<p>I remember a thread here saying that we should play a role in a athletic league to boost our name recognition, as Northwestern U in the Big Ten. Any idea about this or anything more?</p>
<p>yeah, sports is a very effective way to boost a school’s name. WashU does in fact have a good sports scene. Their mens Bball team was 1st place in DIII, and their women’s vball team has won DIII champs for a few years already. I think if WashU were to start recruiting athletes, say for football or basketball, that’d be good. First of all, though, i think washu needs to renovate the weight room/fitness centers/gyms. You can’t have star athletes if your training facilities are outdated.</p>
<p>Get all the parents to start telling their friends how great WashU is haha… I just read some past threads on why isn’t WashU famous and etc and wow so much support from parents. It seems like a lot of people turned turn supposedly more prestigious schools/famous schools to attend WashU which is very good as it would definitely mean that WashU student body is of an extremely high standard.</p>
<p>wear washU apparel all the time…
get a washu bumper sticker.</p>
<p>I think I can say with a fair amount of confidence Wash U will never try to break into big time sports like a Duke or Stanford or Northwestern. Another thing that won’t happen but would probably help would be to have a more unique name. Makes recognition a lot easier. As people on here say all the time, the school gets confused with all sorts of academically lesser institutions. Duke, Vanderbilt, Stanford…never any doubt about which school someone means when they say those names. Hey, who knows, start a movement, LOL. As much as most of the students love the school, I doubt anyone feels remotely as passionate about the name of the school, per se. Let’s see, the Danforths were/are a big part of the university for many years, so maybe Danforth University. Damn, just Googled it and it looks like there already is one in Pittsburgh. Anyway, you get the idea.</p>
<p>I think Wash U has done considerably well over the last 20? years or so… there are always stories you hear that it used to be more of a regional institution, but now it’s definitely so much more than that. </p>
<p>More name recognition is a double edged sword. Part of Wash U’s appeal to me was the “hidden gem” aspect of it. I love that vibe. If you know about Wash U, you probably have lots of respect and know how happy people are to be here. If it gets more popular and the Average Joe starts equating Wash U to Penn/Yale/Brown/Stanford/etc, I wonder if some of those wonderful hidden gem qualities might fade away due to the type of applicant Wash U would then attract.</p>
<p>The Ivies definitely benefit from having the Ivy branding, but I think that’s why so many people just go there. You go there because you’re supposed to, because everyone else did. Sure, they are great schools without a doubt, but I think the Brand very much affects people’s preferences in colleges to a significant degree. There really isn’t as much individual decision making as there should be, it’s all part of the “follow the masses” and “follow the popular kid” kind of philosophy that’s so sad. </p>
<p>There aren’t many famous colleges outside of the East Coast. In the midwest, you have Wash U, Northwestern, and UChicago. Northwestern definitely benefits from the Big 10 conference. UChicago… well… it’s definitely a good school, but suffers from the same name problem that Wash U has. It doesn’t have the cachet… doesn’t have an identifiable street credibility. The west coast has Stanford, and that’s really about it (for private schools, that is… I’m not talking about Berkeley or UCLA, etc). </p>
<p>St Louis is a cool enough city, and is bigger than some cities that other schools are in (Providence RI, Princeton NJ, Ithaca NY, for example). St Louis has some weird negative reputation, but really its a pretty nice city. It isn’t Boston or anything, but it’s better than most cities out there. St Louis is a definite barrier for Wash U, and it needs to find ways to jump the hurdle. I don’t know how that could be done except on some large scale effort, but I’m sure it could be. New York City, for instance, used to be a DUMP of a city. No one liked NY… it had the worst crime, dirtiest buildings, and was just a mess. Now, the biggest selling points of NYU and Columbia is the fact they’re in New York City. I dont know how it got turned around, but St Louis should definitely take a page from New York City’s marketing. St Louis used to be the 4th biggest city in the country (and one of the richest) until the 1950s or sometime around then, but it really hasn’t grown much since then. The city should just hire some fancy marketing executives to completely rebrand and publicize the city, and then Wash U would benefit from that. </p>
<p>Short of Wash U changing the name (which while it sounds nice in hypothetical situations, would be foolish to actually implement), it’s hard pinpoint one specific thing that the school can do. It already mails TRILLIONS of brochures/magazines, and it has a very high ranking in nearly every ranking guide.</p>
<p>We need to find ways to put Wash U on the same “level” as the Ivies. It already is on the same level in terms of academic quality and student profile (test scores, gpa, diversity, etc), but not so much in terms of prestige. Wash U needs to find a way to put its name in the same sentence when people talk about “Harvard, Yale, Stanford, etc”. I mean, literally, the name Wash U needs to be in that same sentence. </p>
<p>Right now, a conversation goes “I’m applying to HYPSwhatever”. Second guy goes “Oh, what about Wash U?”. Original guy says “Oh yeah, I forgot about them, I might as well apply there too.” I mean, Wash U does have Early Decision and some of my friends applied Early because they knew it was where they wanted to go, but most people don’t do that. </p>
<p>There’s gotta be some way Wash U could be mentioned in “I’m applying to HYPSWashU”, and not as an after thought.</p>
<p>Until someone finds a direct way to make Wash U included in mentions of top college names, just do very simple and cheap things that everyone can do. It’s dumb, but wearing your Wash U hoodie whenever you’re home (I do everywhere… it’s kind of gross after awhile, hehe), having a bumper sticker on your car and your parents’ cars, and networking with alumni are going to be the best and easiest things we can do. If you know people from your high school or home town who are applying to college, make sure you talk up Wash U and how much you love it here and how they should visit and apply. Word of mouth is the cheapest and easiest way to get the word out. Its really simple and won’t work on a massive scale, but its something small that can help a little. Something bigger does need to be done, clearly, but this is something easy for the time being until someone has a better solution. </p>
<p>So until some genius comes around with some technique to put Wash U in the same sentence as HYPS, word of mouth is our best friend. We have so much pride at Wash U, so let’s show our pride to everyone else!</p>
<p>Sorry for the long stream of consciousness :p</p>
<p>You know we love you, vbball, but you do realize you argued both sides of the name recognition issue, right? You don’t want it equated with an Ivy because…but let’s figure out a way to have everyone equate it with an Ivy. I am just yanking your chain, I know exactly what you mean.</p>
<p>Although I was joking about the name change (mostly) and certainly don’t think it will happen, it is not unprecedented for established brands to successfully change names in order to either get more recognition, revive/upgrade a product, or, as would be the motivation in this case, eliminate confusion with other products that while not close enough to be challenged on trademark infringement, none-the-less cause confusion for the brand. Anyway, all theory, but I think it would actually be easier (but not easy!) for a university to pull off than a consumer product. OK, we just gave someone a brilliant marketing class project.</p>
<p>Yeah. Somewhere in these threads I suggested WHYPS… should be the acronym of choice (at least for us WUSTL folks) (and S isn’t an Ivy, either). It kinda rolls off the tongue! Someone didn’t like my idea. I am undeterred, however (and posting it again)! LOL.</p>
<p>The name creates real problems. It gets confused with the University of Washington, George Washington University, Mary Washington University, Washington and Jefferson College and Washington & Lee University.</p>
<p>^
I totally know that I was arguing both sides of the issue. I think we all want Wash U’s name to be jointly mentioned with Ivies, but no one wants Wash U to lose the character we have. It’s a difficult thing to balance! </p>
<p>But, each Ivy has it’s distinct character, Stanford has it’s character, etc, but they’re all mentioned jointly. Perhaps Wash U really won’t lose its character as it gets more pretige? Other universities manage to remain distinct, while still being recognizable. </p>
<p>I don’t know. I guess I have no real solutions here. Just food for thought :)</p>
<p>Does WUSTL have any Nobel prize winners on faculty? </p>
<p>Referring to the school as WUSTL (which seems to be the trend - e.g., the website) instead of WashU will help re-brand it a bit.</p>
<p>well, palmalk, at the risk of pointing out the obvious, if people starting using WHYPS we would never hear the end of the leather jokes.</p>
<p>Nobel Prizes still on the faculty: Doug North in Econ, and Rita Levi-Montalcini is technically still on the faculty I think, emeritus. She is a great story, btw. Look her up if you never have.</p>
<p>WashU IS most definitely mentioned in the same breath as the Ivy’s (and considered superior to many of them) in the biomedical world… just FYI. Not just in the med school either, WashU has some very heavy hitters in plant biology+genetics lurking in the biology department and a very well known theoretical physicist…</p>
<p>1) wear washu apparel all the time.
2) explain what WashU is when people ask you where you’re going for college and they haven’t heard of WashU</p>
<p>Honestly, i think it’s good that WashU isn’t an ivy. I don’t want it to be on the same level as those ivies because those students who go to yale, harvard, princeton can be pretty obnoxious and like to think the world revolves around them (or they’ll become that way by the time they graduate). At WashU, you don’t have to deal with ivy-league snobs. It makes for a more comfortable, friendly, laid-back atmosphere where kids want to study for the enjoyment of learning. And they’re focused on their academics too!</p>
<p>It is irritating that many people mistakenly think WashU is another school. I had to endure someone telling me how bad the neighborhood around WashU is, I think she might have thought it was St. Louis U. This is only one of many that I have encountered. ARRGGG!!</p>
<p>Well krug, you know as well as I how much of a problem that is for a lot of schools. Everyone hears New Orleans for Tulane and you can imagine some of the postings. For those that don’t know (krug does) Tulane is in a very ritzy part of New Orleans, eerily similar to Wash U’s setting in St. Louis. Huge park across the way (with zoo and golf course, but no art museum or planetarium), big old money homes all around, classic campus in its own right, and so on. Anyway, the point is that while Wash U has kind of a double whammy because of the name itself, other schools have issues regarding misconceptions also. Not much to be done sometimes, I suppose.</p>