By Adam Markus, Graduate Admissions Guru
As MBA results roll in with all their joy, pain, and annoyance have more or less emerged, some people will find themselves admitted, others outright rejected, and others in that netherworld known as waitlisted.
For some, the wait will actually end relatively quickly, but for others, the wait might very well continue, well, for months and months. For some, the waitlist will ultimately convert into a ding.
While I have no numbers yet, my expectation is that admissions acceptances to top programs like Booth, HBS, MIT, and Wharton will have become lower for fall 2014 entry (Class of 2016) because of making the essay burden lower (HBS, MIT, Wharton), proactive use of waitlisting to decrease an acceptance rate that is too high given its ranking (Booth) and increase yield (Booth and Wharton, Haas and others likely), and overall market effects…
