Faithlynn Morris was home in Bridgeport, Conn., when she received a letter from Syracuse University in early April 2009. It was a letter she had expected since January, when she applied to the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications.

Morris was rejected from Boston University earlier that day and was feeling discouraged. So instead of opening the letter immediately, she took it with her to the Westfield Connecticut Post Shopping Mall, where she finally opened it a few hours later.

It was not another rejection, but it wasn’t an acceptance, either. Morris was offered a spot on the wait list — along with 1,292 other students at SU.

But this year, 200 fewer potential SU students will experience the uncertainty of being on the wait list. Though the number of students on wait lists increased at most universities compared with last year, it decreased at SU, where only 1,017 students were offered spots on the wait list this year. This is a 21 percent decrease from last year.

“Wait-listed students meet our admission criteria, but at that point in time we don’t have the room in the class for them,” said Donald Saleh, vice president of enrollment management at SU.

The decrease in the number of students on SU’s wait list is relatively significant, but appropriate given the change in the university’s selection process this year, said David Viggiano, associate director of undergraduate admissions.

In February, the admissions team made the decision to admit more students during the regular admissions process to fill the class earlier, Saleh said. The goal is to have 3,300 freshmen in the next incoming class, he said.

The admissions team at SU thought placing thousands of students on the wait list would be unnecessary, even though other universities across the country have done so, Saleh said.

“We just put the number of students on there that we think we need in case we didnÕt admit the right number of students,” he said.

Some schools place prospective students on wait lists because it is an easier alternative than rejecting them, Saleh said. But SU will not be increasing the number of students on its wait list in the future, he said.

“We have found that this number of students is about the right number for us to have in order to have a cushion to bring in a class of the right size,” Saleh said.

Though SU received a record 22,864 applications this year, Viggiano said there were also more students who were accepted during the regular admissions process.

It was a risk to decrease the number of students on the wait list because the admissions staff did not know how many of the admitted students would accept, Saleh said. The shorter SU is of meeting the goal of 3,300 students, the more students it will admit from the wait list, he said.

“The waiting list gives us the buffer so that if we fall short, we have the opportunity to fill the spots we have available for the class,” he said.

But SU is also planning on admitting slightly fewer students off the wait list this year, Saleh said. The university admitted more students in the regular application process, so more students will accept SU’s offer before the wait list has to be used, he said.

The number of students who have accepted their offer of admission at SU has increased by 19 percent so far when compared with this time last year, Viggiano said. The main reason for this increase is because admitted students can accept the offer and make their payments online this year, which takes less processing time than mailing them, he said.

No students have been accepted off the wait list yet because the admissions team is waiting until all of the admitted students’ decisions are in on May 1, Viggiano said.

Published on April 21, 2010 at 12:00 pm