<p>Yep, the Danforth being by nomination only flies under the radar and is not on the website. I think the numbers ST2 posts may be close to correct.</p>
<p>My counselor told me not to apply to Wash U because I'd get waitlisted. I'd never heard of overqualification outside my school before though. Interesting.</p>
<p>But as for them sending mail to increase yield, almost everyone does that. U.S. News and World report uses selectivity as a big part of their rankings. If you don't have enough people apply, you won't have enough to reject. /cynicism</p>
<p>It's advertising like anything else. I gave most of the college mail I got to juniors. Seemed a shame to just bin it.</p>
<p>I did not make it up. I used reasonable estimate. probably you can convince wash to disclose how many students applied for scholarships. Harvard and MIT do reject good students but their accepted student pool are better than waitlist pool. Washu is the opposite. Just look at th stats for those accetped and waitlisted on cc, judge for yourself.</p>
<p>Some of you are assuming students with good scores do not have ECs. That is simply not true. Many students with good stats do significantly more ECs.</p>
<p>You know that wash u is not more special than Harvard and Stanford. What is personality of student body? You mean Harvard and Stanford do not have enough students to choose from and just accept washu waitlisted. I guess everybody knows better than that.</p>
<p>If Wash U doesn’t disclose the numbers, Wonder123 you are making it up. Caltech also tries to catch out of state students with scholarships; I remember the many brochures that came to my house (and I heard your D applied to them). For two years in a row, the valedictorians at my D’s high school were rejected by Harvard and MIT, and this year the valedictorian was deferred by Yale (2400 SAT). As a matter of fact, every top 25 schools rejects valedictorians; don’t forget that at least ten thousand valedictorians and salutatorians apply to those schools.
There is no way to know that the students accepted at any school are better than the ones rejected unless you have all the applications with more than the stats.
Students don’t have to have tons of ECs; it is enough just one if the student shows passion and commitment for what he does. Many student don’t understand that; they waste their time doing things they didn’t care just to make a higher number filling many spaces in the applications as they can with just meaningless names and numbers, and all the admissions officers know that.</p>
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Given they accept kids with the same credentials, the waitlisted kids are not overqualfied. Just too many highly qualified kids to accept. Can't end up with a class that is too big.
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<p>But that isn't what happened. Many students with extremely competitive grades, test scores, and EC's were waitlisted in favor of students whose resume's were very good, but not as impressive. Yes some students who had resumes similar to those who were "overqualified" were accepted, but the general trend is still present. So it's not like at MIT where nearly all the students who apply are exceptionally well-qualified. In the WashU applicant pool, some students were definitely more qualified than others, and in many cases these students were waitlisted. </p>
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What do you think of MIT basically telling kids of any quailty to apply and getting kids hopes up and then rejecting high stats candadates along with a ton of others, many of whom have fallen in love with the place.
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<p>Um, I don't think anything because MIT doesn't do this. They are very forthcoming about the competitive nature of admissions. So is Stanford, another school school you like to bring up. Also, I don't think it makes sense to compare WashU to MIT or Stanford because their admissions strategies are totally different. MIT and Stanford don't have to worry about yield; as we can see from the RD thread, WashU does.</p>
<p>wonder123 - You may well have guestimated the numbers you used. I don't even know what you based your guestimate on. The numbers I presented are based on actual numbers from 2 years ago and last year. So while I do understand your need to vent and you have every right to do so - don't do it based on immaginary numbers.</p>
<p>It may even be possible that you should have been accepted. Unfortunately the whole admission process is not perfect. Possibly some who were accepted should not have been and some who were WL should have been. But based on the adcoms I have met at WashU, they do the best they can under difficult circumstances. All I know is that the end result ends up as a pretty fantastic class. Good luck and I am sure that a year from now everything will look a lot better.</p>
<p>Couldn't it just be that WashU is looking for diversity? If all of its students were valedictorians and perfect ACT/SAT scores, wouldn't the school be a little less exciting? WashU probably looks for a group slightly below the way top just to bring in more adventurous people. An entire school of perfect students would be boring. While i'm still very bitter about being waitlisted, I can see how they would want to bring in diversity to their campus.</p>
<p>Harvard reportedly rejects 40-50% of the valedictorians that apply. Something besides numbers (scores and grades) must be taken into account. You could be a great applicant on paper, but another applicant could be just as qualified BUT they train seeing eye dogs or want to study a less popular subject or have astonishingly amazing recommendations.</p>
<p>Wash U has to waitlist so many people because so many people apply. It is a school that, perhaps, tries to be all things for all people. I briefly considered applying to WashU as a safety because I got several letters about a merit scholarship I qualified for. My college counselor told me not to. She said I would hate it, that WUSTL is, in a lot of ways, a "school without a soul".</p>
<p>If you were waitlisted and not accepted, that's too bad. But, if you really are such a qualified applicant, you'll get in somewhere just as good if not better.</p>
<p>Life goes on.</p>
<p>(Flame away.)</p>
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Couldn't it just be that WashU is looking for diversity? If all of its students were valedictorians and perfect ACT/SAT scores, wouldn't the school be a little less exciting?
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Is being white a requirement for having good test scores and EC's?</p>
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WashU probably looks for a group slightly below the way top just to bring in more adventurous people.
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Do people need to be boring and nerdy to have high test scores?</p>
<p>I resent the stereotype many posters have advocated that students with high test scores are androgynous machines who are only interested in school.</p>
<p>Diversity doesn't only apply to race.</p>
<p>ST2, first of all, I have no need to vent. I just feel funny. My child is not going to attend Washu even if accepted. She has been accepted by Stanford, U of Chicago, Caltech, Rice, Duke likely, Emory and other two schools. Wash u is the only school which waitlisted her. There is no need for me to vent. Even if my D is not going to washu I still want to have a top school in the midwest. Frankly say, what Wash U is doing may be able to get its rank one or two places higher, but will never get into the very top, because it does not even want to compete and it does not have the courage to compete. it is also not fair to those kids who spent so much time fill out the two applications and write asseys. The end results is that wash u tells them that they are not even acceptable. If indeed they are not good enough for wash u, nobody will say a word. The problem is wash u waitlisted them for fearing they would not accept the offer (even though my D has no interest to go wash u without scholaship, some students may accept)</p>
<p>I made it clear that I estimated because I had no data. If your data is the actual data, 2000 applicants can still have a significant impact on admission rate and yield.</p>
<p>Wonder123, if your D is so exceptional child who applied to many universities and has so many acceptances, why are you still losing your time with WUSTL? Even if they would like to please you, they cannot accept 22,000 students because they are all as good as your D. It’s a shame that the good universities don’t have campus bigger than cities to give a chance to everyone.</p>
<p>Everytime I see a person complain about being "waitlisted" since he/she is too "overqualified" I think it's ridiculous. Don't you guys realize that WashU is ranked behind only 5 schools in terms of selectivity by USNews? Take a guess what schools it's ranked behind: Harvard, Princeton, Yale, MIT, CalTech. </p>
<p>If you seriously think that your "overqualified", then your saying that schools like Harvard/Princeton/Yale/MIT/CalTech would be matches, and NOBODY is a "match" for schools as selective as the five listed above.</p>
<p>Additionally, saying that you "overqualified" is saying that your "overqualified" to attend schools such as Colombia/UPenn/Stanford/Brown.</p>
<p>Seriously, i cannot stop reading these posts and it's getting ridiculous. Wonder...your daughter got into a handful of top schools and that's wonderful! she wasn't what WashU was looking for. Get over it and stop spamming up these forums with this endless banter, please! </p>
<p>Everyone who was waitlisted but got into a "higher quality school" has this sort of entitlement complex, like they deserved to get in to WashU. But if they had gotten into Yale but not Harvard, it would have just been the crapshoot admissions process. If you're no longer interested in WashU, please just leave the forums and quit spouting off about things you're only speculating about.</p>
<p>NO ONE except the admissions officers at WashU knows how or why they chose each candidate. By saying some people got waitlisted because they're overqualified to reassure yourselves, you're also putting down the applicants who got in and are grateful to have gotten in, because they are "lesser qualified". Nobody knows anything about their applications except each individual candidate. </p>
<p>I'm sick of seeing this great school get degraded by people who are just bitter and have no idea what they're talking about. It's all the same repetitive nonsense. </p>
<p>Again, sorry that that came off as very harsh but I felt it needed to be said. To everyone who was waitlisted: I am sorry, but you will to well wherever you end up and best of luck to you! And to those who were waitlisted but who never planned to go, but still are on the forums whining endlessly (except Mallomar, she's insightful, kind, and pretty much the most level-headed one here!): Please stop!</p>
<p>Editor, thank you for saying what so many are thinking.</p>
<p>Wonder...why would you think they should refund your application fee?
I have hesitated to enter this fray, but as the parent of a Wash U sophomore and a senior who was recently waitlisted, I just can't stay quiet any longer. No one, no matter how statistically qualified is "entitled" to admission anywhere. You develop a list of colleges where, one hopes, you would be happy to attend...IF admitted. Is it disappointing to be placed on a wait list when you think you deserved admission, of course. But disappointing is what it is. Not a denial of some god-given right.
You pay your money and take your chances....do you get a refund for your lottery ticket when you don't win? Of course not. College admissions today is, in a lot of respects, a lottery with a twist. Most selective institutions could fill their classes multiple times over with "qualified" students. Some with higher SATs, some with higher gpas, some with that something extra that will add something to the community. In the end I believe that most admissions offices do the best they can. If Wash U chooses to waitlist, for whatever reason, then that is their prerogative. It is your prerogative to refuse the waitlist if you so choose.
Our advice to our child has been to focus on where you have been admitted and if you want to stay on the wait list, then by all means do so. If by some chance you get an offer of admission then we'll deal with it then.</p>
<p>^Wonder deleted the post, so out of fairness let's not sock it to him/her. I was waitlisted myself and I feel a bit mad about it, considering I spent money visiting and interviewing there. I don't think it's legitimate to expect a refund, but I do empathize with wonder somewhat.</p>
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<p>Additionally, saying that you "overqualified" is saying that your "overqualified" to attend schools such as Colombia/UPenn/Stanford/Brown.
</p>
<p>Ivy's and Stanford send out likely letters. I think it's safe to say that someone who receives a likely is a match. Regardless, I don't think we should shy away from this discussion out of fear of being presumptuous. An objective look at the RD thread reveals a pretty clear trend. </p>
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By saying some people got waitlisted because they're overqualified to reassure yourselves, you're also putting down the applicants who got in and are grateful to have gotten in, because they are "lesser qualified".
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</p>
<p>That's exactly what I'm doing. It's not nice. So what? I think it is pretty clear what WashU did, and I don't see why everyone is so reluctant to admit it. They are perfectly within their rights to admit applicants in whatever way they choose, so I don't think there is any reason to be uptight about this. I do think, however, that people next year deserve to know, so that if they are pretty confident of an acceptance to several higher ranked schools (yes these people do exist), they can save the application fee.</p>
<p>^I agree with Weasel. I'm inclined too, since he/she didn't even apply to Wash U.</p>
<p>I aure am surprised by so many things on this thread --- the sense of entitlement, the "bashing" of a school people must have thought was good enough to bother applying to, the belief that stats makes the person, etc. There are some things about WashU's admissions process that my D knew about from last year (different than this stuff) that turned her off from applying --- but she certainly never believed those things somehow made WashU a bad school. She just didn't want to play the particular game & had plenty of other options. The school is still just as good as it was before she knew certain info --- she just was less interested. It bugs the heck out of me to see the nasty put-downs of an excellent school. It kind of sounds to me like people thought it was great UNTIL they were waitlisted. Time to grow up, kids.</p>