Adademia Masters Admission Conundrum I have applied for masters in a few programs and am suffering from a row of rejections.

I am waitlisted in a few programs too.

I was going through https://www.scs.cmu.edu/sites/default/files/SCS_Masters_Programs_in_Brief_2016.pdf this document:

If you scroll down a few pages you can see 2016 stats.

CS : 90 accepted 36 enrolled. How can that be?

Does 90 accepted also include waitlisted people? If I am on the waitlist does it mean that if my waitlist rank is &lt; 54 I will be accepted?

How many people are there in a waitlist usually for these programs?

This whole admission cycle is taking its toll mentally. I am too distraught after rejections from my dream colleges.
Disclaimer: I do not work in admissions. My answer is simply based on my observation as a computer science student in the US.
When schools send admissions, they already have a yield rate (the percentage of accepted students taking the offer) in mind. If they have 30 spots for a program, they will most definitely send more than 30 offers. If the past yield rate has been around 1/3, they will send about 90 offers and expecting about 30 people to enroll. In general in the case of waitlist, they will only accept people if they have lower yield rate than past years.