Last Minute WL Activity, Or, When Miss America Strikes

By Jacob Baska Published Aug 2, 2023 Updated Aug 2, 2023

With the calendar rolling over into August, law school AdComms find themselves right on the precipice of the upcoming academic year. While there’s certainly a lot that we can discuss this week regarding the upcoming admissions cycle (Some schools are posting updated application instructions! Some schools may have accidentally updated their app instructions to include a 90-second video and then were hounded by conservative media to take it down! Other schools count their lucky stars and continue to make flight reservations for their law fairs in September!), a lot of the focus in the coming week or two is making sure that the first-year class arrives in one piece. So let’s take a few moments today to talk about last-minute waitlist admission—why it happens, how AdComms try to proceed forward, and what you can do.

If it seems like we discussed waitlist admission a bit in the spring, well, guilty as charged. The vast majority of waitlist activity happens in the days and weeks directly after a school’s deposit deadline. There can be a bit of dust from students who may have double-deposited and from others who received last-minute offers of admission and/or scholarship that led them to change their plans. Once this initial rush is over, waitlist activity tends to peter out as summer begins. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s over.

In a related-but-separate thread which we’ll use to dovetail with the previous paragraph in a moment, let’s take a minute to consider an age-old question that waitlisted students ask with equal parts confusion, sarcasm, and anger. When explaining waitlist procedures to students, many schools will mention the possibility of admission offers coming as late as the first day of classes. The immediate and visceral response from many students is “First day of class? How can they expect me to wait until then?” And the answer is that they don’t expect you to wait. They hope that you’ll wait. Because it always seems like the sturgeon moon brings some real weird movement at this time of year.

I worked in higher ed admissions for 14 years before joining the 7Sage team. Here are real reasons why I had students change their enrollment plans at the last minute (defined as “post-August 1 / i.e., just when you thought you were safe…”). I’ll put these in a few categories, beginning with the most normal and understandable reasons, before moving on to the most outlandish, and then concluding—obviously—with Miss America.

Regular Admissions Stuff That You Know Will Happen

• Students who were admitted off the waitlist to their top-choice school.
• Students who had been previously admitted to their top choice, had not received financial aid previously, but aid subsequently became available and the school reached out to the student with a new offer.

Personal / Family Issues That Are Completely Understandable

• The student who discovered she was pregnant and she decided to delay law school a year to focus on her pregnancy and baby.
• The student whose father passed away the weekend before orientation and he decided to delay law school a year to help his family (and himself) process everything.
• The foreign national who couldn’t obtain a visa because the U.S. consulate in her country closed due to local political instability.
• The foreign nationals (plural) who couldn’t obtain their visas because the U.S. consulate in their home countries were closed due to COVID restrictions.
• The student who was going to return to law school after working for several years, but just received an unexpected promotion and decided to stick with their job.

The “You Can’t Make This Up” Group

• The students who simply ghost you at orientation. They’ve been deposited the entire summer, they submitted their required forms, you printed a name tag for them to pick up at orientation … but they simply never arrive and then never answer any of your emails or phone calls to check in.
• The foreign national who hadn’t yet obtained a visa because he didn’t think it was really necessary and asked you if it was possible just to tell U.S. Customs that he was crossing to the States for a semester-long vacation.
• The student who had been double-deposited the entire summer, attended orientation, decided that he liked the other school better, and simply left the day before the semester began with no explanation.

Miss America

• The time that one of your admitted students won her state’s competition for Miss America, you allowed her to arrive late for orientation so she could compete … but then she won the contest and had to postpone her enrollment by a year in order to attend to her duties as title holder.
• The second time that the exact same scenario played itself out and you had to start wondering if you had magical abilities to pre-select the winner of Miss America every year.

I offer these points to illustrate a core reality—law schools are not holding open seats until the last minute. Rather, the seats were previously filled and only became available at the last minute due to an Act of God or an Act of Miss America. AdComms know that this is going to happen every year. However—and to add a bit of a twist—they don’t know who these last-minute drops will be statistically or demographically. Sure, there may be some pretty obvious candidates, such as the deposited student who decides to register for the September LSAT (and, yes, LSAC continues to report LSAT registrations to law school admission offices…) with the clear intention of reapplying in the upcoming cycle. But otherwise, AdComms know that there are “known unknowns” lurking in their deposits. Will all the last-minute cancels be high LSATs and put that median at risk? Maybe all women and now your class’s gender balance is a bit wonky? Perhaps in-state students and now some politicians in the state house will wonder why you don’t enroll more local kids? As such, AdComms need to hold on to a little bit of their waitlist as a “break glass in case of emergency” measure and they need to make sure that the remaining candidates can assist the incoming class across a broad range of potential contingencies.

So now that we know why last-minute waitlist admit offers can happen, how can you utilize this knowledge? If you are still on a waitlist, now is the time to seriously reflect on whether or not you would accept an offer if one was made to you. Are you or are you not willing to change your plans at the 11th hour? If you are not, you should contact that school’s admissions office to remove yourself from the waitlist. By doing so, you will make it far easier for AdComms to reach out to the right students in case the need arises.

(As an aside, I know that there’s a line of thinking on the part of some students that they want to ride out a waitlist until the bitter end even if they have no interest in attending the school for the coming year. This has less to do with strategy and more to do with a sense of finality—if you submitted an application, you are owed a final decision, and that final decision has to come from the admissions office rather than from you. I understand and respect that emotion. Some of my best decisions have begun in moments of pride and righteousness. But, then again, some of my worst have also started in that fertile breeding ground. Ask yourself who benefits from your decision to remain on a waitlist even if you don’t have any intention of attending the school. If the answer is “No one,” it may be time to take a step back. Perhaps you can take a sense of pride and righteousness in your act of graciousness to your fellow waitlisted candidates by doing the right thing!)

But if you are still willing to accept a last-minute offer of admission from the school in question, now is the time for the last outreach. It’s alright to send another email or make another phone call to reiterate your interest. Put your cards on the table—if you’re willing to move cross-country at a moment’s notice to show up at orientation, let them know that. If you have sent them LOCIs or other updates through the summer, then this message can be brief. Just a paragraph or two of messaging should suffice. Then take a deep breath, tell yourself you’ve done all you can, continue making your normal plans for the upcoming academic year, and say a little prayer for that Act of Miss America to strike again.