Some might argue that applying to a high-profile university is like trying to go to a New York City club on opening night. If you know someone, you’ll get in. If you don’t meet the club’s minimum requirements — maybe you’re under 21 or visibly pregnant — then you’ll get turned away at the door.

And then there’s the dreaded third group: those who will spend the majority of the night stuck in a line just to see if they can go inside. Sure, there’s no real reason for them to keep waiting; after all, they’ve never been to this club, so there’s no guarantee it’ll live up to the hype. But if they leave now to go somewhere else, they’ll give up all-night drink specials forever.

This third list is akin to the college waitlist — where more and more high school seniors are being placed each year. This admissions season, Penn leads the Ivy League in waitlisted students: 2,300 are still unsure of their Quaker fate, a number up 500 from a year ago. Eric Kaplan, Penn’s admissions director/metaphorical bouncer, has some words of wisdom for these students in limbo:

“I do feel for them,” he told the U.S. News & World Report last week. “[But] don’t send roses. No chocolate. It doesn’t work.” (Kind words, but thousands of adulterous husbands would disagree.)

So I guess the ultimate question is this: is it better to be outright rejected than placed on a waitlist? If you’re an exemplary student, rejection can lead to media coverage — check out Navonil Ghosh, the Texas senior turned down by MIT, Stanford, multiple Ivies and even U-Texas (?!?) despite perfect SAT and ACT scores. If he had been waitlisted instead of rejected, his story would smell less of shattered dreams. (Penn also passed on Ghosh, but I’m sure Eric Kaplan “feels for him.”)

And then there’s the statistical stigma of the waitlist: far more waitlisted students are eventually rejected than accepted; most will wait months until their decision, complicating the enrollment process at other universities; and there’s no actual guarantee that anyone from the waitlist will make it into the university in question. It’s like that NYC club just hit capacity and you can’t enter until the first drunken idiot manages to stumble out.

So wouldn’t you rather hear “no” now than in three months? After all, I hear they’ve got two dollar martinis at the place down the block, and you might just run into that guy who perfected the SAT.

Tags: Kaplan, martinis, waitlist

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 22nd, 2008 at 8:00 am and is filed under Higher Education, Penn. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.