Playing the Waiting Game 1/7/25
I currently have senior twins. One has been settled on his path for college for a while. He wants to go to the local state school and major in engineering, and so far so good, he’s accepted and plans to start this fall. The other was settled on his dream school, NYU. He fell in love with it 2 years ago and hadn’t stopped until 12/12/24. He applied early decision, and he waited. We all did, and it was torture. On December 12th, he was told he was waitlisted and was absolutely furious. Many counselors say this doesn’t happen in ED. Well it does, and this school has been doing it for a couple years. My head and heart cannot understand how this can be an option. The earliest he’d hear back is 5/1/25. That’s about 6 months, but the window for the waitlist goes until late July. Even for your dream school, this seems to be a bridge too far.
There is also no data available on early decision acceptance rates nor waitlists provided by the school. The fact that they can withhold this information from students and parents is abhorrent. It’s like they just want you to throw application fees at them and they’ll toss you around a bit to see which pile you’ll end up on. And no need to count anything until the very end!
I watched a video last week where Mel Robbins was explaining her “Let Them” theory. It basically says that people show you who they are and you have a choice to react or step back and let them be that person. This mostly applies to people you are on the fence with, of course. Hopefully you followed Maya Angelou’s advice and believed a person shows who they are pretty quickly and you can stay or leave. This reminded me of the waitlist. I think that what the school did was incredibly rude and doesn’t care about stringing kids along (who were willing to pay full price because of the ED contract). So, I’m going to “let them.” I need to just let it go as they have shown me their true colors and I am not going to change anything. After all, I’m sure I’m not the first mom to be upset about this.
In any case, we are very proud of him, since he was technically not denied, which is very easy to do at a school this rejective. They typically reject 97% of the applicants for his major, after all is said and done. So, it’s a huge accomplishment to not be denied at this point. He’s done everything he could and we are always behind him.
Enough ranting…this is where you realize that the next best school may be the best of all. And, you can wait on other decisions where the school might show some extra love in merit money. It’s all a game, but he’ll end up where he’s supposed to be.