<p>The problem with waitlisting kids who don't show interest and/or are overqualified, is that some kids are bound to get screwed. What happens if a lot more schools become like WUSTL? You could get rejected by all your safetys for not showing interest, and rejected from your choice schools by being underqualified and/or unlucky. Not a good scenario... at least from an applicant's perspective.</p>
<p>But Wustl.. shouldn't be considered a safety :( the same way you shouldn't consider Brown or Columbia a safety.</p>
<p>not to offend anyone, so dont' get mad. did anyone get rejected from WashU cuz ppl at my school mostly got waitlisted or accepted</p>
<p>washu is no brown</p>
<p>I know I know~ of course washu is better, but I was just giving an example.. :)</p>
<p>I love it plushenko ---you are the best!</p>
<p>There is actually a name for this: The Tufts syndrome. Tufts is famous (even more than Wash U) for waitlisting or even rejecting very highly qualified applicants that they think (or know) will be getting into other schools. </p>
<p>Frankly schools like WASH U or Tufts are in a bad situation. They are surely very good school but don't have the panache or reputation of their ivy league counterparts. Thus, many kids apply there as a "second choice." Tell me, would you like your boy/girl friend to to consider you second best?</p>
<p>Thus, they are trying to do something about that problem.</p>
<p>Now I'm REALLY SCARED b/c I've already been waitlisted by WashU, and i'm still waiting to hear back from Tufts... they are both 'target schools' for me, therefore I applied to like 4 REACHES.... if I can't get into these targets, I'll have no hope for the reaches....... <em>crossing fingers</em></p>
<p>taxguy...I don't think WashU is in such a "bad" situation as you say...they are up consistently in the rankings in the past years. Their endowment fund is up more than 100% in the past years to over $4 Bil. (8th in the US). If it was such as "second choice" school, it would not have over 21,000 applicants for a class of +-1,400. Give it a few years and their yield will improve as well.
(It is ahead of Brown and Cornell in US News...) "panache" and "reputation" left aside.</p>
<p>Uhhhmmm...</p>
<p>Yeah, I have a 3.3 (weighted) G.P.A, a 500 on the math section on the S.A.T (my verbal score, however, was 740) and definitely blew my American History S.A.T II. I'm at the bottom half of my class. (Of course, I do take MOSTLY honors classes, one A.P, and regular math... plus my school is really hard and has a different grading scale than most schools do...) However, I got waitlisted at Wash. U. Which was totally unexpected. My parents made me apply there, and I didn't think I'd even get in. Of course, I did start/am the editor-in-chief of my school's magazine, got a 740 on my Literature S.A.T II, got a 4 (I didn't finish one of the essays due to a stupid mistake I made on the gridding) on my A.P English exam, and was in Johns Hopkins C.T.Y program for a couple years because of my verbal S.A.T score... But ****, you guys all have amazing scores and grades. You are all so much more qualified than me, I'll admit it. So how did this happen?</p>
<p>By the way, how many people are actually going to stay on the waitlist? I'm not sure whether it's worth it or not.</p>