Waitlist decisions are, as a rule, not good news. They aren’t the worst news you can get from a college, which would be a rejection, but if you’re reading this post you are either disappointed by a waitlist decision from Vanderbilt or trying to plan ahead just in case the next time you open up your email you have a waitlist decision waiting for you. In this post, we’ll prepare you for what comes next, and how to improve your chances of getting into Vanderbilt off of the waitlist.
Over the past decade, Vanderbilt has transformed from a well-respected and strong university, but not absurdly competitive to get into, into one of the hardest schools to gain admission to in the country. Vanderbilt has become immensely popular, and the acceptance rate is now less than 6% — those are Ivy League-type numbers. We don’t see the Vanderbilt acceptance rating plummeting much further in the near future, but never say never.
For the Fall of 2023, Vanderbilt didn’t release the number of students offered a spot on the waitlist out of the over 45,000 applicants. We do know, though, that only 140 waitlisted applicants ultimately got in. So, if you will put up with us doing some theorizing, let’s play with some numbers to try to estimate probability. Throwing out a conservative and realistic number out based on comparable schools, like Vanderbilt waitlisting 8% of applicants, or 3,600 students, that’s a 3.9% of waitlisted students getting in. And it’s likely they waitlist more than 8% of applicants to hedge against the yield rate. But we’ll go deeper into the yield rate in a second.
First, looking further back, we don’t get better data. For the fall of 2022, Vanderbilt accepted 221 students off of the waitlist. Again, though, we don’t know how many students were on the waitlist in the first place. And they haven’t released that number of waitlisted students for at least a decade. They do report, though, that, over the last five years, “an average of 11% of our enrolling class of 1,600 has been admitted from the waitlist.” This is a large percentage of the class, but does not mean a large percentage of the waitlist was accepted to fill those spots.
Now back to yield rate. The number of students accepted off of the waitlist has declined due to an increasing yield rate, or the number of accepted students who ultimately pick Vanderbilt. Since 2017, the yield rate has risen from just over 40% to 57%.
While the increasing yield rate is not good news for waitlisted applicants, Vanderbilt does try to help you out with information. To do this, they give waitlisted students a good amount of guidance on what to do next. In this post, we break down what they advise, what we have seen work, and what you need to do next.
Getting into your dream school off of the waitlist is possible. What you do next, though, is extremely important. We can help. Learn More.
If you are trying to figure out how to get into Vanderbilt off of the waitlist, we can help. That’s actually the whole point of this post. To get specific, there are four steps you need to start taking right now if you want to turn a waitlist decision into an offer of admission. Let’s get into it.
Step 1: Accept Your Spot on the Waitlist
If you have been offered a spot on the Vanderbilt waitlist, you are not on it yet. We repeat, you are not actually on the waitlist yet. This is why step one is to get on the waitlist. Vanderbilt will make this clear in your offer, and, they say, you “must accept your spot” on the waitlist to be considered.
However, take note, you are only offered a spot on the waitlist for one of the four undergraduate colleges at Vanderbilt, and the waitlist you’re being invited onto may not be your first choice school. Keep this in mind when deciding whether to join the waitlist.
You can take a few days to decide, too. The Vanderbilt waitlist is not ranked, and it’s most certainly not ranked based on response time. You do have to respond by the deadline they give you, though, or else you give up your chance at a spot on the waitlist, and your chance at potentially getting into Vanderbilt later into the spring or even in the early summer.
Step 2: Commit to a College
The next step is often the hardest — picking a school that is not Vanderbilt. If you are on the Vanderbilt waitlist, you have reason to be hopeful. You should not, however, let that hope lead you to go ‘all in’ on something that’s more likely to not happen than it is to work out. So, you need to commit to a school that did accept you. This may not be a big deal. Maybe you have a great second choice. But it’s also possible that there isn’t a school that you’re excited about that you’ve been accepted to. If that is the case, that is a huge bummer. What it is not, though, is an excuse to forgo committing to a college altogether. Postponing college to reapply next year if the Vanderbilt waitlist doesn’t work out is a bad plan. Like a really bad plan, because you are the strongest first-year candidate as a high school senior. If you reapply as a first-year, your application risks being stale.
Instead, pick a school that you can stomach and plan, if you want to, for a transfer after your freshman or sophomore year when we’ve augmented your application, improved your transcript, and overall strengthened your profile as a prospective member of the student community at your dream school.
Step 3: Update Them
While Step 2 is not a ton of fun, Step 3 makes all the difference. Especially for a school like Vanderbilt, executing a strong Step 3 can easily make the difference between your waitlisted application blending in or standing out.
Vanderbilt invites waitlisted applicants to update them by providing “any new information regarding your academic work and other activities,” as well as reinforcing your “continued interest” in the university.
They allow you to send second semester transcripts, evidence of rewards and honors mentioned in your update letter (more on that to come), and even additional letters of recommendation. These should be submitted in the way suggested in your waitlist offer, but most often includes sending it to your regional rep or submitting through the online application portal.
The most important part of this, though, is not sending the admissions officials redundant information that repeats things they’ve already seen in your original application. What they want here is new stuff that has happened since you initially applied.
Before you submit anything, set up your strategy and prep a Letter of Continued Interest to accompany any documents. The Letter of Continued Interest will be submitted directly to your regional admissions representative, and should reference what has been submitted through an application portal or other means, like an attachment, to ensure they know what to look for and where.
Now let’s talk formatting for the Letter of Continued Interest, which will be made up of five key parts and should, in total, be less than 400 words.
Opening: Start the letter formally with “Dear Mr./Ms./Mx. LAST NAME”, referring specifically to the regional admissions representative you are emailing.
Introduction: Next, introduce yourself. Give your name, high school, prospective major, and your status as a waitlisted applicant. Ask them to consider the updates you are sending, and remind them that Vanderbilt remains your first choice school.
Update: If you want to get off the waitlist, you need to have something new to say. This update should include 3-5 specific changes to your profile as an applicant since you first submitted. These could be awards, recognitions, academic or extracurricular successes, or something else exciting if it is relevant to your prospective area of student or the extracurriculars you emphasized in your application (like service).
We do not recommend using space in this letter for sports updates, as you are not a recruited athlete and your potential as a walk-on will not increase your chances of admission off of the waitlist.
Inventory of Additional Documents Submitted: After writing your update, we recommend including a short, bulleted list outlining what else you are submitting. This is not a standard thing to include in a letter of continued interest, but as Vanderbilt lets you send so many updates, we encourage students to be really clear in their communication as to what is coming to the Vanderbilt admissions office. If you are getting any additional letters of recommendation, which should be submitted by the recommenders directly, include that in this list as well.
Closing: Finally, you need to close out the letter by restating (yes, again) that Vanderbilt is your first choice, and you will absolutely attend if accepted. Saying this is important, even though it isn’t binding. You should also thank them for their time and consideration. Sign off with “Sincerely, FIRSTNAME LASTNAME”, edit, and submit.
Since Vanderbilt invites these letters, you are very unlikely to get in off of the waitlist if you do not send them a Letter of Continued Interest. A letter isn’t enough, either, as they specifically want more. So, you want to respectfully pursue all avenues. Bombarding them isn’t good, but informing them of what is going on in your academics and extracurriculars is.
Step 4: Be Responsive
Vanderbilt has a track record of ‘checking in’ on students who have joined the waitlist. Sometimes this is personal, in a communication just to you, and sometimes it might be a mass email inviting you to reaffirm you waitlist decision. You need to respond to any communications like this promptly and enthusiastically if you want to be considered for a spot.
Don’t expect to know what your ultimate outcome is, though, until late May — or even later. “Any offers of admission to waitlist candidates typically occur first in early May,” they say, “on a space-available basis, and may continue through June. The first-year admission process usually ends by mid-summer.”
If Vanderbilt offers you a spot, you’ll have a limited amount of time to respond, so it’s important to check your email and stay optimistic while also enjoying senior year.
Every year, we help strong and passionate students get off of the waitlist. Contact us to learn more.