Seeing lots of pessimism regarding reports of schools being full at this point. Want to give my understanding of what that really means, and why I do not believe it is a reason to lose hope that the waitlist will move.

Say school A has 100 seats. Today, May 13th, there are 50 students who CTEd at school A and 50 students who PTEd at school A. While there are many reasons why a student with an acceptance would only have PTEd and not CTEd yet, the relative reason here is that this student is on waitlists for school B and school C.

A school would look at this data and say hmm, as it stands currently, we have 100 students planning to fill our 100 seats. We are full. This is what many are hearing from schools when they call to inquire status.

However, lets say between the end of this week and all of next week, 10 students who PTEd at school A move off the waitlist for a school that is better for them. They switch their PTE to school B or school C.

During the next admin meeting for school A, adcom sits down and realizes hey, we had 100 students planning to enroll but now we only have 90. Looks like we need to send some more acceptances, prompting waitlist movement.

While I am sure there are nuances I am not completely elucidating, such as how proximity to CTE deadlines affect movement, this is my general understanding of not only how WL movement can incur at schools stated to be full, but also how the "domino effect" that induces the bulk of WL movement works in general.

All of this is to say, I refuse to give up hope until the first day of orientation. There is no way to predict when this movement will occur, but there is also no evidence to say that absolutely without a doubt there will be no more movement.

Would be happy to learn others' perspectives on this. Felt like sharing both to get it straight in my own head and maybe to light a brief candle of hope for those on the verge of giving up. Peace and blessings to all