@chris2 your questions are exactly my questions. Don’ know why the following poster made assumptions about who you are. And by the way, that junction where Illinois and Kentucky meet is considered the south by me., perhaps not deep but still part of the south.
i guess everyone is entitled to their opinion, but growing up on the east coast, and bring very familiar with columbia, I see this as just flat out bashing. First of all, Washington University is a wealthy school, its per student endowment must be equal to Columbia’s if not greater. Second, the poster talks about transferring out of wash u into tier 1 and tier 2 schools. that means, if he means it, that wash u, which is ranked (not that i think rankings mean all that much) 12 nationally is tier 3, which means, what, that penn and dartmouth are tier 2. and, in areas such as medical school, which of course is a graduate program, wash u is superior to columbia. and all the faint praise, that wash u people try to be accepting, is bitterness bubbling forth. wash u was not a good fit for this poster. wash u struggles i guess with name recognition as it doesn’t have sports teams. I personally have found that Columbia students are the ratins obsessed folks, trying to sneak Columbia into the hyps shorthand, and bashing unfairly barnard students at the same time. As hard as it is for status obsessed east coast folks to believe, there is an entire part of the country filled with smart succesful people and if it isn’t your type of place good, but holy cow, keep the bitterness to yourself. oh yeah, my undergrad was not at wash u,
As an east coast parent of a kid that has been accepted to WUSTL and waiting to hear back from the east coast schools, I find OP’s narrative lacking in “compelling” value add direct reasons for transfer. Most kids apply to schools after a lot of research and reasons of “good fit” and not merely based on a neighbor’s name recognition skill of the school they will be attending; that would be rather silly. Just as all admitted kids are not homogeneous in “who” they are and “what” gets them in, same with teaching faculty as well. OP should remember many of the faculty at WUSTL are products of MIT, Columbia etc.
I feel like the OPs entire argument hinges on the fact that he is going to grad school at MIT.
He’s doing a mea culpa. I was stupid, didn’t research enough, went to college for superficial reasons. We’d all dismiss this argument, but he believes (and I bet some of us too) that his downfalls are trivial since he had enough muster to get into MIT.
Wash U is an amazing school with amazing resources that push students to become amazing academics in many programs. What Wash U is not good at placating those who would rather have people recognize the name of their institution than the quality of their work.
If name recognition is paramount to you, Wash U is going to be hell. It’s amazing school tucked away with few people knowing about it. Why people continue to gripe about the 14th best undergraduate institution in the country is beyond me.
I find the OPs post a bizarre exercise. Almost vindictive. Like you didn’t like it here, so to justify your troubles you are painting yourself as an academic hero who escaped the claws of Wash U and it’s faux top tier status.
Wow, this thing blew up. If you think WashU is the best thing since sliced bread then be my guest and go there. If you have a real question then I will answer it. I’m just going to address some random points I’m gathering from the last few posts, especially since it sounds like a lot of you didn’t read everything I said. But I guess I shouldn’t expect “feedback” posts here to be positive, since this IS the WashU forum. I won’t address any more non-question posts after this response.
@Moooon I don’t know how many people will transfer out of WashU this year, but it shouldn’t affect your chances, and if you’re really obsessed with getting out, I just hope you’ve figured out what you want and why, because that is what matters most when transferring. Worrying the way high school seniors do about college is not a sign of a mature transfer student - they are expected to have a plan and have things figured out, or at least believe that they do. So I hope you aren’t too worried, for your own sake.
I’m only giving my perspective, you know, not some argument against WashU. If someone transfers out of a school, and it isn’t into a better or equal school, then they really messed up. So as a transfer, I can’t really be anywhere but a good school and have any credibility (if I transferred to UF you would all look down on me unless I said “WashU was so great but it was too good for me and I couldn’t handle it or afford it”), so I’m sorry that I go to a good school. How terrible of me. I’m only able to give my own opinion on WashU, and I think one that isn’t all sunshine and rainbows is good. I think it’s good to be critical. I’m not in love with Columbia either - not trying to sell any one school or bash WashU. If I end up putting WashU down with the truth then that’s fine by me. Furthermore, you can be a “product” of a lot of places, but that alone doesn’t improve where you go next. Not everyone who went to Harvard or MIT is going to make a good professor. It depends on the person. I had a particularly terrible professor at WashU who got her Ph.D. at Harvard. We’re talking about opportunity here, though. Better schools have better opportunity, and that’s that. What makes them better? Certainly not just ranking, but you should know that WashU increases its ranking dramatically with its well known practice of reducing its admission rate by waitlisting so many people. I don’t trust the US News rankings anymore - and that’s my entire point. I trust what I know. WashU isn’t good because of its ranking. Its ranking is undeserved, in my opinion, but that doesn’t mean I don’t still have positive or at least objective things to say about it, which I was happy to relate in my previous post. If you want someone to tell you that WashU is for you, then look in the other threads in this forum. There are a lot.
Don’t talk about tours of WashU like they’re objective looks at the school. They put a ridiculous amount of effort more than comparable schools do into selling themselves, so they only show you the nicest, prettiest things, while other schools don’t try as hard. I know this from touring a lot of other schools since I began college, as well as staying with friends at other schools and researching other schools thoroughly. I even went on a tour of WashU before I transferred, since I had never been on one, just to see what they would show us. @manyloyalties I never said WashU was “tier 3” - I was actually implying that it was tier 2. I meant that people transfer laterally from WashU into other tier 2 schools, as well as up to tier 1 schools, and that WashU is a top school that people leave, along with Hopkins, for other equal or better schools. People transfer down as well of course, but that’s not what I’m focusing on because WashU isn’t known for having a lot of students do that. I’m not trying to divide schools into concrete “tiers,” by the way. Also, WashU is 14th, not 12th, in the nation (as the poster before me pointed out), if you’re bringing up rankings and trying to sound like you’ve researched this thoroughly. And endowment per person isn’t actually as important as total endowment, since the endowment affects the quality of research centers, etc., not the individual person’s experience. It’s not like every student gets a “piece” of the endowment. An argument like that is one that is made with a misunderstanding of the point of a university.
I didn’t really say much at all about my academics, so I don’t know why you’re bringing that up. I just said where I went and where I’m going to be. I didn’t go to college for superficial reasons, either. I just didn’t know what to look for in a good school, and I’m sure most high schoolers are the same way. “Good fit” is a load of crap - one should strive for a university that offers the best opportunity, not some lifestyle or “smart and successful people” - any school can admit smart people, after all, and if their PR is good they can be a successful backup school too - sorry, that’s my opinion slipping out again. And I know a lot of pre-meds who also left WashU and comparable institutions for better ones. In the end, it was the school that made them leave, not the lack of name recognition, which is only one of a large number of reasons I left but which, by the way, actually does matter, no matter what you want to believe. I believe that I really do know now what makes a good school a good one (and no, I don’t just think about the US News ratings), and that’s the advice I’m offering. I’m not sure what downfalls of mine you’re talking about, but this isn’t about me, this is about WashU. I don’t care what any of you think of my success.
@weirdalsuperfan: Here are some straightforward questions for you:
- During your time at WashU, were you able to acquire some sense of the employment prospects for WashU grads in the humanities who choose not to pursue post-graduate education? At some elites (e.g., most Ivies, Williams, Amherst), humanities grads are recruited by businesses, under the theory that such students, who presumably have acquired solid skills in analysis and communication, are eminently "trainable" to perform a variety of specialized tasks within the business sector. However, I suspect that humanities grads from less prestigious schools do not get the benefit of the doubt and therefore need to work much harder to "sell themselves" on the job market.
Where does WashU fit into this hierarchy? Can a freshly minted WashU English or History major easily end up in consulting, banking, marketing, etc., or would such an outcome be unusual?
- Did you find WashU students to be, on the whole, a friendly and collaborative bunch, or was there a significant element of cutthroat competitiveness and/or snobbery in the student body?
@MrSamford2014 - A few years ago, I met a humanities graduate of WashU (don’t remember the exact major). She was an editor of the student newspaper there. Because of her excellent writing skills, she ended up working as a freelancer after graduation. At the time, she was at a tiny community newspaper, presumably not for great pay - likely much less than, say, investment banking. She told me her real interest was in writing about science for the general public. Eventually, she quit her job to attend Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism. Would she be successful in the business sector? Really hard to say. All depends on the individual.
@weirdalsuperfan Thank you for writing honestly. That is what a forum should be about. What you have written is an opinion and I am always astonished how people with a negative opinion about a place are attacked by those who have a positive opinion. We want to, and need to, hear both points of view without the need to argue about which opinion is “right”. All opinions and lines of inquiry are informative. I am glad to see that you are standing up for your right to express an informed point of view.
@weirdalsuperfan
Now see, that is just a lie. I don’t use the term wrong any more, because I have demonstrated to you before, beyond any doubt, that it is wrong. So you continuing to say that is a knowing lie. You even added the word “dramatically”, which makes it an even bigger lie. It is quite easy to find the formula that USNWR uses to calculate its rankings. But I will quote the relevant section for you and the link since you seem not to want to learn this for yourself, again seeing as I pointed this out very clearly already.
And there is it at the end. Of the 12.5% that student selectivity weighs in the formula, only 10% of that is acceptance rate. I trust I don’t have to prove to you that you only have to multiply 12.5% by 0.1 (or 10%) to get to the fact (FACT!) that this means the acceptance rate that you claim WUSTL takes so many pains to manipulate is 1.25% of the overall rankings formula and therefore can barely affect the overall ranking of WUSTL, much less “dramatically”. I continue to say that this pattern of yours puts your credibility at just about zero in my opinion.
I understand that in order to have a productive thread you refuse to reply to non question related posts, but seems like an easy way to avoid criticism. Your credibility is still to be determined, so blocking this out is troubling. And I know you said you won’t respond to this (you will read it though), but I feel the need to address some of the comments so this thread isn’t too one sided.
Washington University is vulnerable. There’s no way around it. You tell the average person on the street you go here, and they’ll wonder if you’re a Jesuit or if you’re on Seattle, etc. Through extreme efforts and planning to elevate the school starting all the back to when Nobel Prize winner Arthur Compton became chancellor, then the Danforths and then the current chancellor, etc. Wash U by some miracle has made it to the top.
When we try and make arguments, we exploit vulnerability. In your dualistic argument of saying these are merely my own experiences and attacking the school, we can see just how you are running home by shaping your argument around the vulnerabilities described above.
No one is arguing that Wash U was not a good fit for you–it wasn’t. Whether you left for legitimate reasons, lack of notoriety, or what not, stop attacking the school’s anecdotal practices. For some reason, instead of just saying this school was not a good fit for you, you feel the need to tear it down and announce a warning to all prospective students that you shouldn’t go here.
Washington University, in computer science, is ranked 24th in career placement (source: https://■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■/edu/rankings/us/undergraduate-software-engineering?trk=edu-rankings-ctg-card) by LinkedIn. Of course you might come back and say that Washington Universities creates fake profiles and forces students to make accounts so inflate its image. Btw, Columbia isn’t even on that list.
Even though everyone is crazy about criticizing the 1%, no one seems to be upset about the rise of an academic aristocracy. You seem so afraid of Wash U and its defiance of the status quo that you have resulted to these attacks. Yes, Columbia has been an institution of higher learning for a lot longer than Wash U. But why can’t we–as we do in other aspects of our lives–praise Wash U’s rise as a horatio alger story like we do for so many other things?
And you keep talking about maturity? Really. I’m not the one posting on a college forum about how I didn’t like a school and then spouting talking points made up by those who didn’t get in to feel better about themselves (oh wait, I see the similarity now).
@John6777: Thanks for providing the LinkedIn source! I would’ve expected Wash U to appear in at least one of the business related rankings.
So I’m only responding now because somebody did ask a question, but I’ll also respond to allegations of “lying” against me while I’m at it. I feel like we could debate numbers all day, but since it hasn’t been brought up before, I guess it’s worth addressing. Skip to the links if you’re interested in LinkedIn rankings.
@MrSamford2014
Thanks for the questions.
- Where does WashU fit into this hierarchy? Can a freshly minted WashU English or History major easily end up in consulting, banking, marketing, etc., or would such an outcome be unusual?
I know of only one person in the humanities from WashU. He studied American Studies, wants to be a writer, and was actively involved on campus. I’m pretty sure he got great grades, but anyway, all I know of his status is he’s asking people for money on Facebook so he can afford to travel the world for inspiration. Not sure how far he’ll get, but he seems like he doesn’t really have any prospects, though he may have chosen that path himself. But I think that means just be careful with your major. I doubt anyone at WashU with a humanities major like can easily get away with something like that. I wouldn’t count on going to consulting or something out of WashU. Try business or engineering, or, alternatively, an Ivy or something like that. I don’t generally recommend Liberal Arts Colleges.
- Did you find WashU students to be, on the whole, a friendly and collaborative bunch, or was there a significant element of cutthroat competitiveness and/or snobbery in the student body?..
I thought the WashU students were pretty collaborative, especially the ones I knew personally, but I did notice a lot of people freaking out about beating curves in the pre-med classes, many of which are general requirements, so you might come across that no matter what you study. I will say that for some classes it’s easier to find collaboration if you’re looking for it, or if you’re part of a student group. I don’t think I really witnessed any snobbery. I also never would have expected it from anyone.
@myyalieboy
Thanks, I’m happy to give my opinion.
@John6777 and @hidalgo23
I’m familiar with the list you cited. What you referenced is for software development, a small subdiscipline of computer science, though you claim those ranking are for “computer science.” Not so. But since we’re on the subject, Columbia is, however, on their list for “software development at startups.” It’s #9 for undergrad. WashU isn’t on there. Columbia is also #7 for both grad school software development and grad school software development at startups (WashU isn’t on either of those either). But I’m not here to argue random rankings, if you haven’t figured that out yet. I’m not afraid of anything, I’m here to give my opinion. I don’t recommend taking every ranking as gospel and generalizing it. In fact, I don’t recommend giving too much weight to rankings, difficult as that may be. For the record, I’m doing an academic year internship at AT&T (formerly known as Bell) Labs, and I’ve gotten offers from places like Raytheon and the CIA and the FBI, and also startups. A lot of people here like those startups, though they aren’t my cup of tea.
Undergrad startups: https://■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■/edu/rankings/us/undergraduate-software-engineering-small?trk=edu-rankings-category-link-m
Grad software dev: https://■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■/edu/rankings/us/graduate-software-engineering?trk=edu-rankings-ctg-card
Grad startups: https://■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■/edu/rankings/us/graduate-software-engineering-small?trk=edu-rankings-flt-ctg-dd
and here’s the full list of linkedin rankings (they didn’t rank that many things): https://■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■/edu/rankings/us/undergraduate?trk=edu-rankings-flt-degree-dd
@fallenchemist
Sorry, but you’re misinterpreting the ranking factors and missing the fact that actually 35% of the ranking is influenced by admissions standards and acceptance rate. The student selectivity (12.5%) and the peer/counselor reputation (22.5%) are affected by driving down admissions rates. If a school is good at advertising its image and is known to be selective, it leads to an increase in average standardized test scores among applicants and enrolled students, a decrease in admission rate, an increase in reputation among peers and counselors (and students) simply because of their selectivity, and of course the percentage of students in the top 10% of their high school class. Change your admissions standards and spend the amount of money on advertising that WashU does, and you’ll sit at a nice comfortable rank on US News. Image is key, and that’s my point. I would put WashU in the 20s or 30s on a list of US schools overall. It has a good med program, and if that’s what you want, then great. What does this mean for my advice for other majors (and possibly pre-med as well)? Well, maybe consider some place like Vanderbilt or Cornell or Georgia Tech or Michigan too, in addition to the Ivies, etc. http://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/articles/2014/09/08/best-colleges-ranking-criteria-and-weights
I’m only offering a recent first hand account of my experiences at WashU, and I’m not attacking it. Just trying to give a perspective. But of course, if I’m made out to be attacking the school that’s an easy way to hurt my credibility, though frankly as long as I’m not attacked I don’t care who listens to me. But I haven’t lied about anything about WashU and the admissions rates’ influence, as I’ve just pointed out. Furthermore, “disproving” (not that you did) part of what I say and claiming that that means I don’t know what I’m talking about at all is just a fallacy of composition, and completely misses the point - the point being “ask me anything about my experiences.” At least I have experience there unlike high school kids’ second hand experiences like visiting (which I do count as second hand since you’re viewing the school through a lens), or parents second or third-hand experiences, or people’s accounts of going to WashU 10, 20, 30 years ago, or hearing about people who went there and have “good jobs.” If all you want is a good job then, assuming the WashU culture is what you like, then fine, go there. I’m sure you’ll get a job. But I think graduates having a $60k-$120k salary (non-medicine) 0-20 years later is just a decent job, and not what I measure a school’s opportunity by. But that’s just me, and I’m more interested in giving any advice or opinions regarding being at WashU, deciding, or transferring. You can all do what you want. But no, I haven’t lied about anything.
@weirdalsuperfan
That is an assumption on your part regarding the peer/counselor reputation. You have zero proof of this. Do you really think a professor of so and so or a dean at another school really cares about WUSTL’s admission rate? No. Student selectivity is a completely bizarre thing to mention. That makes no sense. This is a horse you fell off of long ago. Let it ride off rather than keep chasing it.
@fallenchemist It’s ignorant to pretend that people don’t pay close attention to admission rates. Since we’re getting distracted from the point, as I just said, I’ll say no more about it. I didn’t come here to discuss numbers. I’m just surprised how committed you are to insulting me.
@weirdalsuperfan
I am not insulting you, show me where I did. I won’t even hold it against you that you display hypocrisy by talking about insults and using the word ignorant towards me in the same message. I am questioning your assumptions. What people? Did you survey the counselors and admins at colleges that vote to see how much they take admission rates into account? No? Then you really don’t know, do you? You just think that everyone looks at this like you do. That is bad science and bad methodology.
As far as you bringing up the Student Selectivity factor, let’s analyze that. I’ll quote the section from USNWR again for you so you don’t have to look back a page:
Now it is obvious that acceptance rate affects acceptance rate 100%, but that this is only 10% of a 12.5% factor, or the 1.25% I have already established. I assume we are in agreement so far. So let’s look at the other two factors, since you seem intent on making this factor a major issue, which 1.25% is not. So you must think acceptance rate affects these other two factors.
Test scores: 65% of 12.5% or an 8.125% factor overall. This is significant. Oh, but wait. This is only for students that actually enrolled. And the complaint you have is that WUSTL is turning down or wait listing the top Ivy level applicants, so they essentially never enroll. The acceptance RATE has zero impact on this statistic. Well, that makes no sense for helping WUSTL with this stat, since those people would RAISE the average test scores if they enrolled at WUSTL. Guess you didn’t mean that part of the selectivity factor. So at best we are down to 12.5% - 8.125% = 4.375% as the maximum impact of acceptance rate within the Student Selectivity factor on the USNWR ranking. So we have to look at:
Top 10% of class: This is 25% of the 12.5%, or 3.125%. Oh darn, this is just like the test scores, it only helps WUSTL if those elite people they denied/wait listed were actually enrolled at WUSTL. The acceptance RATE has zero impact on this statistic as well. Ooops, we are back to the trivial 1.25%.
Yet you keep misleading people by mentioning Student Selectivity as an important factor as to why WUSTL would go to all this trouble and using the 12.5% number.
That is one of the most inaccurate statements I have seen on CC in a long time. That is why I question your credibility. If you think that is an insult, I guess I cannot help that. To me, it is a provable observation.
We’re talking undergrad, not grad. Doesn’t it say something that Wash U is on the undergrad list but columbia isn’t. Wash U CS is focused on undergrads; Columbia CS has most focus on grads.
Did they not teach you the words paralipsis or apophasis at Columbia? I’m not going to look much into rankings, but here are 6 statistics and 3 links…lol
Hey Man I hope you are still looking at this thread because I have a burning question to ask. I am currently a freshman at wash U and I hold a 3.86 GPA however I really do want to transfer to a bigger city school like columbia. Would you recommend transferring at the end of freshman year for sophomore standing or transferring out after sophomore year for junior standing and why? Thank you very much in advance
I’m a recent WashU graduate. I wanted to add to the discussion, even though the thread is old. Though I liked WashU more than he did, I agree with @weirdalsuperfan on a lot of points. Of course you should take what he’s saying with a grain of salt. He obviously didn’t like the school and that’s why he transferred. The title of this website is literally “College Confidential”. It should be a safe community to ask for advice and be honest.
-At WashU, you are basically paying for a brand-name education without any of the name recognition, although I’m not sure if name recognition really makes a difference outside of top-tier ivy leagues. NOTE: I find that students and parents (but especially parents, in my experience) often take criticisms of schools they or their sons or daughters attend very personally. Though you can logically convince yourself otherwise, name recognition can matter and many do consider WashU a “safety school”. The happiest WashU students aren’t in denial. They just don’t care or worry about it.
-If you are pre-med, this is a fantastic school but the liberal arts education is sub-par. I pictured my education building on a strong foundation of liberal arts knowledge, but there is no such thing. We had “clusters” (I think it’s recently been replaced with something equally as horrible), which were complete crap. I wish we had classes like First Nights or something. Also: no famous faculty! Our faculty is still incredible (especially pre-med), but imagine Jhumpa Lahiri teaching you at Princeton or like, Michael Crichton at MIT (RIP). Perhaps this is to be expected from a school that doesn’t even have a writing supplement outside of the common app.
-Due to what was mentioned above, the school has low original creative output. For example, no one reads our student-run newspaper, Student Life. Recently, the biggest university program that bought performing artists to campus was defunded. This may be because students try to be involved with everything they possibly can. They often frazzled and frustrated because they split their time so many ways. They cannot fully commit to a single activity. There are hundreds of student clubs and a lot are mediocre.
-Housing is horrible. Yes, WashU supposedly has the best dorms and food of any nation, but is that really a criteria for picking an educational institution? You want to be around ambitious and intelligent students who will support and inspire you. The university should make it easy to do that. Sure, there are extremes when it comes to basic amenities in universities. But for the most part, dorms are just dorms. In my opinion, what’s more important is the housing system. At WashU, most undergraduates move off-campus after one or two years. Not only are the dorms often wildly expensive, they don’t offer any kind of group environment. Students aren’t missing out if they move off-campus, which is why they do. I was surprised when my friends at other universities told me how much of their school lives on campus and loves it. The food is delicious (albeit unhealthy).
-The location sucks. This one isn’t really WashU’s fault and to its credit, it has done all it possibly can to make the area around the university an exciting place to be. Forest Park is wonderful as is CWE, downtown St. Louis, and the Loop. In the past couple of years, more restaurants, breweries, and bars have popped up. There’s fun spots (the arch, city museum, etc.) and lots of events (marathons, mardi gras parade, ironfork, etc.). BUT it’s not a big city and in the middle of nowhere. Physical location is underrated. More places make for more experiences to have with friends, as well as better and more varied opportunities for internships and jobs.
-The Career Center and Office of Undergraduate Research are useless. There’s a saying among students: “The Career Center is only good for getting a job at the Career Center.” There’s enough professors and alumni with connections to help you on your career path or research goals, so you will be fine. Some of the staff in these offices really are helpful. But the general consensus is that they’re not and this is a huge oversight. Several of my friends also hated their advisors.
-I was so enamored with WashU my senior year of high school that I didn’t apply to any higher-ranked schools. I got in with a great scholarship. But WashU seemed to be filled with people who maybe didn’t try that hard in high school or were smart but fairly lazy or people who had been rejected from their dream schools. As a result, it always seemed like people at WashU were complaining all the time. Overall, the student body came off as whiny and ungrateful. Plus, I just really hated the lack of ambition (outside of pre-med). Nearly everyone has above-average intelligence, but many don’t have the kind of drive and vision you’d expect at such a school.
-There is low student morale. You don’t really feel a connection with others who went there. I’ve read only around 40% of those accepted into WashU actually go. It’s hard to have high morale when so many people appear to be settling for WashU.
-WashU does have some social justice warriors who basically make causes their identity. The “green” movement is big (and annoying).
-WashU is run like a business. They certainly have the endowment to fix all of these problems.
I’m sure many of you will have a bone to pick with me. I don’t want to come off as hateful, but I wanted to give my honest opinion. WashU is a great school, especially if you’re pre-med. Don’t be wooed by mattresses or food. Focus on educational opportunities, student body, and overall school spirit. All schools have their issues, and I daresay many of them are similar to WashU in that regard.
Don’t evaluate your college experience on whether or not it resulted in a “good job”. Anything from nepotism to word-of-mouth can result in a good job. College should be about education. Education is a gift that can help you develop critical thinking skills that allow you to effectively analyze the world around you and live a more enriched and examined life. Sure, landing a good job is often a reflection of these skills. But it’s a silly criteria to use in a vacuum, regardless of how badly you want to validate your school.
If you are a high schooler, here is some advice:
-Be really good at a couple of things that interest you.
-If you have the means, go to the best school you can. Relying on the USNWR is fine. People who say there isn’t a difference are idiots. The difference is jarring.
-If you can, do some sort of high school summer program out of state. Try to do it at the best university possible. I remember HSSP as being a pretty good one. If a specialized program costs too much, still try to find something that will allow you to travel.
^ As a parent whose D just applied to WUSTL, the above post concerns me. It seems that you really didn’t enjoy your time there. It also sounds like the school wasn’t a good fit for you. I think students can do research into the schools, interviews with current/past students and overnights but still things can go wrong. Perhaps you needed to transfer out although I understand that may not have been feasible for you.
My D went to the overnight and came back relating that of all the schools, she’s seen, WUSTL tries the hardest to make the students feel that they are supported.
She felt very positive about this. She is applying RD because as of yet she doesn’t have a clear super duper first choice but would be happy to have a WUSTL acceptance opportunity.
BTW, my husband also attended the open house later and came back very positive on the school. Not taking away anything you’ve said because this is your perspective and experience.
My D would be miserable at her friend’s top school (an Ivy) and vise versa (at the schools on my D’s list).
Good luck to all.
Hey OP. @weiralsuperfan Is CS any good at wash u? I can hardly find any information about it. Thanks.