Waitlisted from Notre Dame: What to Do

If Notre Dame just placed you on the waitlist, you are one of roughly 2,000 students in a position that the admissions office takes seriously. Notre Dame is one of the few elite universities that openly states it hopes to admit students from the waiting list each year, and its historical track record supports that. Over the last 23 years of published data, Notre Dame has admitted an average of 109 students per year from the waitlist, with a cumulative waitlist acceptance rate of about 14%. In some years, the number has exceeded 500. In others, it has been zero.

For the most recent cycle with published data (the 2024-2025 Common Data Set, reflecting enrollment for the Class of 2029), Notre Dame offered 2,206 students a place on the waitlist. Of those, 1,385 accepted. From that pool, 42 were admitted, a waitlist acceptance rate of about 3%. That is below the historical average, but the admissions office has been clear that the number fluctuates dramatically depending on yield. In typical years, between 20 and 100 students come off the list. In exceptional years, far more. The admissions staff has also been transparent that there have been years, specifically the Classes of 2005, 2010, 2017, and 2019, when no one was admitted from the waitlist at all.

The takeaway: your odds are better than at most peer institutions, but they are not guaranteed. The 28-year dataset that Notre Dame makes available through the Common Data Set is one of the longest and most transparent in the country, and the average of 14% over that span is meaningfully higher than what you will find at comparable schools like Hopkins (1.5%), Duke, or most Ivy League institutions.

Confirm Your Spot on the Waitlist

Confirm your place on Notre Dame's waiting list through your applicant status portal immediately. This lets the admissions office know you want to remain under consideration. If you do not confirm, you will not be reviewed when the committee turns to the waitlist. The waitlist is not ranked.

Commit to Another School Before May 1

Notre Dame's own guidance is to commit to enrolling at another college or university before their enrollment confirmation deadline, which typically involves submitting a nonrefundable deposit. Do this. Waitlist notifications do not begin until early May and may extend into mid-June, well past the point where you need a backup plan in place.

If Notre Dame later admits you from the waitlist, you will be given a period of time to confirm whether you accept the offer. The offer is non-binding. You can accept, withdraw from the other school, and forfeit the earlier deposit. But you cannot float through May with no landing pad.

Upload Your Letter of Continued Interest by April 15

Notre Dame explicitly invites waitlisted students to submit a letter of continued interest, and they give it a deadline: April 15. They also give it a name. Notre Dame calls it a "letter of desire," and the language matters. They want you to explain why you believe Notre Dame is the best school for you.

Upload the letter through the "Upload Materials" section of your applicant status portal. Notre Dame asks that updates be sent as a package rather than in multiple uploads, so if you have other materials to include (updated transcript, brief note on a new achievement), bundle them with your letter in a single upload.

Your letter should be up to 650 words, and it should function as a love letter to Notre Dame. Not a brag sheet. Not a resume update. Not a list of other schools that admitted you. A letter that makes the admissions committee understand exactly who you will be in the Notre Dame community and why this is the only university where your intellectual, personal, and spiritual formation can be fully realized.

Notre Dame's identity is built on several distinctive pillars, and your letter should engage with them directly.

The first is the Catholic intellectual tradition. Notre Dame is not a university that happens to be Catholic. It is a university whose Catholicism shapes every dimension of the institution, from the curriculum to the residential life system to the way students are expected to engage with the world. The Congregation of Holy Cross founded Notre Dame with the conviction that faith and reason are not in tension but are mutually reinforcing, and that the purpose of education is the formation of the whole person, mind, body, and spirit.

And if it is genuine, if it does not conflict with your own religious beliefs or conscience, and if you can write about it with sincerity rather than performance, make an explicit connection to how you value the Catholic intellectual tradition and the opportunity to develop your faith at Notre Dame. This is not a suggestion to fake religious devotion for strategic advantage. Admissions officers at a university where the Basilica of the Sacred Heart is the spiritual center of campus life can spot insincerity about faith from miles away, and a hollow invocation of Catholic identity will hurt you far more than it helps. But if your faith is a real part of who you are, if the idea of attending a university where theology is not an elective curiosity but a required core of the curriculum genuinely excites you, if you are drawn to the residence hall Mass tradition, the Center for Social Concerns, the retreats through Campus Ministry, or the way Notre Dame integrates moral formation into every corner of student life, then say so. Most applicants will not touch this in their letter because they are afraid of being too personal or because it does not occur to them that a university might actually want to hear about it. At Notre Dame, faith is not a footnote. It is foundational. A student who can articulate a sincere desire to grow intellectually and spiritually within the Catholic tradition, or who can explain how the university's commitment to faith and service aligns with their own values even if they come from a different religious background, is a student Notre Dame was built to serve.

The second is the residential community. Notre Dame's 32 residence halls are not dormitories. They are the primary social unit of the university. There is no Greek life. Each hall has its own traditions, its own rector, its own chapel, its own identity. Students live in the same hall for all four years, and the bonds formed there are central to the Notre Dame experience. If the residential model matters to you, reference it with specificity, not generic praise about "community" but genuine engagement with what it means to live in a hall system where your dorm is your family.

The third is the academic programs. Notre Dame's Mendoza College of Business is consistently ranked among the top undergraduate business programs in the country. The College of Engineering offers rigorous programs in a setting far smaller than most peer engineering schools. The College of Arts and Letters houses exceptional programs in political science, philosophy, theology, English, and the humanities. The College of Science is home to strong programs in physics, biology, and chemistry with significant undergraduate research opportunities. If a specific department, faculty member, research initiative, or interdisciplinary program drew you to Notre Dame, name it. Show the admissions officer what your four years would look like in concrete terms.

The fourth is service. The Center for Social Concerns coordinates over 100 community-engaged learning courses and sends students to service sites around the world. Over 80% of Notre Dame students participate in some form of service during their time at the university. If service is part of your identity, connect it to the specific infrastructure Notre Dame provides. Do not write a generic sentence about wanting to "give back." Explain what you would do and where you would do it.

Do not brag. Do not list your accomplishments. Any genuinely significant updates should be included briefly as context, but the heart of your letter must be the portrait of you on Notre Dame's campus. When you show the admissions committee a vivid picture of yourself contributing to a specific community, a specific academic program, a specific service commitment, and a specific spiritual tradition, you become someone they want to fight for.

Have Your Guidance Counselor Advocate

After your letter is uploaded, your guidance counselor should contact your regional admissions representative. The counselor should communicate that Notre Dame is your top choice, that you will enroll if admitted, and that your academic performance has remained strong. If there are genuinely significant new developments to share, the counselor is the appropriate person to deliver them.

If your counselor resists making the call, push back.
If you'd like help maximizing your chances of getting off the waitlist and into your current top-choice colleges, schedule a free consultation with an admissions expert today.