What Universities do to Stay "Beautiful"

6.3%...7.2%....9.7%....it's acceptance rates like these that, perhaps embarrassingly, make prospective students and interested researchers alike gasp and blush. Universities know that these prestigious, exclusive numbers are marveled over time and time again, making the necessity to uphold them quite strong. Reading these microscopic values previously led me to the conclusion "Well, schools like Harvard and Stanford...they're just selective. They know who they want and they pick wisely!" A couple students cherry-picked to attend and a herd of hopeful students denied. 

However, as I got my first college decision, I opened it to read what essentially led to "wait-listed". I had heard about some of my other friends receiving the same sort of decision and feeling happy about it, as in, they were happy it wasn't a rejection and maybe there was hope. I, on the other hand, wasn't as thrilled. I couldn't feel happy nor could I feel sad. It was a massive question mark. Upon hearing more about students getting "wait-listed" than rejected or accepted, I decided it was time to find out why the wait-list has become so attractive. Is it a real sign of hope or something else?

Well, as I had expected, the infamous wait list isn't as hopeful as it seems. An article from the Wall Street Journal described it as schools wanting to "pad their wait list". Sure, a prospective student may be put on there because they definitely piqued an admissions officer's interest in some way or because they were truly very close to getting a spot, however when a school is wait-listing hundreds, even thousands of applicants, you start to wonder what their intentions are. For example, one can look at Johns Hopkins waiting list of approximately 2700 kids and true freshman class size of about 1200 kids question if they're really that indecisive or if they are just trying to stay beautiful. And for them, beautiful means exclusive.

Personally, I would rather receive a definite yes or a no from colleges. However, I understand that sometimes space clears up and a wait list is helpful to have. That being said though, it's frustrating to think that a handful of the most prestigious universities are simply trying to "beat the system" in order to keep their acceptance rates low. Would colleges lose their prestige if their acceptance rates began to creep up? As much as I want to think they wouldn't, I honestly would probably assert that our system does value the rates....perhaps a bit too much.