Waitlists and Letters of Continued Interest

   Last month, admissions decisions were released by the most selective schools in the country. Of the ones that reported data, the top 25 schools in the nation–as ranked by Niche.com for the 2023-2024 academic year–had an average acceptance rate of 5.84%. The average number of applicants at these schools was 50,106. What this means is that there were many, many more students who were denied admission than there were who were accepted.

   There were also a fair amount of students who landed in the gray area of “waitlisted”. The focus of this month’s blog is going to be on those students and how they can increase their chances of moving off of the waitlist by drafting a Letter of Continued Interest, otherwise known as a LOCI. I will talk about why applicants are waitlisted, what are the elements of a strong and effective LOCI, and why it is always a good idea to submit one.

    First, let’s discuss why colleges have waitlists in the first place. On its face, it is just that: a school is waiting to make a decision on your application while other things happen. Most schools–particularly selective institutions–make more offers to applicants than seats they have available in each first-year class. They know that not every applicant is going to accept their offer, so making more offers than seats is a sound strategy for them to pursue.
 
   This is of particular importance when it comes to selective programs because they know, every year, there will be a small group of applicants known as “the gets”. The “gets” are your academic powerhouses; students who have performed exceptionally well academically, have won highly competitive scholarships or competitions, and/or some prestigious national or international award or honor. These students receive multiple offers from selective universities and will spend the month of April deciding which offer is the best fit for them.
 
   After the “gets”, there is another tier of highly sought-after students. These are students who have performed exceptionally well in one or two particular areas. Think here about your athletic recruits, your strong STEM students who may have published independent research, your strong writers who may have published award-winning essays, your visual or performing artists who may have excelled in regional or national artistic competitions, your social justice warriors or savvy content creators and influencers. These applicants also receive multiple offers because they have performed something I like to call “distinguished excellence” (one of the five areas of focus for the Ivy Edge Method); they have found a way to significantly distinguish themselves in competitive applicant pools by pursuing their passions to the Nth degree. They also tend to have strong academics and competitive standardized test scores as well.
 
   So, after making offers to the “gets” and to those who have distinguished themselves in one or two areas, admissions officers must now fill an entire class with students that will collectively make the most use of the school’s academic resources. They must have enough potential history majors, economics majors, English literature majors, etc. to keep those departments populated with students. One of the goals of selective admissions committees is to select a well-rounded class that will make the most of the school's resources by selecting very particular–or, “pointy”--applicants from very competitive applicant pools. So, taking in all of these factors, they make their offers–and wait.

       And here is where the waitlist comes in.

    Waitlists are populated by students who are not the school’s top choice in any particular area the admissions committee is seeking to fill. Students may be a not-top choice for a host of reasons. Sometimes, an applicant is so strong that an admissions committee may assume the applicant has already been “taken off the market” during the Early Action/Early Decision phase of the application process by a similarly-tiered school. Other times, there may be an overabundance of applicants interested in a similar field in an applicant pool. And other times, it just may be that someone on the admission committee fell in love with a particular applicant for whatever reason, but couldn’t get enough other members of the committee on board to a full “yes”, but they were able to make the case for a “waitlist” decision instead of a full-on denial. 

   The point is there are many reasons why students are waitlisted; those reasons are varied and unique to each selective admissions committee for each application cycle. The most important point I impress on some of my clients each year is this: they didn’t say no. Selective admissions committees say “no” to thousands upon thousands of applicants each year. They say “yes” to a few, and “waitlist” to an even fewer group. So, if an applicant gets a “waitlist” response, there is absolutely hope!
 
    One of the most important things impressing this distinction does is reframe my clients’ thinking around the waitlist decision. Sometimes, a waitlist decision comes from a dream school or a dream program, and anything other than that all-hoped-for “yes” can feel like a defeat. So, it is important to reframe the thinking around this response as soon as possible because there is very little time to be sad about it because the sooner a letter of continued interest is submitted, the better. Selective admissions committees are frantically sorting things out during the month of April just as much as students and families are; it is a frenetic time for everyone. Helping my clients understand this helps them not to process the decision on a deeply personal level and, hopefully, shifts them to a more positive mindset in order to draft a compelling and impactful letter of continued interest. 

    Now, let’s break down what are the elements of a strong letter of continued interest. But before the work on a letter of continued interest begins, it is important to know the method by which the schools will accept them. Some schools have portals by which waitlisted students may submit their LOCI and/or other additional information. Often, there is a word count limit to what students can write on these portals. Very much like the Common App personal statement, once a word count limit is known, a student can make an informed decision about what information will need to be included in the LOCI and what may need to be omitted.
 
    There are also institutions that will ask a student to submit their LOCI to an email address. If this is the case, I advise students to draft a LOCI between 450-500 words. If a student is really serious about seizing the opportunity to move themselves off of the waitlist, then the LOCI needs to be substantive. If not a lot of new information is shared with the committee, it is highly unlikely that admissions committee members will be compelled to act favorably on the student’s behalf and move them off of the waitlist to the “admitted” column.
 
    The most ideal scenario, however, is for a student to submit their letter of continued interest to the regional director in the admissions office that has a student’s geographic location as a part of their portfolio. Most selective college admissions committees have members that are assigned specific geographic areas, or regions, and are known as regional directors. It is the job of regional directors to know the high schools in a particular region as well as who are the strongest potential applicants from that region. It is likely the regional director was the first reader of a student’s application. While it may take some internet sleuthing, the email addresses of regional directors are pretty readily available, if not outright listed on the school’s website itself. 

    This is the person students should wish to contact when submitting their LOCIs. Why? The regional director is probably already familiar with the applicant on some level, so contacting them and submitting a LOCI won’t be so much of a fresh read on an application as it will be a reminder of who the student is; the LOCI is to remind them why the student believes s/he is a great candidate for admissions to the school. Also, it is easier on a student’s imagination to think or believe they are crafting a letter to another human being rather than to a faceless institution. This can really help LOCIs have emotional impact as well as providing additional information.

    A letter of continued interest that has strong emotional impact as well as shares relevant information will contain a few key elements. The first of those elements is to thank the admissions committee for taking the time to review the application. Expressing gratitude is always an important thing to do in life, but I always recommend my clients open their LOCIs with sincere statements of gratitude. It helps the reader to be open to reading the remaining contents of the letter. Remember: the admissions committee could have denied the application outright, so a sincere opening of thanks acknowledges that someone on the admissions committee cared enough about the application and its contents not to do so. So thanking the committee for another opportunity to demonstrate interest is something waitlisted applicants should think about doing, feel, and genuinely express.

    Next, students should let the admissions committees know what has happened in their lives since submitting the application. Talk about academic achievements, even if it is as simple as letting the committee know that a grade point average hasn’t fallen or has improved. Students should also reify activities listed on the original application and discuss if anything significant has changed in those activities. Sometimes, students will experience a significant life event that dramatically impacts who they are and/or their view of the world.  I believe this information is equally as important to share as significant movement with academics and extracurriculars. This helps to make the LOCI personal and reminds admissions committee members about the internal life of an applicant, which is just as important as an applicant’s external life. Significant life events may also shift how a student plans to engage the campus culture if admitted in a way that is very different from what was expressed in the original application. 

    The third element effective letters of continued interest should include is what makes the school special to the student. It is here students must remind admissions committee members that their institution offers the students something that he or she cannot get elsewhere. Students may wish to talk more in-depth about an intended major, the research produced by a particular professor or department that aligns with the student’s professional goals, or a series of classes or specific program offered at no other institution that a student strongly feels is essential to meeting their needs for going to college.

    The next element is what I like to call the “love letter” aspect of a letter of continued interest. Here, students need to remind the admissions committee why they applied, or “fell in love” with the school in the first place. It could be something specific about the campus culture, a particularly warm and endearing experience a student had on a campus visit, the sports programs or the performing arts programs, a school’s geographic location, an affinity for particular student-run groups that are aligned with a student’s extracurricular interests, or any broad range of things one school uniquely offers over another. Sometimes, students are able to express their fondness for a school via the supplemental questions in an application. The LOCI is an opportunity to expand on the answers to those questions or, if such questions were not a part of the application’s supplemental questions, to share with the admissions committee in full why the student is drawn to the school, why it was included on the application list, and why a letter of continued interest is being submitted.

    The last element of an effective letter of continued interest is a summary of the intellectual and emotional reasons a student believes a school is a right fit for them. The summary is yet another opportunity to thank the admissions committee for reviewing your application as well as reading the LOCI. The bulk of the word count should be spent in the other sections of the letter, so make sure to make the close brief, but brilliant. Once the draft of a LOCI is completed, students should ask a trusted advisor to review the letter and provide feedback on grammar, punctuation, form, and content. As with the original application, also be sure to follow all of the directions given (if any) of how to submit a letter of continued interest.
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    There is no way to ever really know why a student was put on a college’s waitlist while another one was admitted. Keep in mind that a waitlist response is not a response of denied; it is exactly what it is…a request to wait. If a student is willing to put in a little more extra work, a well-crafted letter of continued interest just may be the last piece of information needed to move an applicant from the waitlist to a “YES!”