How does the Princeton waitlist work?

PPrinceton's waitlist is not a ranking of merit, according to the university's own former dean of admission: students taken from it fill demographic or other gaps in the class, and the number admitted varies widely from year to year. Janet Rapelye, Princeton's dean of admission for fifteen years, explained this in the Daily Princetonian's 2020 investigation.

Families tend to picture something different, a line of students waiting their turn in order of merit, and they plan the spring around moving up it. What the office is actually weighing by then is something else, and it changes what a waitlisted student should do with the weeks that remain.