How It Works
Applicants accept or decline waitlist offers via their GoCPS account. Make sure all contact information is up to date in your GoCPS account in order to be notified of waitlist offers.
- Waitlist seats are only offered if the program has not met its capacity.
- The amount of time you are on a waitlist will vary by program and waitlist number.
- Applicants can withdraw from the waitlist if they no longer wish to be considered. Once withdrawn, the decision is final and cannot be reversed. If an applicant later decides to rejoin the waitlist, they will NOT get their old waitlist place back.
- Once a waitlist offer has been accepted, any previously accepted offer will be automatically declined.
Ranking
As of the 25-26 application cycle, the GoCPS rolling waitlist for all programs will now take into consideration how students have ranked programs on their application. That means applicants should rank their choices accordingly and only include programs you would be seriously interested in attending or accepting an offer to.
The Office of Access and Enrollment will be running a bi-weekly match designed to place students into their highest ranked program. Waitlist offers will be extended by 10AM on Tuesdays and Fridays. In order to be considered when our office runs waitlist selections twice a week, students must join the rolling waitlist by the end of the day on Monday and Thursday. Waitlist offers extended on Tuesday and Friday will expire at 11:59PM on Thursdays and Mondays, respectively. Students can receive up to one single best offer in each program category. Accepting any waitlist offer will automatically decline any previously accepted offers.
Choice programs
- If an applicant received an initial choice offer, they will be automatically waitlisted for all of the programs ranked higher than the offer received.
- If an applicant did not receive a Choice offer, they will be automatically waitlisted for all programs on their application for which they meet the eligibility requirements.
- Waitlist seats are offered based on the priority preference groups, if applicable. For instance, if a seat is declined by a student in a program’s proximity category, that seat will be offered to the student who is first in line on the proximity waitlist.
- When students join the Rolling Waitlist, they are joining the end of the existing Choice waitlist for programs that run selections through lottery.
- Choice waitlists will remain active until the beginning of the following January.
SEHS programs
- Applicants who received a SEHS offer in the initial round of selections will NOT be waitlisted to any other Selective Enrollment programs. If an applicant's Selective Enrollment offer expires or is declined, they will need to manually join the waitlist once the Rolling Waitlist opens.
- Eligible applicants who do not receive a SEHS offer are automatically placed on the waitlist for any program they qualify for and included on the application. Applicants can also add additional programs to their application as long as they don’t exceed the category limit of 6 programs.
- Waitlists for all SEHS programs are sorted in descending total point order. Applicants are re-sorted as new students join the waitlists. This means that waitlist numbers for SEHS programs can go up and down depending on who joins the waitlist.
- If an applicant receives a SEHS offer but would like to join the waitlist for another program, they will need to first decline the offer in order to join the waitlist for any other SEHS program.
- Seats in SEHS programs are extremely limited, and waitlist offers are rarely extended, so we recommend keeping in mind that another SEHS offer is not guaranteed.
- SEHS waitlists will remain active until the 20th day of school. After that time, there are no transfers into SEHS programs for the rest of that school year.
NOTE: SEHS programs make extremely limited waitlist offers so make sure to think carefully before declining any offers.
Getting a Waitlist Offer
Make sure the contact information in your application is up to date.
- If the program has a seat available, and the student’s number on the waitlist is reached, the contact on file will receive an automated notification that an offer has been extended. You may also receive a phone call or email from the school making the offer, but this is not guaranteed.
- All waitlist offers will go live at 10AM on Mondays and Fridays. Offers will expire at 11:59 PM the following Thursday and Monday respectively.
- Expired offers cannot be reopend. If you allow an offer to expire or decline that offer, you will need to re-join the waitlist to be considered for that program again.
- If an applicant accepts a waitlist offer, they will remain on the waitlist for any CHOICE program on their application that is ranked higher than the program from which they received the offer.
- If a student receives a SEHS waitlist offer, they will be automatically removed from all other SEHS waitlists they are on. It is advisable to only remain on waitlists that you would accept if given an offer.
Adding New Programs to Application
If applicants are not satisfied with the selection results or did not receive an initial offer, they can still select additional programs to apply to once the rolling waitlist process opens.
- Log into the GoCPS online portal.
- Add additional programs to your existing application.
