College waitlist acceptance rates: methods note Story: https://shortlist.college/data/waitlist-acceptance-rates Data: https://shortlist.college/data/waitlist-acceptance-rates.csv (144 rows: 126 with a rate, 18 listed without one) What it is How many students who accepted a waitlist spot were admitted, at 126 U.S. colleges, each from the college's own Common Data Set (CDS). Median: 8.8%. Under 5% at 44 colleges. Source and year CDS section C2 (waitlist: students offered a place, students who accepted a place, students admitted from the list) and section C1 (total applicants and admits), from each college's latest CDS: 115 from 2025-26 (students entering in fall 2025), 11 from 2024-25 (students entering in fall 2024). Each row names its CDS year. The CSV is generated from our planner dataset of 9 November 2026 and rebuilt with every update; a test fails if the file and the dataset disagree. How the numbers are computed Waitlist admit rate = admitted from the waitlist / students who accepted a waitlist spot (two decimals in the CSV). Accepted share = students who accepted a spot / students offered one. 144 colleges in the dataset report an admitted-from-waitlist count. 18 are listed with included = no and the reason in the note column, because the rate needs the number who accepted a spot. We also leave out any row reporting more students admitted than accepted a spot, or more accepting than were offered one. None does. Caveats Waitlist admits depend on how many admitted students sent deposits that spring, so they can change a lot from one year to the next. 5 colleges had fewer than 20 students accept a spot (small_list = yes); treat those rates as rough. Pooled across all 126, 69,016 of 315,063 students who stayed were admitted (22%). A few large universities drive that figure: the 5 that admitted the most (University of California, Santa Barbara 9,603, University of California, Irvine 5,737, University of California, San Diego 5,284, Virginia Tech 4,295, Purdue University 3,916) account for 42% of all waitlist admits, and without them the pooled rate is 16.2%. The median is the better guide to a single college. Columns Rates and shares are percents from 0 to 100. Every count is as printed in the college's CDS. A blank count means the college's CDS doesn't report it. A 0 means the college reported zero. Rates are blank on rows left out of the rates (included = no). college, state, cds_year (the CDS edition, e.g. 2025-26), entering_class (the fall those students entered). offered_spot, accepted_spot, admitted_from_waitlist: CDS C2, students offered a waitlist place, students who accepted one, students admitted from the list. accepted_share: accepted_spot / offered_spot, percent, one decimal. waitlist_admit_rate: admitted_from_waitlist / accepted_spot, percent, two decimals. total_applicants, total_admitted: CDS C1. overall_rate: total_admitted / total_applicants, percent, one decimal. small_list: yes when fewer than 20 students accepted a spot. included: yes when the row has a rate; rows marked no give the reason in note. source_url: the best public link to the CDS the row came from: the college's own file or CDS page where we've linked one, else the College Transitions copy. source_type: college_file (the college's own CDS file), college_page (the college's own CDS page, which links each year's file) or repository_copy (the copy in College Transitions' public CDS collection). cds_source: the exact file we read the counts from. It can be a repository copy even when source_url points at the college's own site. shortlist_page: the college's admissions page on Shortlist. planner_id: the college's federal IPEDS unit ID. Source links Of the 126 rated rows, 51 link to the college's own CDS file, 8 to the college's own CDS page, which links the file, and 67 to the copy in College Transitions' public CDS collection, where we haven't linked the college's own copy. Charts in this folder (1200 px wide at 2x, PNG) - waitlist-rate-distribution.png: Students who stayed on the waitlist and got in, 126 colleges - waitlist-most-selective.png: Students who stayed on the list and got in: under-10% colleges - waitlist-took-many.png: Colleges that admitted 30%+ of students who stayed on the list The distribution chart counts all 126 colleges. The other two, like the story's lists, leave out the 5 colleges where fewer than 20 students stayed on the list, which is why their counts can be lower. Embed a chart Column chart: 10 colleges admitted under 1 percent, 34 colleges admitted 1-5 percent, 25 colleges admitted 5-10 percent, 20 colleges admitted 10-20 percent, 10 colleges admitted 20-30 percent, 13 colleges admitted 30-50 percent, 14 colleges admitted 50 percent or more. Free to reuse with credit to Shortlist (shortlist.college), under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0). Questions or corrections: https://shortlist.college/press