<p>Hey dulce, I'm curious about the WashU vs. Cornell comparison. Could you expound on what made you choose Cornell? Also, which Cornell school did you apply to?</p>
<p>Sanjenferrer, my D who is a freshman at WashU was considering Cornell as well. For her, the big difference was the environment. Cornell is a beautiful school which is truly in the middle of nowhere. You literally drive through cow fields to get there. WashU has a beautiful suburban campus with easy acess to a city. Totally different. What type of environment better suits you?</p>
<p>Wash U certainly has employed several marketing strategies to improve their profile and their national ranking, many of which have been elaborated on in previous posts. One such technique to increase applications, which I haven't seen mentioned, is to not reject anybody (figuratively)! Although the school only admits slightly under 20% of all applicants, just 25% are actually rejected. This is done through aggressive use of the wait list. While use of the wait list has been a topic of discussion for some time, I've never seen figures on how extensively it is used.</p>
<p>Using naviance, I was able to check the stats of 50 of the top 1000 high schools listed by Newsweek. While this was only a sample of data, it did cover over 2200 students who applied to Wash U, and an astounding 55% were placed on the wait list. </p>
<p>To put this in context, most schools put 0-25% of all applicants on the wait list. For the top schools, the numbers are at the low end of the range:</p>
<p>Brown 10%
Columbia 15%
Cornell 10%
Dartmouth 8%
MIT 3%
Princeton 7%
Yale 3%</p>
<p>By submitting an application to Wash U, most students know they will not be rejected! Worst case, they'll be put on the waiting list. Wash U knows that psychologically, this is much more palatable than being rejected. Contrast this approach to a school like Yale where 9% are accepted, 3% wait listed, and 88% rejected!</p>
<p>This is one of the reasons Wash U is reluctant to release their common data set. There is no other school in the country who wait lists as many students.</p>
<p>The flip side of their strategy is that many students actually hang on thinking that they have a shot of getting in off the wait list, not realizing how long the odds are. If the school had roughly 24,000 applicants last year this means that as many as 13,000 students were placed on the wait list. Although the school did go to the wait list this past spring to admit as many as 100 from it, the chance getting in off the wait list are 10 times worse than being accepted to Yale!</p>
<p>ACT4: Very interesting data...Was there any pattern to the waitlisting? More RD than ED or can you not tell? Eventually Wash U has to send a reject letter to all of those thousands of students.....or do they figure students will weed themselves out by not even opting to be on the waiting list in April?????</p>
<p>I have to question the stats you listed about waitlisting - From my high school year, 4 people applied, 3 got in, 1 was rejected, and 2 of us came here. The next year, about 10 people applied, 2 were waitlisted, 4 were accepted, and 3 ended up coming (2 regular, 1 waitlist).</p>
<p>Things may be different coming from the top schools in the nation, as WashU thinks that those students are using them as a safety, but their regular stats are probably nowhere near 13,000 students being waitlisted...</p>
<p>oncampus, your school's results only show that they are different from the overall statistics for Wash U. Over the 2 years 14 students applied and 7 were accepted, a 50% acceptance rate, much larger than the <20% accepted for Wash U. 2 students were put on the wait list, or 14%. This doesn't really disprove the 55% rate for wait list that I estimated. It only shows how anecdotal evidence can't be used to make a point. However, the data I mentioned which included over 2200 applicants is a large enough sample size to provide statistically significant results.</p>
<p>My children’s high school was in the 100 best High school in America list by Newsweek, and in the last five years, 10 students applied to Wash U, 4 were accepted, I was waitlisted (he applied later as a transfer and was accepted), 5 rejected.
My S also applied to Cornell (for the one who asked about Cornell) and got the Dean engineering scholarship (small money, just for books because Ivies can’t give up merit scholarships other then this kind of incentives); he is now enrolled at Wash U with Merit scholarship. Last year my D was accepted and she is currently at Wash U.</p>
<p>As the parent of a WashU freshman, it's interesting to read threads that were similar to those started at this time of year last year (when we were, obviously, far more invested in these types of threads). A piece of advice that I'd like to offer is that, should you visit, try and speak to students that are current freshman. I'm certain that you'll find that they were applying and either admitted or rejected to many similar peer schools as the current applicant pool. Ask them why they decided on WashU, the variables that they weighed, etc. The student body tends to be very open and, from our own experiences last year, will very quickly share their opinions. The one thing that I know that you'll find is that there is a "cultish" aspect at WashU.....the prevailing sentiment amongst many of its students is that "they love it" (as does our S).</p>
<p>I think Dulce is having a hard time believing that Cornell is actually better, thus explaining his numerous attempts to verbalize that sentiment, hoping that he'd ultimately believe what he's saying. No offense, Ducle. I'm just intrigued by this psychological phenomenon.</p>
<p>WashU is an outstanding school and has been for a couple of generations. I have a parent who went there, siblings who went there and know a few current students. It is much more well known now than it was twenty+ years ago.</p>
<p>They admit about 20% of applicants. I think that the number mentioned earlier about a huge waitlist is misinformation. The admissions office would probably give that information to a prospective student if they asked.</p>
<p>Also, the stats for the kids getting in are very good, SAT mid-ranges are
CR 670-750 and Math 700-780. </p>
<p>When we were visiting east coast schools with S1, many parents on the tours knew of WashU and were including it in the choices for their S or D and were as concerned about getting in as they were HPY...</p>
<p>momstl4, do you have any accurate information about the size of the wait list? Asking the admissions office doesn't work. They say that information is unimportant, it's stale as soon as it's available because it relates to last year and has no bearing on this year, and therefore they don't provide it. Such is the case with all the information on the common data set which most schools make public, but Wash U does not. </p>
<p>The school could answer a lot of CC poster's questions and speculations by releasing their CDS, but they choose not to. Why not?</p>
<p>In 2006 no one got out from the wait list and the class is very crowded, last year they accepted less students, so they called the waitlist, if the numbers didn’t change, about 30 students were accepted (at least enrolled) from the wait list. If for any reason you received a letter that you were waitlisted, remember that you are not in the waitlist until you send your card, if you forgot it, don’t expect to be called (that happened to a friend of mine’s S, but he later applied to transfer and he was accepted)</p>