For waitlisted students, it can be hard to judge just how much of a chance they have of getting accepted off the waitlist. Data around waitlist acceptances can be scarce, especially as waitlists at top colleges grow and more and more schools become less transparent about their admissions statistics. The college counselors at IvyWise, however, have dug into the data and have some insight into waitlist admission rates.
What Are My Chances of Getting Off the Waitlist?
According to recent data from the National Association of College Admissions Counseling, colleges on average admit 20% of students off the waitlist. At the most selective institutions, that figure was 7%. In reality, since waitlist decisions can come as late as weeks before the start of the fall semester, families usually don’t have a good sense of how many students are admitted off waitlists each year.
Recent Waitlist Admission Rates
Waitlist admission rates can vary from school to school and even year to year, especially as colleges have seen record-breaking application numbers over the past few years. Here is a list of colleges and universities and their waitlist admit rates for the Class of 2025, the most recent, complete data that schools currently have available.
| Waitlisted | Accepted from Waitlist | Waitlist Acceptance Rate | |
| Barnard College | 1,904 | 104 | 5.46% |
| Bates College | 1,245 | 2 | 0.16% |
| Boston College | 8,019 | 13 | 0.16% |
| Boston University | 8,944 | 1 | 0.01% |
| Brown University | Unknown | 28 | Unknown |
| Bucknell University | 1,736 | 64 | 3.69% |
| Carleton College | 580 | 11 | 1.90% |
| Carnegie Mellon | 5,319 | 35 | 0.66% |
| Claremont McKenna | 589 | 9 | 1.53% |
| College of William and Mary | 2,417 | 38 | 1.57% |
| Columbia University | Unknown | 137* | Unknown |
| Cornell University | 5,800 | 24 | 0.41% |
| Duke University | Unknown | 88 | Unknown |
| Emory University | 3,883 | 21 | 0.54% |
| George Washington | 2,798 | 163 | 5.83% |
| Georgetown University | 2,543 | 29 | 1.14% |
| Georgia Institute of Technology | 4,916 | 276 | 5.61% |
| Haverford College | 955 | 6 | 0.63% |
| Lehigh University | 2,079 | 102 | 4.91% |
| Massachusetts Institute of Technology | 501 | 25 | 4.99% |
| Middlebury College | 1,716 | 2 | 0.12% |
| Oberlin College | 1,368 | 100 | 7.31% |
| Pomona College | 570 | 27 | 4.74% |
| Princeton University | 1,000 | 150 | 15.00% |
| Rice University | 2,118 | 2 | 0.09% |
| Santa Clara | 2,951 | 138 | 4.68% |
| Stanford University | 535 | 61 | 11.40% |
| Trinity University | 519 | 31 | 5.97% |
| University of California – Berkeley | 6,871 | 359 | 5.22% |
| University of California – Irvine | 1,288 | 189 | 14.67% |
| University of California – Los Angeles | 9,897 | 214 | 2.16% |
| University of Georgia | 1,025 | 277 | 27.02% |
| University of Miami | 4,643 | 13 | 0.28% |
| University of Michigan | 13,063 | 68 | 0.52% |
| University of North Carolina Chapel Hill | 6,564 | 647 | 9.86% |
| University of Pennsylvania | 2,753 | 121 | 4.40% |
| University of Richmond | 886 | 9 | 1.02% |
| University of Southern California | Unknown | Approximately 400* | Unknown |
| University of Virginia | 4,924 | 86 | 1.75% |
| Vanderbilt University | Unknown | 181 | Unknown |
| Vassar College | 634 | 96 | 15.14% |
| Washington and Lee | 1,150 | 11 | 0.96% |
| Wesleyan University | 2,031 | 10 | 0.49% |
| Williams College | 929 | 1 | 0.11% |
| Yale University | 774 | 4 | 0.52% |
Not getting into your top-choice or “dream” school can be a big disappointment, but it can narrow the pool and allow you to focus on the other great schools where you were admitted. That said, a sense of uncertainty can come into play when you’re waitlisted, especially with enrollment deadlines right around the corner. At IvyWise we offer Waitlist Consultation services to help you decide what steps to take next to have the best chances of admission and decide where to enroll.