PreVU Days: Good Morning Class of 2014

Posted by Thom on Monday, June 15, 2009 in PreVU, Summer, Waitlist.

“June, she’ll make you change your tune,” says the legend Paul Simon.  While most of Vanderbilt’s campus is winding up for the arrival of the VU Class of 2013, Vandy Undergraduate Admissions, like we always do at this time, is almost completely focused on the next class (except for our waitlist, see below for more on this).  So it’s with a mixture of excitement and amazement (didn’t we just finish an admissions cycle) that we will welcome a new group of prospective students this morning at our first PreVU Days of the summer.  These days are fun for us in that we get to meet new friends from all across the country, and collectively start turning our thoughts to the fall.

Summer Melt

One of the things we enjoy in our job is to try and unpack for people some of the strange and quirky terms and traditions that occur in admissions (see Brad’s Commando Guidelines post).  One nearly ubiquitous term in admissions vernacular is “summer melt” referring to when a college loses deposited students (as students withdraw to attend elsewhere) after the May 1st deadline, but before the beginning of the school year and the 10th day enrollment census (when the official incoming class is counted).  Every college “melts” some students and it is mostly attributed to those students being taken off of a waitlist elsewhere.  Colleges will often accept more deposits and/or take more from their waitlist in order to guard against their anticipated summer melt.  project wrong on your melt and you can end up either over- or under-enrolling the class.

This brings me to our waitlist.  Right now, we’re watching our melt and have not gone out with any additional calling over this last week.  Without getting into specifics (recall that as a practice, we don’t roll out data until the cycle completes) we are watching our melt to see if additional calling from the waitlist is necessary.  So as it stands right now, we’re in a bit of wait and see status; the waitlist is still active and none of the colleges are closed.  Again, as I know more, I will try and post updates here.

Tags: Vanderbilt Admissions, Vanderbilt Admissions Blogs, Vanderbilt PreVU, Vanderbilt Summer Melt, Waitlist