<p>I know US PRESIDENTIAL SCHOLARS, 1600 SATers who go to WASHU.</p>
<p>I haven't read all the posts, so sorry if someone already said something like this. As to the one poster's question if WashU's admission officers have actually said anything about their practices, well, yes, they have (sort of). They have some issue with a lot more people from my school going to Northwestern than WashU, so they started waitlisting the overqualified students and accepting the, well, not so qualified students. I'm not exaggerating when I say that the people from my school who went to WashU last year (not sure about who's going this year) are most likely not even in the top third of the class (we don't rank so I can't be sure). And no, they do not have any minority status.</p>
<p>WashU's admission officers told our school's counselors that they did not like that more of our students were going to Northwestern - this was when our counselors met with their officers to try to convince them to just reject the "overqualified" people instead of waitlisting them. Of course, they would never flat out say that they waitlist them because they don't want to be an Ivy reject school, but the vibe comes across. My friend who visited the campus this year for a scholarship interview told me that the admissions officers talk a lot about how in a few years they will be on par with the Ivies and how they're trying to bring up their US News figures. Yes, they focus A LOT on those rankings.</p>
<p>This accusation always sounds like either sour grapes or a basic ignorance about how adcoms make their choices. There are simply too many variables involved.
Wash U clearly cares about having a gender balance, so some decisions may have been based on whether the applicant was male or female.
Also, Wash U probably gets flooded with applicants interested in the well-regarded medical and business programs and fewer interested in majoring in humanities. So unless you know what applicants indicated regarding majors, how can you speculate as to why someone was accepted or rejected or waitlisted?<br>
Also, the ED option gives applicants a big leg up, so for the poster describing lower-qualified classmates getting accepted at WU, you have to ask if they applied ED (wisely as it turned out) and got themselves admitted.<br>
And, you have to consider whether someone indicated whether financial aid was important; I think many students get waitlisted -- at many universities besides Wash U -- because there is not enough merit or need-based aid to accommodate everyone.
The power of indicating strong desire, or preferably "first choice," to any highly selective university cannot be overemphasized.<br>
The UPenn admissions director was unapologetic on this point in a magazine article about ED and the numbers Penn accepts under this option. In a nutshell, he said the university wants students who are happy to come there and will bring that positive vibe, along with all their other talents, to the campus.
So a candidate who visits, who interviews, who sends follow up explanations about why they see Wash U as a good fit for them is going to be a more attractive candidate for admission than even the most statistically stellar student who simply sent the common ap in with no further lobbying.
I guess it shows that I am soon to be a rabidly supportive Wash U. parent.
I won't go bragging about his stats, but here are the schools he turned down because he fell in love with Wash U: Cornell, Northwestern, Brandeis, UC-Berkeley, UCLA (Regents Scholar) and UCSD. He can't wait to join the class of 2010.</p>
<p>Jazzymom is right. Admissions isn't all about if the school would be a good match for the student, but if the student would be a good match for the school. In fact, that's one of U Penn's essay questions on their application. Can you blame a school for wanting to accept the students it thinks will want to attend?</p>
<p>All of you people who keep griping about Wash U's supposedly sketchy admissions practices, quit acting like you are certified experts on this topic and quit acting like you know what you're talking about...stop your complaining, get off your computer, and go get some fresh air.</p>
<p>ST2: I'm not saying people who attend Wash U are not smart. But according to some other posts, people believe that there are also a lot of smart students who apply to Wash U as a backup and because of this they are waitlisted. In my case, Wash U probably looked like a backup to admissions based on the other schools I was applying to, when in fact Wash U was up there in my top choices.</p>
<p>I don't understand why people attribute WashU thinking that some people percieve them as a backup based on the other schools they apply to when WashU doesn't ask this question on their application, so there is no way they'd know where else you were applying to unless you told them. Hell, WashU doesn't even require the use of the CSS-Profile (they have their own form) so they can't even get the info from that.</p>
<p>So, if the assumption is that WashU looks at stats and determines if someone has a 4.0 and 2400 that they are using the school as a safety so they waitlist/reject accordingly, then that is just plain dumb because WashU would then be setting itself up to be filled with a school that doesn't truly have the best students around which would defeat its who quest of being among the upper echelon schools in the nation.</p>
<p>WashU uses the common app so they don't ask essay question like "why is WashU your number one choice school" so how in the world do they know who is and who isn't using them as backups? Well, there is no way they can know. This simply shows that WashU admits students who would seriously consider going to their school if given the opportunity and students who they think will fit in and contribute to their school if given the opportunity. WashU isn't trying to be everyone's first choice. They, like pretty much every other school in the country, appreciate a prospective student coming out to visit or doing an interview so both parties can make a wise decision on whats best for the school. Adcoms have been doing this for years, so they know who to admit and not to admit, and it goes a lot deeper than test scores and gpas. None of us, as far as I know, are in a position to judge the school's admissions policies. So what we know a couple of kids with great stats that got waitlisted while the person with a 3.8 gpa instead but who actually has a personality and really wanted to go to WashU got in. This happens @ every school. Admissions is not entitled to anyone. </p>
<p>If you want to go to WashU and your academic track record along with your personality and ecs are up to par, you will get in. If you are @ the top of your class but WashU can sense from your application that you don't really want to go there, they will do you the favor of not even making it an option for you. Its as simple as that.</p>
<p>D2 turned down Brown, CalTech, JHU, Rice, Brandeis, UIUC and U.Rochester to go to WUSTL in 2004. She's really happy there.</p>
<p>This is <em>not</em> meant to imply that WUSTL is better/ worse/ equal to any of these other universities. It's just that each university sees a particular set of applicants EACH YEAR as being best suited to the university, and each student chooses (from among acceptances) the university they feel will be best suited for them. </p>
<p>Perfect? No. Are mistakes made? Absolutely. But until someone thinks up a better way of doing things, it's all we've got...</p>
<p>My school's valedictorians for two years in a row were rejected from such schools as MIT, Yale, and Harvard, yet were accepted at others such as Princeton, UPenn, Hopkins, Cooper Union, and Cornell (both students had a good extracurricular resume, as well as academic). Does that mean that MIT, Yale and Harvard reject overqualified applicants? No. Every school looks for certain kinds of people, and doesn't just base their decisions on academic merit.</p>
<p>Do the universities see which institutions you have sent your SAT scores to? I always assumed that this information was shared, and the primary source for admissions to know where a student has/will apply.</p>
<p>Also, at a School of Art day, the admissions counselor mentioned that they knew all students applying to RISD because there was a drawing of a bicycle in their portfolio.</p>
<p>bahaha, NUgrad, i didn't use my RISD bicycle drawing for my washu portfolio... maybe that's why they took me, because they didn't think i'd reject washu for risd (vice versa, rather.)</p>
<p>I don't know how they know where else you're applying. But, they do know where you're applying to somehow. In my interview for Brown, he seemed to have a list of all the schools I was applying to without asking me. Maybe WUSTL does the same.</p>
<p>@music_uofter: maybe it’s on our Common Apps?</p>
<p>Anyway, yes, I’m pretty sure WUStL does this. I’m a great student (4.4 GPA, 7 APs and 4 college classes, math through multivariable calculus as a junior & student teaching math as a senior since there are no more classes available to me, editor-in-chief of lit mag for 2 years, officer in many clubs, etc etc) and got admitted EA to MIT…so it was pretty surprising when I got waitlisted at WUStL.</p>
<p>But a little more research online shows that WUStL is at least suspected of doing this to up their % of accepted students who enroll. I understand that practice and honestly don’t even mind…there was really not a chance I was going to go there anyway.</p>
<p>EDIT:</p>
<p>@oncampus: there are about 28,000 valedictorians every year, and MIT admits only ~1200 freshmen a year, so them rejecting valedictorians doesn’t mean they’re pushing away overqualified applicants. Their admissions is actually pretty straightforward and transparent for the most part. ;)</p>
<p>Edit 2: I didn’t mean to brag/suggest that WUStL admits underqualified/sub-par students. It is a great school. But I’m sure that they do consider whether students are going to be challenged at WUStL and also whether or not WUStL is a serious top-choice school for them. I’m sure if they saw the list of schools I applied to (actually, my interviewer asked me about that, and I didn’t lie), they would realize that WUStL was more of a safety for me.</p>
<p>An admissions officer of WashU recently came to our school’s “Applying to colleges 101” thing, and she talked about how admissions works at WashU (super scoring and all that jazz). One thing that she did focus on though was that she (bitterly) did not like the term “safety school”, and she recommended that we show demonstrated interest. So to me, it really did sound like she all but said that WashU suffers from Tufts/WashU syndrome.</p>
<p>Sigh… asking applicants to demonstrate interest is not the same as rejecting applicants they view as overqualified. If you had to choose between two applicants, one of which showed extreme interest in the position and the other no interest at all, which would you choose?</p>
<p>This whole “Tuft’s Syndrome” thing comes about like this:
WashU (or any other school) would be a far worse place if it simply accepted the applicants with the best numbers without regard to individual personality, or “fit”. One of the characteristics that contributes to “fit” is a real passion about the school - shown by demonstrated interest and not by numbers. This leads to some qualified applicants with high numbers being waitlisted or rejected. In order to inflate their bruised egos, these applicants tell themselves that the reason they didn’t get in was because they were “too good” for the school, rather than the fact that they weren’t a good fit in the eyes of the admissions officers.</p>
<p>Additionally: A 7 year old necro? Really?</p>
<p>Closing old thread.</p>