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Mostly a product of increased applications as a result of overaggressive marketing on the part of Wash U, and the school being smaller than NU,
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Excuses mean nothing, it is what it is. Not all Ivies are the same sizes either.
Please tell me then how waitlisting candidates helps their yield, since I bet you don't know. If they don't accept them it means nothing..... O and fyi yield means nothings for USNWR, and acceptance rate means very little also. So Wash U, strong student body, very selective, large endowment, good reputation, strong pre-med, strong academics across the board, chill-laid back atmosphere....ect.</p>
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WUSTL waitlists almost every applicant it does not accept. THAT is why their yield rate is nearly as high as NU's. They try to appear to be highly selective. NU does not play such games
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THAT DOESN"T CHANCE ITS ACCEPTANCE RATE. Think about it, yield is affected by who they accept and whether they decide to enroll. Waitlisting people by itself means nothing. If you can explain why waitlisting people instead of rejecting them changes yield/acceptance rates? Acceptance rate is based on how many people you accept, not how many you waitlist.</p>
<p>WAITLISTING DOES CHANGE THE ACCEPTANCE RATE, NOT YIELD (IN THE SHORT TERM AT LEAST)</p>
<p>A gradual decrease in deflated acceptance rate will cause an increase in yield and selectivity (eventually). You can't blame WashU for this, just working the system.</p>
<p>A massive waitlist, then reaching deep into it for interested students easily decrease acceptance rate. (Example need 1000 students to fill class, instead of accepting 3100-3200 or so for a full class, WashU would accept somewhere in the 2000s, and then fill their class with wait listed students who wrote 100 supplementary essays)</p>
<p>Have you ever wondered how a 32% or so yield school can manage to fill classes with only 17% acceptance? Thats some magic right there. It is obviously that WashU "under accept", then "over waitlist" to game the numbers.</p>
<p>^^ That makes sense, since students that stay on the waitlist and are later accepted will raise yield (they are, after all, the ones more likely to attend). By accepting a higher proportion of waitlisted students than most schools, WashU increases its own yield rate. If WashU just accepted more and waitlisted less right off the bat, its yield would be even lower and acceptance rate even higher.</p>
<p>Basically, WashU likely uses the waitlist extensively to "find" the kids most likely to attend, thereby raising yield and decreasing the acceptance rate. That's just how I see it. It doesn't make sense to waitlist so many kids otherwise.</p>
<p>I actually did some investigative work on WashU admission practice and I found that they were very clever. Here's how it works (noobcake/rd31 kinda covers it but WashU actually does a little further):</p>
<ol>
<li>they waitlist most that aren't accepted.</li>
<li>then when they under-enroll, they call the waitlist candidates to see if they would accept the "offer"; if the person declines (there could be some variation on this; I remember one CC member wrote that he/she was asked to decide and call back in two days), no offer letter/package will be sent and the person will still be counted as "waitlisted", not admitted (i checked with two CC members who declined on the phone and both said their online status remained "waitlisted" long after the call). It means they can happily expect nearly 100% yield off the waitlist candidates. This can be done because nothing is documented as there's no paper trail.<br></li>
</ol>
<p>Such practice allows WashU to shield itself from risk of under-enrollment and deflate its admission rate simultaneously. It also allows them to more liberally admit lower number during the first around in April so the risk of over-enrollment is also minimized. It is very clever.</p>
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Please tell me then how waitlisting candidates helps their yield, since I bet you don't know. If they don't accept them it means nothing..... O and fyi yield means nothings for USNWR, and acceptance rate means very little also. So Wash U, strong student body, very selective, large endowment, good reputation, strong pre-med, strong academics across the board, chill-laid back atmosphere....ect.
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</p>
<p>WUSTL is able to accept fewer students and rely upon their waitlist to garner students who truly DO want to attend. There are a number of ways WUSTL can (better) ensure that the waitlisted student will accept their offer admission, thus increasing their yield. </p>
<p>If acceptance rate meant so little to you, then why did you reply in such a way and imply that WUSTL's lower acceptance rate makes it a "better" university? (See below.)</p>
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would put WUStL below NU
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I wouldn't, NU has a much higher acceptance rate than Wash U
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THAT DOESN"T CHANCE ITS ACCEPTANCE RATE. Think about it, yield is affected by who they accept and whether they decide to enroll. Waitlisting people by itself means nothing. If you can explain why waitlisting people instead of rejecting them changes yield/acceptance rates? Acceptance rate is based on how many people you accept, not how many you waitlist.
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</p>
<p>Of course it changes the acceptance rate. They can decide to accept fewer students in the beginning and then take from their waitlist if needed (which usually occurs). And right, the acceptance rate is based on how many people you accept right off the bat. That's why their acceptance rate appears to be lower.</p>
<p>Common sterotype of Hopkins is it is cutthroat, competitive, premed central, lack of a social life, great medical school, BME, IR, lacrosse team. Of course, ppl do tend to miss out on the number of top 10 graduate level programs that exist on campus and that has the Hopkins name to it.</p>
<p>Oh, in addition to the #2 medical school, The Johns Hopkins Hospital is #1 in the world as well. Beat that WashU. Public health is also very famous, #1 in the U.S. as well. Hopkins has a broad strength of program outside of just premed. It holds its own against other high caliber schools pretty well.</p>
<p>Major problem is that our endowment is nowhere the size of WashU or NU. Its exactly on par with Brown's endowment. Gotta do what you gotta do with the resources you have in front of you. Gotta make best of what you got.</p>
<p>Those two links cover what many of us already know about many schools. What we were talking about goes beyond those measures.
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<p>Does WashU really need to game the system by waitlisting ppl like that. I could have sworn in the WashU forum someone displayed to me raw data that showed WashU waitlisting just about 1000 student, relative to IDK, 13K or 23K students applying, that is not a lot of student. If someone could double check on this 1000 person waitlist figure, someone could verify that figure, that would be great. I don't know where he got it from, it sounds legit.</p>
<p>EDIT: Oh yeah, playing the waitlist game does lower the acceptance rate, dramatically. noobcake's post said it best.</p>
<p>^^^ Phead wrote - "Major problem is that our endowment is nowhere the size of WashU or NU. Its exactly on par with Brown's endowment. Gotta do what you gotta do with the resources you have in front of you. Gotta make best of what you got."</p>
<p>While 1000 is about right for many colleges, the number is likely way higher for WashU. I think that's just a bogus number WashU gives out and it's a convenient number that makes WashU look similar to others. But if you do a search and find previous decision threads, you'll see WashU does stand out--there were far more people getting waitlisted than rejected. Now I think of it, "far more" may be an understatement. You should go find them to see for yourself and you'd know what I mean.</p>
Extensive waitlisting helps both the yield rate and the acceptance rate. Instead of taking a normal WL approach and trying to hit the numbers by accepting a percentage of students based on yield rate, Wash U endeavors to accept too few students and fill the remaining seats from its wait list. This obviously lowers the acceptance rate. </p>
<p>Then they accept students from the WL who have made many contacts with the admissions office. Supplemental letters, more recommendations, et cetera. Obviously these WL-admitted students who send this information really want to attend Wash U, increasing the yield rate.</p>
Wow, thanks a lot for those links. WUSTL is gaming the system even worse than I thought. I'd LOVE to see some real numbers on their total amount of WLs versus flat denies.</p>
<p>From post #60: "hmm i wasn't aware that the 2009 version came out.."</p>
<p>Oh my. Tonight Swimguy can expect his house to be surrounded by a CollegeConfidential mob, wearing HYPSMCCPAWSWUStL-Berkeley sweatshirts and carrying torches and pitchforks.</p>