<p>I've been reading this in other places and want more opinions. I have heard they inflate stats to raise their ranks. I didnt want to post this in the Wash U forum, so i was wondering if you guys had info. Also, what other schools do u consider overrated?</p>
<p>Their undergraduate business school sucks...that's all I know.</p>
<p>I know that their medical school is at least top three in the nation, right up there with Hopkins. I guess many here on CC are kind of not happy with WashU b/c it tends to reject highly qualified students who don't show enough interest in washU or treats it as a safety while trying to aim for the ivies (but jeez, can you blame a school for disliking students like this?)
I had this friend who turned down Hopkins, Duke, and Northwestern's HPME program for WashU, if that means anything</p>
<p>I was wondering this myself. It ranks the same as Cornell. Is it possible?</p>
<p>No. If anything, Wash U is underrated. The truth is that Wash U is now running ahead of the non-HYP Ivies and many Ivy defenders will try to knock the school down in order to preserve the historical status quo. Wash U has used clever and aggressive marketing techniques and has attracted a terrific student body and they deliver a lot of resources to their students. </p>
<p>Consider the facts about the nature of the undergraduate experience that they offer as measured by student strength, faculty resources, and financial resources.</p>
<pre><code> USNWR Faculty Resources Rank , College
1 , U Penn
2 , Caltech
3 , Princeton
3 , Harvard
3 , Duke
6 , U Chicago
7 , WASH U
7 , Northwestern
9 , Yale
10 , Columbia
13 , Stanford
14 , Cornell
15 , Dartmouth
18 , Brown
20 , MIT
22 , Johns Hopkins
</code></pre>
<p>USNWR Selectivity Rank , SAT Range , ACT 25/75 Range , % of Top 10% students , College
1 , 1390-1590 , 31-34 95% , Harvard
1 , 1390-1580 , na 95% , Yale
3 , 1370-1590 , 30-34 94% , Princeton
3 , 1380-1560 , 30-34 97% , MIT
5 , 1330-1540 , 28-33 93% , Columbia
6 , 1370-1530 , 30-33 95% , WASH U
7 , 1340-1540 , 28-33 89% , Stanford
7 , 1330-1530 , 29-33 94% , U Penn
7 , 1470-1570 , na 88% , Caltech
7 , 1350-1550 , 28-34 90% , Dartmouth
7 , 1350-1530 , 27-33 91% , Brown
12 , 1350-1540 , 29-34 89% , Duke
15 , 1280-1490 , 28-32 84% , Cornell
19 , 1320-1500 , 29-33 83% , Northwestern
24 , 1320-1530 , 28-33 80% , U Chicago
24 , 1290-1490 , 28-32 80% , Johns Hopkins</p>
<pre><code> USNWR Financial Resources Rank , College
1 , Caltech
2 , Yale
3 , Johns Hopkins
4 , MIT
4 , WASH U
7 , U Chicago
8 , Harvard
8 , U Penn
10 , Stanford
11 , Dartmouth
12 , Princeton
12 , Northwestern
14 , Duke
16 , Columbia
17 , Cornell
24 , Brown
</code></pre>
<p>The only reason that it is not ranked higher on USNWR is that the subjective Peer Assessment scores handed out by the academics rate the school only at 4.1. No other Top 15 scores below a 4.3. </p>
<p>Peer Assessment Score , College
4.9 , Princeton
4.9 , Harvard
4.9 , Stanford
4.9 , MIT
4.8 , Yale
4.7 , Caltech
4.6 , Columbia
4.6 , U Chicago
4.6 , Cornell
4.6 , Johns Hopkins
4.5 , U Penn
4.4 , Duke
4.4 , Brown
4.3 , Dartmouth
4.3 , Northwestern
4.1 , WASH U</p>
<p>I disagree. WashU is overranked when it comes to the "what can I do for you" dept. Its job placement is weaker than schools ranked near it and its grad placement lags. Its a good school, but the established schools have a huge leg up in both these areas.</p>
<p>WashU's selectivity is inflated by their Tufts Syndrome strategy. They waitlist tons of people and only go for the best applicants, thus lowering their acceptance rates. However, WashU has the lowest yield rate among top 15 schools, which means that it has to take in many of the waitlisted students anyway. WashU is the only school I know of that waitlists students more than rejecting students. As an example, my h.s. had only 2 people rejected(both had terrible grades) and over 25 people were waitlisted.</p>
<p>How could Caltech, Yale, Johns Hopkins, MIT, Wash U, and UChic all have more financial resources than Harvard? Harvard's by far the richest university with probably the second most generous financial aid policy.</p>
<p>This is a really interesting topic. Why is the peer assessment score so low? And why does there seem to be a lot of hate towards wustl on these forums?</p>
<p>slipper,
Wash U is located in St. Louis 1000 miles from NYC. It lies in a very different economy with different priorities. Should that location and the inclination of its students not to pursue Wall Street and/or northeastern-based consulting jobs determine its place among American colleges? I agree that recruiting is important but should a college’s status with these industries really be painted with the broad and institution-defining brush that you frequently apply? I don't think so.</p>
<p>As for the student quality issues, many here on CC post often about the admissions practices of Wash U. To put it mildly, they aren’t popular with the folks in the status quo. But when you’re trying to overtake the market leaders and engaging in (successful) practices that result in more outstanding students choosing your school, it’s easy to see the attacks of the historical powers as elite school snobbery. The historical, academic world, status quo is being upset and defenders of the status quo will fight any suggestion of competitor equivalence or, horror of horrors, competitor superiority. Happens all the time in business, but academia is a much more static, protected environment and so the barbs can more effectively maintain public perceptions and the status quo. </p>
<p>The hard numbers can help remove some of the fog and they clearly show that Wash U has a terrific student body and much, much more. The school is one more example that superior student strength and colleges offering a great undergraduate experience can be found all over the country. If anything, we need more Wash Us and the beneficiaries will be the high school students looking for a great college to attend.</p>
<p>WUSTL is a fantastic place for the sciences from my research last
year. If you know what you want to do in the sciences, you may
find in a number of cases the quality of WUSTL = HMPS and almost
as good as Caltech and way above the rest of the IVYs. The profs
are simply world class.</p>
<p>"Demonstrated Interest" is something that most top schools have
stopped relying on. WUSTL's insistence on demonstrating interest
is in this regrads archaic. You could view it as "snobbish kids"
regarding WUSTL as a safety or as "people with travel/money constraints"
viewing WUSTL as a safety.Either way without resorting to hearsay, I
found that at my public HS it is true that the top students <em>always</em>
get waitlisted and the next tier below get accepted.</p>
<p>I am one of those people with constraints. WUSTL was a very good choice
but I decided not to apply based on the demonstrated interest requirement.
Interestingly this year there are a couple of kids who are in the
upper tiers who have faked their demonstrated interest-if they still get
waitlisted it would signal that it is the higher stats and not the demonstrated
interest that is the driver (Tufts syndrome).</p>
<p>I keep hearing about "demonstrated interest" and Wash U and not taking students they think might get into Ivy's. Wash U is one of my d's top choices. She is a NMF. Has near perfect SAT scores. Has all the EC of a top candidate including wrote and received a grant in 10th grade to start a specific organization she had in mind. She did not show demonstrated interest other than fill out the application. We did not even visit the campus. And she was accepted and thrilled. But like everyone is saying college admissions at the top Universities is a lottery. And it is a very understandable that when a student works 4 years very hard to get into their top choice schools only to find out they are not accepted it is very sad and must feel like a kick in the stomach. But saying things like Wash U takes sub IVY students is just not true.</p>
<p>"Trying to overtake the market leaders" is not a very enticing approach for a college or university to employ. Using a business model to up a school's stats is embarassing, imo. Good marketing, but it does not and should not have much to do with why we choose a college. Most of us want an outstanding academic experience, along with the other trappings that make college fun. This business model attitude is one very important reason for applicants to pay closer attention to the opinions of educators and scholars, imo. Businesses fail. We do not expect or want the same for our colleges. Gimmicks in business are often short-lived according to everything that I have learned. I would not choose a college based on a gimmick approach to upping its stats.</p>
<p>Johns</a> Hopkins University - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia</p>
<p>Provides good and current info about Johns Hopkins, including all stats. It annoys me to see people constantly posting incorrect stats about various colleges and universities to bolster their own postions. I encourage students who feel the same way to post the correct statistics here on cc. Please check with your school to make sure that you post what is accurate. I have already done this for jhu. I use Wikipedia only as an addition.</p>
<p>Um...this is a thread about WashU. Why are you randomly inserting Johns Hopkins in here?</p>
<p>hotasice. because in within the discussion, once again, stats were listed to prove some sort of greater point about wash u. i always find, regardless of the school being discussed, which, here happens to be wash u, that some posters continuously put up either old or incorrect information about other schools, which while ancillary to the discussion, is misleading to students. you are right. this is about wash u. but there is really a great need to make sure that when data is posted, that it is as correct as possible.</p>
<p>I'm not applying to WashU, but I think it's a great school and not overrated at all. Some of it's graduate/professional schools are at the very, very top, which I'm sure affects the undergraduate program.</p>
<p>The problems is that the school is focusing too much on it's us new ranking and not engough on getting employeers to visit. This is the one line synopsis of the undergraduate business school by business week magazine "Faculty is talented and helpful, but many students feel not enough top companies recruit on campus".</p>
<p>WashU is not known for its business school like Penn and NYU are, so I don't know why you decided to base your whole judgment of WashU on its business school. It's known more for medicine, and you conveniently decided to ignore that.</p>
<p>It's in St. Louis, not in New York City, D.C., or Chicago. Plus, it's a relatively new and upcoming school--it was only in the past decade or so that WashU rose in the rankings and thus bolstered its reputation as a nationally acclaimed school.</p>
<p>In spite of its limits in the business school, WashU puts out every effort to help its business students engage and participate in internships in local companies and in the St. Louis area. WashU is very enthusiastic and helpful towards its undergraduates.</p>
<p>A decade ago, WashU had a hard time attracting the majority of its 7,000 applications to come attend the university; today over 22,000 applicants applied for a coveted number of 1,350 spots in the freshman class. I think that's an amazing feat. </p>
<p>Likewise, don't expect WashU's business school to become the second Wharton in a couple years. It's not Wharton level (and really, can there be another Wharton? I don't think so), but it's rising in the ranks. I predict that WashU can only go upwards from here.</p>
<p>It's just that the fact that WashU's Olin school is not as well established as Wharton or Ross or Stern or even UT's McCombs School that top recruiters haven't flocked there as of yet.</p>
<p>Georgetown's McDonough school isn't even that great yet top recruiters go there because of the name. </p>
<p>Stop judging WashU so harshly because you were waitlisted or harbor some unwarranted hate towards it. It's a great school and it's only going to get even better.</p>
<p>*** are "faculty resources?" Some of the colleges ranked lower or not ranked at all on that list have MUCH more accessible faculty than those ranked higher. Places like Yale, Dartmouth, Princeton, etc. have faculty members who are eager to interact with students. Harvard and others, on the other hand, are notorious for having inaccessible faculty. I don't see how well-published or accomplished the faculty is matters, unless undergrads can actually interact with them.</p>