percent of the applicant pool.
• The active wait list is approximately 2,450 students

These numbers are daunting, and the overall process reveals the complexity of decision-making wait-listed students are dealing with.  As lists typically are not ranked, there is no way for any particular student to figure out the odds of an eventual admission.  A violinist could potentially be offered admission because another violinist decided to go to a different college.  At another school, a Chemistry major may have a harder time getting off the list than a student in a less impacted department. The same possibilities could hold true for factors based on gender, geography, and any number of reasons that are not within a student's control.

Colleges also use strategies to enhance their "yield." The yield is the percentage of students who accept a college's offer of admission. Colleges like the yield to be high, so they try not to admit students who they think will ultimately turn them down. In 2009, Duke reported a 42% yield and Yale's yield was 69% http://www.usnews.com/articles/education/best-colleges/2009. Also in 2009, colleges with very low yields included the University of San Francisco (21%) and University of California Santa Cruz (19%). The yield however, isn't necessarily a reflection of the popularity of a school or the selectivity used in its admissions process. Students simply apply to several schools, and they can only choose one to attend. Nonetheless, a college's yield gets reported in the media and can impact its reputation.

At the University of Southern California (USC), the admissions procedure follows a different path.  According to Timothy Brunold, Associate Dean and Director of Undergraduate Admission, USC has never used a waiting list in its admissions process.  Instead, USC offers students an option of entering the college in the Spring semester.  Brunold said, "We are philosophically opposed to {wait-listing} because we believe that it leaves students in limbo and simply adds to the frustration and confusion of the college admission process. However, our spring admission can be used in the same way as a waiting list: if, after the May 1st National Candidate’s Reply deadline http://www.collegeboard.com, it turns out that we still have capacity for the fall, we will select certain students (based on the specific enrollment needs of the university) and provide them the option to be moved from spring to fall . This is not predictable…in some years, we’ve moved several dozens of students from spring to fall; in other years, such as two years ago, we’ve moved none."

As May 1 approaches, students should place a deposit at a school where they have been guaranteed admission.  For most students, the closure will put them at ease. They will remove themselves from waiting lists, and move forth proudly branding their selected college's mascot.  Other students may choose to deposit and risk losing the deposit if an opportunity becomes available elsewhere.

College admission isn't a scientific process, and no one can predict who will go where. This year's high school junior class will do best by applying only to schools that are desirable and a good fit based on their own thorough research and college visits.  While all schools aren't created equal, an admission to a college of one's choice is certainly an achievement to be proud of.