<p>But no applicant seems too upset as the ones waitlisted at WUSTL even if they didn?t have it as a first choice or they already decided to go to another school and WUSTL was a no-no since the beginning of the process. Why?</p>
<p>Because those waitlists are "true" waitlists in the sense that they are boarderline. They are <em>very</em> close to being admitted. WashU waitlists just about anybody not admitted so other than not being accepted in the first round, it literally means "no desicion", instead of "boarderline". It's a way for them to keep the acceptance rate further down for the ranking while shielding themselves from the risk of not having enough admits matriculating, as I have explained in couple of my earlier posts. It also gives WashU extra time to act after other colleges finish their decisions. It's a very intelligent idea but it annoys many applicants.</p>
<p>Sam if what you said it’s true, how you can explain that no one from the waitlist was accepted last year and there was over enrollment of 12%?</p>
<p>I believe last year they had miscalculation; I believe the year before, they accepted people off waitlist. </p>
<p>But regardless, the practice protects themselves from under-enrollment but not over-enrollment.</p>
<p>edit:</p>
<p>Actually, now that I think about it, this practice also helps to deal with over-enrollment also, depending on how one goes about it. To protect yourself from over-enrollment, you would actually try to intentionally underpredict the yield a little and then fill the difference with the waitlists. Wow, the more I look at this, the more I find how well-designed it is.</p>
<p>Sam you said washu waitlists about everybody not admitted. So is that 18000 or so? Can you back that up? I thought the number was 200 -300 which would be only about 1-2% of the non-admitted or so, right?</p>
<p>oldoldadd,</p>
<p>I didn't mean to say it literally. But I believed I'd seen someone said they waitlisted 1000 kids or something ridiculous last year or the year prior. I also saw how students said they knew more people waitlisted than rejected. So maybe that 1000 was actuallly the number of people that stayed on waitlist. I am surprised your didn't see it in your district.</p>
<p>Nope, just admits or rejects.</p>
<p>oldoldadd,</p>
<p>Your district must somehow have extremely special relationship with WashU--1. only the kids with the best stats got into WashU and 2. decisions were either admits/rejects when lots of others are complaining otherwise. ;) I don't want to comment on (1), seeing WashU does have high quality students. I just did a search, looks like as early as 2004 (don't think there's CC in 2003 yet), kids were saying many they knew were waitlisted.</p>
<p>sam better look at the posts on the other WUSTL thread . WUSTL waitlist numbers are not unique. Caltech and MIT have released theirs today. I put them in the other thread.</p>
<p>oldoldadd,</p>
<p>I am tired of you misreading what people said over and over. Aardvark was saying we have 100-200 or so waitlisted commenting to CC (so far)* and therefore, he argued, that we couldn't be conclusive about the distribution of admit/reject/waitlist considering the pool is 22,000. He's NOT saying WashU has waitlisted 100-200 this year.</p>
<p>It is a smart thing to do if all they are looking for is to decrease the statistic for # of kids admitted. However, speaking as a waitlisted-from-Washu student, it's just annoying to be in that in between space without a definite answer. At least with a rejection you can be a little sad, and then put it out of your mind and move on to your other choices. With a "waitlisted," you have to keep wondering whether you genuinely WERE a borderline candidate for some reason, or if, had you asked to stay on the waitlist, you would have happily been accepted. </p>
<p>After months of waiting, to have a school spit back a "maybe" at you is just hard to bear. "Maybe" is what we've been thinking on our own. We were waiting for some sort of final decision, but Wash U is treating us as though we are all expendable and interchangeable. When you get a definite ACCEPTANCE, you know you're wanted and can feel happy. Wash U seems so apathetic towards its future class.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>The operative words being "believed" --- which has as much validity as "I think I remember reading..." --- and of course, the anything goes word, "maybe." Maybe you're right and maybe you're completely off base. Maybe is so flexible that way.</p>
<p>jazzymom,</p>
<p>WashU is very secretive about its admission number. So there are gonna be some guessing involved. I can't take number on CC as fact because WashU doesn't make published data available. I thought you would appreciate such kind of reservation.</p>
<p>On the other hand, we have yet to see any rejection (or maybe 1 or 2 if I missed seeing them). WashU waitlist was unsuaully large (at least among CC members) last year or the year before. It's unlike anything you'd see on other schools boards. Are you telling me it's more logical and reasonable to believe WashU somehow is no different from others when the data is available for the public (not gonna happen however)?</p>
<p>Sam:</p>
<p>It gets irritating reading criticism of Washu, on the Washu forum, by people who base their opinions on something they believed they'd seen someone said on CC once, last year, or maybe it was the year before or the year before that, I think, and so on. It's not just you. People read opinions and speculation based on nothing more than supposition and they keep repeating this in cc conversations until it becomes conventional wisdom, still rooted in opinion and speculation rather than fact. While I agree that Washu leaves itself open for such speculation since it doesn't release certain figures, it's still irritating. </p>
<p>Also, Washu seems to generate more of this sort of attack then say, Penn, or Duke or any number of universities that also don't sit on the tippy top of the HYPMS pyramid and have to give some consideration to whether certain students might choose to go elsewhere if admitted. Just because these discussions aren't going on on other threads as much as it is on this one is no indication of whether the colleges are or are not waitlisting in a way similar to washu. Pulling whatever you can pull out of CC discussions is not a valid way to make conclusions about how one college handles its admissions policies versus another. It's not valid, but that doesn't mean you and others won't keep doing it. I'm just pointing it out.</p>
<p>jazzymom,</p>
<p>That depends on how large a sample you think it's enough to make inference. You are entitled to your opinion on that. But just so you know, the sample size on CC is not really that small compared to those in many other situations. Part of my work is to work with environmental sampling data and we have to come up with assessment based on data on much more limited points in relation to the area or volume we are investigating. You know those political polls you see all the time on TV? It's in even smaller fraction (with respect to entire population) but political think tanks use them all the time.</p>
<p>I am not attacking WashU and I apologize if I come off this way. I've been explaining if and why it's happening, not if it's appropriate.</p>
<p>ok, the sample size of CC may not be that small--but it's a highly biased sample--it is in no way a simple random sample, therefore you can't draw any conclusions from it</p>
<p>Maybe in ten years' time, when WashU truely establishes its national reputation, things will be different. At the moment, some students use WashU as a safety, despite the PR ranks it as the sixth toughest school to get in. For those who got into Stanford, MIT and Cornell, they feel they are entitled to get admitted. </p>
<p>As the current faculty research productivity high (WashU is ranked the 7th overall) and heavy recruiting in many fields (Economics, Engineering, etc.), we can only imagine there is high growth potential for WashU in the next decade.</p>
<p>eleph,</p>
<p>Skewed? maybe. But skewed to the point of making WashU stand out like this? I doubt it.</p>