<p>i don't understand the reason why people think Waitlisting applicants 1) boost a school's USNews rankings, and 2) fudges the numbers. OR, why they think WUSTL waitlists top applicants.</p>
<ol>
<li>FACT: Wash U has a higher average SAT and ACT score than many of its competitor schools. Its impossible for them to "wait list top applicants" and still maintain amongst the highest test scores in the country. MIT and Cal Tech are probably two schools that have higher test scores than Wash U, and those schools probably don't steal many applicants from Wash U. Of course, we all know that test scores are the only measure of intelligence and likely success :)</li>
<li>FACT: The US Department of Education collects such data from colleges, so the data is overseen by some agency. </li>
<li>Selectivity and acceptance percentage are such a small portion of a US News ranking, that a school's selectivity has to change SIGNIFICANTLY for it to have a material difference in the ranking change from year to year.</li>
<li>Wash U might waitlist more people than its competitor schools. However, its likely that they might accept more people from it. </li>
<li>Waitlisting helps colleges even out their freshman class. Wash U has 5 or 6 undergraduate divisions, each with their own enrollment numbers. Most colleges like Harvard, Columbia, Princeton, etc... have ONE or TWO undergraduate schools -- they only admit one or two freshman classes. Wash U has to do this for 5 or 6 classes! I can't imagine how difficult it must be to coordinate ideal and actual enrollment numbers WITHOUT using a wait list to even things out at the end. Even more amazing is how much more flexible and barrier-free Wash U is compared to other schools.</li>
</ol>
<p>NUMBERS TIME!!! Wash U received about 22,000 applications last year. Let's say they admitted exactly 4000 people for an acceptance rate of 18.2%, which is roughly accurate. Given their freshman class of 1400 students, that's a yield of 35%. Somewhat low, but Northwestern, Emory, and UChicago have similar yields. Let's say of those 4000 accepted people, 150 of them were accepted from the wait list (an estimation, but this is in line with reported figures similar schools that DID report such numbers). Accepting people from a wait-list helps to even out a freshman class. Waitlist-accepted people are more likely to say "yes" than a typical Regular Decision accepted kid. For ease of argument, let's say ALL of the 150 wait list acceptances said "yes" to Wash U.
NOW... let's say that those 150 people weren't accepted from the wait list. Instead, Wash U didn't use a wait list... and as a result they needed to accept 4250 people to get to the same freshman class size of 1400. That increases their overall acceptance rate to 19.3%. Which is only 1% higher than if they did use the wait list to accept people. ONE PERCENT DIFFERENCE.
Clearly this does NOT make a significant difference in statistics, rankings, etc. </p>
<p>Who knows how many people they wait list and if accusations are true or not. AND WHO CARES. It has NOTHING to do with a school's quality, student life, or academics. If it's true, then waitlisting instead of denying people might have gotten them get more attention in the 80s and 90s when their name started to get more prominent, but I can't see any statistical reason why it would sustain a high ranking or lead to higher rankings nowadays. Allegedly waitlisting so many people is controversial, but with 6 undergraduate schools and a desire to become more prominent, it's understandable in my opinion. </p>
<p>Also in the 80s and 90s when they started to get more nationally/internationally prominent, that was around the same time MANY OTHER colleges went through the same process. Even during high school, I couldn't name 3 of the 8 Ivy League schools. I thought UPenn was a state school. I couldn't tell you where most of the ivies were located, either. I had no idea what Case Western, Carnegie Mellon, or Emory was... and even coming from the Chicago area, I didn't even know U Chicago was that great of a school until much later!! Granted I'm only one person, but many of my friends were in the same boat. Rankings Guides, Marketing materials, THE INTERNET, and all sorts of medium helped MANY GOOD SCHOOLS become more recognized. Wash U has a goofy name and will have a tougher name recognition problem than many other schools... but this is not the only school to have grown from a "Regional" school to a nationally renowned school. </p>
<p>Harvard Princeton Stanford and Yale will always be the four most easily recognizeable schools in the US. However, even Princeton's name was "college of new jersey" for more than half its life, Stanford is a pretty new school in terms of when it was founded, Cornell is partly state-funded, and UPenn still sounds like a state school :) . Colleges change, colleges become better, and colleges become more recognized. It's just sad that some people look down at Wash U because it has a goofier name, because is in the midwest (which is inherently uncool for some people), and because it's freshman class profile has crept up to the hallowed ivy league. I applaud a college who has done what Wash U has done, and discredit other schools that have rested on their laurels and name recognition alone and who wish they could develop as rapidly as Wash U has. </p>
<p>People hear "ivy league" and they automatically think it's an amazing school. Most people, however, probably couldn't name all ivies if you asked them too. People say "I've heard XXX is a good school", but they can't tell you one oustanding program, anything about the curriculum, prominent faculty, important discoveries, what activities students do, etc. Some friend might have said "XXX is a good school" and that's how some other guy heard about a school. It's all about word of mouth, and what's sad about colleges is that for most of America, a NAME is all they know... nothing more than a name. For people "in the know", ie top company recruiters, grad schools, etc, they know which schools are really great, which schools consistently produce top performers, and which schools have great professors and WHY in certain fields.</p>