University of Michigan Waitlist 2025
Was your child put on the waitlist at Michigan? Last Friday Michigan released its regular decision results. Among the 109,000 students that applied this cycle, 7000 will be part of the Class of 2029. About 10% of the applicants were accepted, leaving many to be denied or waitlisted.
Michigan waitlists a ton of students every year. However the amount is puzzling. The amount of students placed on the waitlist was 24,800 in 2024. Students are able to not accept their place on the waitlist, yet in 2024, 18800 did and they only admitted just shy of 1000. So why do they leave so many students on the waitlist if they only take so few ? They have to know they will never need to replace a class two and a half times over.
But the waitlist isn't the only issue. Michigan also has a controversial practice with its Early Action deferrals. If a school offers early decision or early action and they decide to defer a student to regular decision, it is only fair to give them a concrete decision at that point. This should be a rule for colleges: deferred students are to receive decisions of accept or deny at the culmination of regular decision. This double blow won’t be seen as a soft denial, but as a long road to no seat at Michigan.
Let’s examine some reasons why:
The school had a ton of applications in early action as well. Maybe they weren’t able to get through all of them and deferred the ones that were not reviewed fully. Then maybe they were reviewed last and there were only a finite amount of spots left. Or, your application was able to push someone out. If neither of these happened, move onto the waitlist.
Michigan just put a bunch aside after a quick review in early action and never got back to them unless they had a compelling letter of continued interest or portal update (accept) or provided nothing and a less than stellar midyear report (deny). And since the rest had good midterm grades and updates, they moved onto another wait?
They want to be seen in a good light? And the admissions department is wanting to let everyone down easy?
And how can it change?
Implement a no deferral to waitlist pathway. This requires no extra work for the admissions department, as these files only have 2 places to go. No more ambiguity.
Have the waitlist capped at 10% of applicants. 11500 is plenty when you have less than 1000 spots to fill. And a 10% admit rate from the wait list will encourage more students to accept.
Rank the list. This way kids can make a better decision whether or not to accept. Schools don’t want to do this, but if you’re going to have 25000 people, they need to know if their number is 5 or if it’s 24500.
Make the SAT/ACT mandatory. This would be a bad idea for sociographic diversity, but it will definitely reduce the amount of applications received so you’ll have more time to fully review each and make more concrete decisions.
While the uncertainty of the waitlist can be hard to accept, remember there are other great opportunities out there. Keep moving forward and exploring other options—hopefully, the news will come sooner rather than later if you decide to ride the wave of the waitlist.