If you or your child have your sights set on Harvey Mudd College, chances are you’re no stranger to high academic ambition. Don’t let your recent waitlisting make you doubt your talents as a student — instead, turn your disappointment into the fuel you need to turn this decision around! How? Read on to find out how you can take action right now to optimize your chances of making it off of the Harvey Mudd waitlist to the Class of 2029 and onto campus:

Harvey Mudd College Waitlist Acceptance Rate and Statistics

Combing through 17 years of admissions data compiled by Harvey Mudd’s Common Data Set, we start to get a picture of how this private liberal arts school conducts its waitlist process. Let’s take a look: 

Harvey Mudd College Class Year	Number of Students Waitlisted to Harvey Mudd	Number of Students Who Chose to Join the Harvey Mudd Waitlist	Number of Students Accepted Off the Harvey Mudd Waitlist	Harvey Mudd Waitlist Acceptance Rate
Class of 2029	TBD	TBD	TBD	TBD
Class of 2028	663	403	53	13.15%
Class of 2027	604	406	57	14.04%
Class of 2026	612	419	17	4.06%
Class of 2025	648	433	0	0.00%
Class of 2024	630	457	55	12.04%
Class of 2023	500	341	9	2.64%
Class of 2022	509	327	0	0.00%
Class of 2021	510	361	63	17.45%
Class of 2020	528	342	12	3.51%
Class of 2019	534	354	11	3.11%
Class of 2018	596	399	14	3.51%
Class of 2017	563	264	0	0.00%
Class of 2016	501	233	27	11.59%
Class of 2015	479	249	46	18.47%
Class of 2014	500	272	0	0.00%
Class of 2013	522	277	0	0.00%

Your Chances of Harvey Mudd Admission After Being Waitlisted

Over the last five years, an average of 8.33% of waitlisted applicants eventually earned admission to Harvey Mudd, compared with a rate of 7.0% over the last ten years. For the most recent admissions cycle, 13.15% of applicants were taken off the waitlist.

Still, drawing reassurance from these figures might be difficult when they vary so widely from year to year. Accounting for this variation is the fact that the waitlist acceptance rate is entirely determined by yield rate, which is a fancy college admissions term for the number of admitted students who go on to enroll. No one, least of all admissions officers at Harvey Mudd, can predict what the yield is going to look like for the Class of 2029. It’s a bit of a shot in the dark.

However, you are still in control of your own destiny. Ivy Coach would like to share some steps you can (and should!) take as soon as possible (i.e., within hours or days of finding out you or your child has been waitlisted) to ensure that Harvey Mudd’s admissions officers will choose your application should they find themselves in a position where they must dip into the waitlist.

Your Chances of Admission to Harvey Mudd After Being Waitlisted with Ivy Coach’s Help

To optimize your case for admission to Harvey Mudd after being placed on the waitlist, we recommend completing the following three steps with Ivy Coach’s assistance:

1. Complete a PostMortem with Ivy Coach. While there’s nothing you can change about your Harvey Mudd application, we need to know how you presented yourself. After all, how you present yourself after being waitlisted can’t be out of left field. It needs to be consistent with how you presented yourself when you applied, though your narrative must be more powerfully told if you hope to earn admission.
2. Submit a powerful Letter of Continued Interest to Harvey Mudd with Ivy Coach’s assistance. Our letters feature no brags and no updates. They’re love letters filled with specific after specific about how our students will contribute their singular, wonderfully weird hooks — rather than well-roundedness — to Harvey Mudd’s campus.
3. After submitting your letter, ask your school counselor to make an advocacy call on your behalf. While some school counselors will refuse to make advocacy calls (sometimes they’ll say that it would be unfair to their other students), we’d argue that it’s their job to fight for all their students.

Ivy Coach’s Harvey Mudd College Waitlist Assistance

If you’re interested in optimizing your case for Harvey Mudd waitlist admission to the Class of 2029, fill out Ivy Coach’s complimentary consultation form and indicate you’ve been waitlisted. We’ll be in touch to outline our go-forward services for those in waitlist limbo.