Booth 2012 - Calling All Waitlist Applicants

Did anyone from R1 waitlist reach out to their interviewer? If so, do you think it helped or deterred your chances for acceptance?
I am 99% positive that the primary reason I was wait listed was bc of my piss poor interview. I literally did not sleep for 2 days due to a client engagement and by the time I caught the red-eye to Chicago I was flustered and incoherent. In the end, I can only blame myself for the lack of planning and under performance during stress, but I wanted to get the thread's opinion on reaching out to the interviewer on guidance, specifically when I'm pretty sure I messed the interview up. Also, any suggestions on how to explain to adcoms my piss poor interview without sounding like I'm making excuses. I'm actually a good interviewer and articulate as well so I'll make sure to portray tha tin the vid. Thanks guys.

Thank you...that certainly is encouraging (and is consistent with Booth's historical practice of approximately 1/5 to 1/3 of the class being on the waitlist at some point, as has been told to me anecdotally). The real question is how this coincides with the number of people on the waitlist (and number of R3 interviewees).

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I think it does not hurt to reach out to the interviewer. I was waitlisted in Round 2 and contacted my interviewer last week. He offered encouragement and gave me good advice on what to do in the video. He said not to try anything too creative since it is so short. Just focus on one or two things and show that you are interested in Booth. He said in the materials you provide, make it clear that you will definitely attend Booth when admitted. I work a rotating shift, so I know how it feels to lack sleep. I think you can definitely redeem yourself on the video.

Another helpful column for the waitlist good doc would be industry or type of work experience IE consulting, investment banking, private equity, IT, engineer, ETC

Admissions are not rolling. You will be notified a day earlier if you are admitted or on the decision notification date if you are dinged or are placed on the summer waitlist.

updated my column...great job badsyntax...

@Boothie2014, thanks for the statistic on the number of accepted students. Do you have any data on how many of these accepted students have decided to attend Booth? I'm assuming paying the deposit, creating a Booth e-mail address, etc are some tasks that would qualify. Does anyone know what the deadline is for accepted students from R1 or R2 to make their decision is? Thanks

Thank you very much for your insight! It's very helpful. Still keep my hopes up and send additional materials to Booth.

I went ahead and added pre-MBA industry and post-MBA industry to the spreadsheet. I believe this will be useful to analyze. Cheers.

Actually, Boothie2014's statistics are not completely accurate. I see the 781 incoming students in the directory, but that number includes about 320 R1 Admits who were in the database following the R1 deposit deadline. I can't remember the exact numbers, but I believe there were around 500 R1 admits (+/- 10-15) prior to the deposit deadline. So, the R1 yield was right around 65% and about 180 R1 Admits did not place a deposit.

This means there were approx. 460 R2 Admits (incl. those accepted from the R1 waitlist). Assuming a 60% yield in R2, 596 seats are spoken for between R1 and R2. This paints a very different picture of the remaining number of spots for R3 applicants and current waitlisters.

I hope I do not come across as pessimistic or negative, but I just want to clarify the situation for those waiting.

If what you say is right, 960 admits in R1 and R2 indeed does not paint a great picture. That being said, a couple of things: 1) R1 yield will still be less than 65% as people get off the wait list at H/S/W and other places. Paying a first deposit still doesn't mean people are going there, particularly in R1, and 2) I've know people that have been admitted from the Booth wait list the past two years and it historically plays a pretty big role. Your numbers would indicate otherwise, which would be a change in precedent with Booth.

I also question why Booth would have what seems to be a fairly large wait list (a waitlist where they require new materials) if they already admitted 960 people in rounds 1 and 2. A 60% yield all but fills up the class. It's not like yield is going to be much lower than that. Plus, admitted 500 people in round 1 just seems like a really large amount (and the number is higher when you include R1 WL candidates).

Likely the number is somewhere between the 30% Boothie said and the <5% chance indicated by BStand.

Also, isn't R2 supposed to be the biggest of the three rounds (30-60-10 is what I remember hearing)? If there were 500 students admitted in R1 and only about 281 admitted in R2 (based on the admitted students remaining after removing the original R1 admits from total admits), this wouldn't seem to match up.

Does anyone have any indication of whether the number of total applications are up/down at Booth or across the MBA spectrum in general? I remember reading something in the WSJ last fall about how applications were projected to be down. If there really were about 500 admits in R1, assuming a 22% acceptance rate, this would imply about 2270 applicants in R1 alone. That's more than half the number of applications in all 3 rounds, last year. Unless of course, acceptance rates went up significantly at Booth this year, which seems highly unlikely as well.

I'm using round numbers to make it easier (and because I don't remember the EXACT numbers from R1).

Based on numbers from the directory, there were ~ 500 R1 Admits and ~ 460 R2 Admits (960 total). I get 960 total admits from the 780 incoming students in the directory today plus ~ 180 R1 Admits that didn't pay the R1 deposit. I know that about 180 dropped off because there were ~ 320 incoming students listed AFTER the R1 deposit deadline but before the R2 notification date (down from ~ 500 after the R1 notification date).

So, the actual numbers suggest there were more R1 Admits than R2 Admits. While that is at odds with the past assumption that Booth receives apps in a 30-60-10 proportion, it's not necessarily wrong. Applications could have been more evenly split this year, or the admit rate in R2 could have been meaningfully lower than R1 if R1 yield was much higher than expected (a 5-10% increase in R1 yield = 25-50 class seats).

We'll have a better sense of total yield after the R2 deposit deadline in April. Based on the numbers above and interactions at admit weekend, my instinct is that Booth's yield is a bit higher than the historical average.

I'm not trying to start an argument, I'm just telling you exactly what I saw in the directory. I'll admit that I looked at the R1 numbers a few months ago, so maybe 500 R1 Admits was really 480, but it's not a number materially different than 500.

Besides, if you assume 500 R1 Admits and say R1 has a slightly higher admit rate (let's use 25%), then that's 2,000 applications. If the split was 45-45-10 this year, then total app volume would be 4,444, which is only about 3% higher than last year's app volume (I think it was 4,300).

This is getting a little too hypothetical at this point. I was just trying to provide some additional context since the original stat was from Boothie2014 was a little misleading.

BStand, thanks for providing some additional insight. I know you're not starting an argument, and just because the data may not be what we want to hear doesn't mean it's not helpful.

That being said, it just seems like something else is going on here. Booth historically has used its wait list a lot and in BStand's scenario, it would hardly be used at all (unless round 2 yield falls off the map). It also seems, based off GC that Booth continues to employ a fairly large WL as it has in the past, and that it requires a fair amount of additional information. It doesn't seem like it would be worth the AdCom's effort (nor fair to candidates) to view all this material if only a handful would be accepted.

A possibility could be the desire to expand the class size, for all we know.

At this point all the speculation is a bit counterproductive since we are all in the dark. As it stands now, A 60% yield on remaining applications would put Booth pretty close to the class size last year and all admits from WL would be a result of the 320 R1 group being reduced. That being said for all we know a 60% R2 yield may be high (it may also be low) which would open up more spots, as would the more likely scenario that the 320 from R1 will be reduced below 300 when all is said and done.

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@bstand and Boothie2014, thanks again for the data which you've provided. I also know that no one's trying to start an argument, etc. The impact of the data, is just surprising to me, that's all. Another useful statistic would be how many people are currently on the wait-list, if anyone has any idea. 41 people on the GC Google Doc, assuming 20% GC usage we can extrapolate to ~200 total wait-listers, but if anyone has anything more specific, it'd helpful.

Also, after the next deposit deadline, assuming the figure you're looking at has changed again, it'd be much appreciated if this was shared again.

Thanks.