If you were waitlisted by Cornell, you aren’t alone. Cornell offers a wild number of applicants, 12% in 2023, a spot on the waitlist. Out of 8,282 students offered a spot on the waitlist in 2023, 6,166 accepted that offer. This is twice as many students as they expect to enroll in the first-year class. We can’t quite understand what the purpose is of having such a deep waitlist, but it is what Cornell has done for years. Ultimately, for Fall 2023, 362, or 5.9% of students on the waitlist were accepted.
This isn’t absurd compared to the overall acceptance rate, but it also isn’t exactly a rosy picture of your prospects if you are the recipient of a waitlist offer. So, let’s dig deeper to gain the clarity we need to construct a strategy that will help get you into Cornell.
Cornell has a number of undergraduate colleges, each of which has a different acceptance rate. The commonality is that they are all very competitive, and the average acceptance rate is about 8%. The most popular colleges with applicants (i.e., they receive the most applications), the College of Arts and Sciences, the Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management, and the College of Engineering, all have acceptance rates under that average.
Let’s look further back, though, as we’ve found that a longer-term view on the data is crucial when constructing the best waitlist strategy for any school.
For fall 2022, 5,531 students joined the waitlist and 260 were accepted, or 4.7%.
For fall 2021, 5,800 students joined the waitlist and only 24 were accepted, or 0.4%.
What this tells us is that Cornell is committed to having a massive waitlist, but they don’t always have to use it. Some years, the yield rate is higher, and they don’t have to turn to the waitlist for more than a few dozen students. Other years, they extend an offer to a few hundred. You can’t control what kind of year this will be, but you can control what you do next.
In this post, we’ll give you the tools you need to make the most of your Cornell waitlist offer while charting a course for a successful future regardless of what happens with Cornell.
Getting into an Ivy off of the waitlist isn’t easy — but it is often possible. Learn how we help students pull it off.
After receiving a waitlist offer from Cornell, there are four things that you absolutely must do to set yourself up for success while increasing your chances of ending up at Cornell. This isn’t all fun, but it is all mandatory.
Step 1: Say YES to the Waitlist
The first, and hopefully most obvious, step is to submit the waitlist reply form that Cornell sent your way when they extended the offer. This form is extremely important, as you will not be eligible for consideration should a spot open up unless you submit the form.
Don’t stress if it takes you a few days, though. The Cornell waitlist is not ranked, and it most certainly isn’t organized by response time. As long as you submit before the deadline, you’re in good standing with the admissions office. There are things you can do to bolster that standing, and we’ll get into those in Step 3.
Step 2: Pick a College and Confirm Your Spot
If Cornell is your dream school, this step is not a lot of fun. It may even feel a little self-defeating, or like giving in. It’s not. It’s pragmatic.
We know that very few students on the Cornell waitlist get in, even on a good year. Hedging your bets, then, is the strongest strategy and we consider this step mandatory.
You absolutely must commit to a college that offered you a spot in the first-year class, and place the (often non-refundable) deposit. Ideally, this is a school that you are excited about, or even just interested in. If you didn’t get into any colleges that you’re excited to accept an offer from, you still need to do this. It can be frustrating and disappointing, we know, but it is much easier to transfer in a year or two than it is to reapply completely as a first-year again next year.
We’ve seen students try the reapply strategy (not with our encouragement) and not even get back into schools they had been accepted by the year before. This is because your application is old news at that point. Not enough has changed since senior year to completely change the circumstances of your application, so colleges are less likely to be excited about you as an applicant — not more.
If we just added another layer of frustration, we get it. But planning for a transfer is a much stronger strategy, and one that we can help with. For now, the most important thing is to commit to a college and then focus back on Cornell.
Step 3: Update Cornell
If you want to get into Cornell off of the waitlist, you absolutely must update them on what you’ve been doing since you submitted your application. You aren’t required to send an update, and they don’t kick you off the waitlist if you skip this step, but it’s like saying “well, whatever,” to them and shrugging. Don’t shrug. Right now, you need to lean in.
This means sending a short letter, emphasis on short. Cornell will have let you know what the best way is to submit your update, and it’s historically through the “Optional Supplemental Materials” section of the Application Status Page. If you don’t see a directive from them, defer to using the “Optional Supplemental Materials” section of the Application Status Page, or emailing an admission official you’ve communicated with previously directly.
But what goes into this letter? This is something we are pros at. You see, an update isn’t simply an update. It’s a statement of who you are, where you are going, and should underline all the things that Cornell loved about your application — driving them to not reject you and instead to keep your application hanging around.
Now, you can take a more is more approach here, and plenty of students do this. They send a multi-page resume, examples of work, or a PDF presentation outlining their strengths. None of these are good ideas. In fact, they are terrible ideas. Don’t do them. Bombarding Cornell with pages upon pages of information about you accomplishes the reverse of what you want. It erodes your application instead of strengthening it.
To actually improve your chances of admission, you want to send a short update — no more than 400 words — that reinforces you interest in Cornell, confirms that you will attend if accepted, and provides up to four concrete and concise updates to your application. These updates must be things that did not appear on your initial application because they hadn’t happened yet. It could be an award, a notable update to an ongoing project, a recognition, or a new opportunity. Whatever you include must be easy to explain, and simple for them to understand the importance of. They will be receiving hundreds, if not thousands, of these updates, so you want to make it easy for them to get excited about yours.
Your update should have three parts, too.
Start with an opening sentence reintroducing yourself (name, school) and your prospective area of focus in college. Be as specific as you can be here.
Second, give your update. This is the meat of your letter, and should take up 70-80% of it.
Finally, close by confirming that you will attend Cornell if accepted (this is important, but is not binding) and thank the admissions committee for taking the time to reconsider your application.
Read twice, edit, and submit. Then, let yourself move on. The ball is in their court.
Step 4: Move On, But Keep an Eye on Your Email
Once you’ve submitted your update, it’s time to enjoy your senior year. Keep an eye on your email, though. Cornell has historically reached out to waitlisted students who are contenders for spots asking them to sign an agreement to attend if offered a place at Cornell. This is their way of ensuring that close to 100% of students offered a spot off the waitlist attend Cornell, boosting their yield rate.
So, you need to look out for an email, checking the email inbox that connected to your Cornell application — even while on breaks. Consider setting a recurring calendar reminder to check the email box every 3-4 days such that it isn’t constantly on your mind, but you also don’t forget. Not seeing a follow-up email from Cornell could blow your chances of acceptance.
Getting into Cornell off of the waitlist is possible. How many kids they pick up off the waitlist won’t be changed by anything you do, but whether you are one of them can be. And making the right decisions now can chart your path towards success, whether or not Cornell is in the cards.
If you want a personalized waiting list strategy, Contact us.