Getting waitlisted feels like a maybe. At a lot of schools it's closer to a polite no. The biggest college waitlists hold tens of thousands of students, and at one famous school last year, nobody on the list got in. Here are the real numbers, straight from each school's own data, and what they mean for you.
The biggest college waitlists, ranked
| School | Offered a waitlist spot | Stayed on the list | Got in | Waitlist odds |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| UC San Diego | 36,709 | 25,411 | 5,284 | 20.8% |
| Michigan | 24,447 | 18,435 | 1,663 | 9.0% |
| UCLA | 20,563 | 13,612 | 1,514 | 11.1% |
| UC Davis | 17,582 | 9,747 | 3,758 | 38.6% |
| Boston University | 15,751 | 9,448 | 95 | 1.0% |
| UC Berkeley | 9,102 | 6,479 | 0 | 0% |
| UNC Chapel Hill | 7,355 | 5,258 | 2,099 | 39.9% |
UC Berkeley: the list that doesn't move
Berkeley waitlisted over 9,000 students and admitted none of them. The year before, it took 26 out of 7,853. If you're on the Berkeley waitlist, treat it as a no and plan around it.
UCLA: about 1 in 9
UCLA's waitlist is bigger than most schools' entire applicant pool, and 11.1% of the students who stayed on it got in. That's actually better than UCLA's 9.4% overall freshman rate, so it's a real shot, just not one to bet on.
Michigan: huge list, rising odds
Michigan offered more than 24,000 waitlist spots. It admitted 9.0% of those who stayed on, up from 5.2% the year before. The odds swing with how many admitted students say yes in May.
UNC Chapel Hill: the friendliest waitlist here
UNC admitted 2,099 students off its waitlist, about 40% of the list. If you're waitlisted here, it's worth staying on and sending an update.
NYU: the one that won't tell you
NYU runs a waitlist but leaves every waitlist number blank in its Common Data Set. Any figure you see online for NYU's waitlist odds is a guess.
Why "you're cooked" is only half true
A waitlist spot rarely turns into a yes. But a no in April isn't the end of the story. The same schools with the biggest waitlists are some of the most open to transfers: UCLA admits over 6,000 transfer students a year, far more than it pulls off its freshman waitlist. Transfers even get their own waitlist now: every UC except Merced uses one, with an opt-in deadline of May 15.
If the waitlist doesn't come through and you're weighing community college as the backup, a website like Transfermatic shows you the exact classes that get you into that same school as a transfer. Two years later, you're applying with a real plan instead of a maybe.
Waitlisted? Take the transfer route in with a plan.
Put in your community college and your dream university. That's it.
Get My Transfer PlanBottom line
The biggest college waitlists belong to UC San Diego, Michigan, and UCLA, and the odds on them run from zero at Berkeley to about 40% at UNC. Accept the spot, commit somewhere else by May 1, and don't wait on a list that might not move. If the answer is no, the transfer path to schools like UCLA is often wider than the waitlist ever was.
Related: see the transfer plan for your college and major · the UCLA transfer acceptance rate · the easiest UCs to transfer into · how to transfer in 2 years
