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If you're a conspiracy theorist, one might argue that many students make their matriculation decisions based on college rankings. And WU's were great that year. Possibly they were overrated?
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<p>Let it go. You went to NU (as did I); it's a fabulous school, the world is now your oyster -- I don't get all the venom hurled at WUSTL. It's pointless. Really. </p>
<p>I love "Whatsoever things are true," myself, and thank you for reminding me of it.</p>
<p>Wash U is very overrated. They have good pre-med advice and programs , but overall their college is not on par with cornell or brown. Its pretty simple. They send out numerous amount of mail for no apparent reason other than to get money from more applicants.</p>
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Also, Northwesten does not call people to find out if their waitlisted candidates would likely matriculate before sending out acceptance letters/packages and exclude those that decline the acceptance offer over the phone in their admit tally.
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<p>You realize that this is purely anecdotal, and with the exception of you I have never heard of this being practiced. If anyone can also confirm it go for it. </p>
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As for Northwestern offering 2734 waitlisted spots to fill 471, why didn't you mention that only 1274 of them accepted to be put on waitlist?
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Because that doesn't change anything? What matters is what the school does (ie waitlisting) not what applicants do...as in rejecting to be waitlist and attending somewhere else. If anything that bodes badly for NU that so many waitlistees didn't care to wait.</p>
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I just mean from the national perspective -- it's far more on the national radar screen now than it ever used to be. It's gone from top-notch regional school to top-notch national school.</p>
<p>I am originally from the East, and I know how it's fashionable to pretend the rest of the country is flyover land; I thought that way myself. It's no surprise that part of why people are hesitant to embrace WUSTL into the upper tier is because of its location. (Not the physical location - it's in a beautiful area - I mean that it's in St. Louis, not a particularly high profile city.)
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Well said</p>
<p>Ultimately, I consider Northwestern and Wash U to be peer schools. They have different strengths, but they are undoubtedly top 15 schools none the less.</p>
<p>And FYI this is the best thread here and it demonstrates why its WUSTL is not overrated and how this artificial waitlisting to raise admit rates, whether true or not does not affect the rankings:
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Sam: Yes, NW rose due to its test scores because the test scores count for 50 percent of the Selectivity Rank, five times as much as the admission rate counts.</p>
<p>If WU uses the WL strategy --- and it's a strategy MANY colleges use, not a "scheme" --- to control its admissions for the best yield (with the goal of admitting students who want to come there) it does not have the kind of impact on its ranking level that would make a difference. WU is ranked 6th in selectivity because of the high national test scores --- remember that's 50 percent of the selectivity rating --- and the high numbers of students in the top 10 percent of their graduating classes --- another 10 percent of the selectivity rating --- not because of some fine tuning in taking students off the wait list for admission. Which other colleges also do so it probably is negligible in impact.</p>
<p>There is nothing "fishy" or suspicious in WashU's ranking. The PA of 4.1 is accounted for in the methodology after all. PA is 25 percent. But WashU shines in the areas of Selectivity (15 percent of the total) mostly due to the high test scores and high percentage of top-10 students; in Faculty Resources (20 percent of total) and in Financial Resources (10 percent of total).</p>
<p>So WashU is lower than it's rival NW in PA (4.1 compared to 4.3), but higher in Selectivity Rank ( 6th for WU and 19th for NW in the '08 figures since I don't have '09 yet) and higher in Financial Resources (4th in rank compared to 12th for NW) and they were tied for 7th in Faculty Resources.</p>
<p>According to the article that Phead linked, WU was helped in the rankings in the late 90s when a huge fund-raising effort created a $175 million endowment that they put toward scholarships to attract top students. Thus, test scores and Selectivity ranking rose significantly. WU was also helped when its Faculty Resources rank rose from 30th to 9th between 1996 and 1997, the year USNWR adjusted its calculation of faculty salaries to account for cost of living differences.</p>
<p>I suppose someone could use that fact to claim that WashU manipulates its data by being located in St. Louis, which costs less to live in than Chicagoland or the NE. Go for it.
jazzymom is offline
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Ultimately, I consider Northwestern and Wash U to be peer schools. They have different strengths, but they are undoubtedly top 15 schools none the less.
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<p>While obviously I think NU is pretty special, I consider them peer schools too, I think both of them easily deserve being top 15, and I think once you've reached that level, there's no point in worrying about over vs underrated, since they're all top notch. I sure don't feel any inadequacy over going to "only" #12; why would I? How fragile would someone's ego have to be to get all worked up that their school wasn't even higher than that?</p>
<p>Bescraze,</p>
<p>There's a function called "search" and it's obvious I got my info from their decision threads. There are a lot of things you've never heard of and I suggest you to start researching instead of just relying on other people to feed you. ;)</p>
<p>Hey Pizzagirl,</p>
<p>I think they are peers too (and so is Brown). </p>
<p>That said, I think WashU needs to be more transparent and honest about their admission practice/numbers. It's obvious to me they didn't waitlist just 1000 students (there are already over 100 waitlists just off those 6 high schools alone in my links); the number is probably more like 10,000 or even more. They shouldn't lie about that number.</p>
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....mountains of anecdotal evidence....decision threads....
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<p>Data culled from anonymous postings on chat forums do not constitute "evidence" by any stretch of the imagination. Please, get a grip. The "everybody knows" assumptions and suppositions and the "it's obvious (because we say so)" invective that gets slung at Washu in the CC community does not, in fact, represent truth. </p>
<p>I find it hard to believe that Washu is the only top college that would contact waitlisted students to gauge their interest --- or accept phone calls from guidance counselors and headmasters and such who are expressing that interest and desire on the part of the student --- in order to make the offer of admission to the students most likely to say yes. </p>
<p>I'd venture to guess that even NU <a href="sorry%20about%20NW,%20pizzagirl">i</a> * admissions' officers try to have some inkling of the level of interest in waitlisted students rather than blinding running down a list and taking the next in line.</p>
<p>Whether Washu's waitlist is in line with NU's nearly 3,000 or whether it's much more than that doesn't have an impact on where Washu falls in the influential USNWR ranking. Other factors are what places Washu at #12, a function of total points garnered and the weight given to each factor. </p>
<p>Washu offers an excellent undergraduate education, on par with rivals NU, Cornell, and Brown. I would agree that Brown, Cornell, and NU have more graduate level programs that are higher ranked than WU, but the USNWR ranking that draws all the vitriol is one that tries to rank UG education and by the measures used, WashU is ranked right where it ought to be. </p>
<p>And I think it's wrong to use speculation about something that doesn't have any significant impact to make it appear that Washu has cheated its way into a high ranking. I like to cite another study that places WashU in the top 10 of American research universities on the basis of NINE different measures --- none of them, repeat none of them --- being the college's admission rate. See page 14 of 236.</p>
<p><a href="http://mup.asu.edu/research2007.pdf%5B/url%5D">http://mup.asu.edu/research2007.pdf</a></p>
<p>Would you guys say CMU is underrated?</p>
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There's a function called "search" and it's obvious I got my info from their decision threads. There are a lot of things you've never heard of and I suggest you to start researching instead of just relying on other people to feed you.
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Sam Lee, I fail to see where I was "fed information" or failed to use the search button. I would suggest though that in the future when you submit information that you call "fact", you realize that is all anecdotal. I think jazzymom pretty well summed up the falsity of your posts and information. Don't be bitter for being proved wrong, it happens in debates. My advice is for the future to try and get your facts right. O and if you fail to comprehend what that means, it means not from a random thread on the internet that anonymous people posted in.</p>
<p>Does it really matter that much to you guys?</p>
<p>Where does WashU place, say.... in rankings other than USNWR....That I am curious about.</p>
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A great university should engage its students in their society and culture. It should inspire them to change the unjust, to protest the unfair. It should teach them to observe, understand, and participate in the world around them, not only to memorize and regurgitate words on a page or notes in a lecture hall. This is where I see Chicago failing its students. Do you disagree? If so, I ask you: how much of that famed workload could be called "busy work"? How many papers do you actually need to write about one book before you've learned all there is to learn about it and your critical thinking skills have reached their potential?
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<p>I think you're misunderstanding a very important part of the curriculum at Chicago. It's true that we spend a lot of time studying, and we take a very theoretical approach to many subjects, but we don't just regurgitate information from textbooks. I've spent two years at the University, and I don't believe I've done any busy work at all. I've learned so many beautiful and profound things in college, and I've spent a lot of time studying difficult texts that I still only understand at a very basic level. The expectations are very high at Chicago because the faculty want you to think critically, not just memorize information.</p>
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I think Chicago benefits from its exponentially famous physics and economics programs, both of which have seen some decline from their respective heydays.
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<p>One of our economics professors just won the Nobel Prize last year. It's hard to argue that any of our departments are declining.</p>
<p>uhHHHHHHHHH..............</p>
<p>thanks for hijacking the topic, everyone. </p>
<p>another thread successfully converted into a pointless and endless argument about UC and WUStL's merits.</p>
<p>jazzymom,</p>
<p>I wouldn't call data for six high schools powered by navariance.com in post #76 as "data culled from anonymous postings on chat forums". </p>
<p>NU's "nearly 3000 waitlists" last year was by far the largest in school history and it's nothing representative. The year before, NU had only 1,500 waitlists and the year before that, 1,100. There were still 16,000 rejects and this number is more than 5 times the number of waitlists. But for WashU, waitlists were far more than rejects, based on data for those six HS. That's why WashU data are so stunning and unique. It's only natural that people are speculating the reason why.</p>
<p>That said, I don't think WashU is overrated. Admission practice and quality of education are two separate things.</p>
<p>OR:</p>
<p>WU - Does this need explanation?
NYU - FA is a joke, Stern/Tisch are really only good part</p>
<p>UR - </p>
<p>Brown - Does this need explanation. It is certainly not worse than Cornell.
Stanford - This should be #1 <em>bias</em>. Really, though, it is better than Yale.</p>
<p>Sam, the problem with your rationale is that it differs from how the rankings are implemented. You say that admissions practices and educational quality are separate. While this is true, in USNWR, they are not. Their admissions practices contribute to an increase in their ranking. They are clearly doing what they do to increase their rankings, which means they are not as good as their ranking indicates.</p>
<p>"Would you guys say CMU is underrated?"</p>
<p>No. What school above it do you think doesn't deserve to be there?</p>
<p>I think part of this is that everyone wants to see their pet school be in the top 10 ... But not everyone can be in the top 10 or top 20! Something's not "underrated" if there are already legitimate placeholders in line. CMU is a very fine school and I'd be proud to have my kids go there (if they were so inclined). But I can't find anything above it that I think doesn't belong there (going by USNWR for the sake of argument).</p>
<p>Bescraze,</p>
<p>I have been on this site for approximately two years now and have had people write me via personal posts quite often. Along with these posts there have been two people (parents) who have written me on many topics to tell me about how their son/daughter were offered "last-minute" spots at WUSL, and how they were called via phone and given "two days to decide whether to accept or not". </p>
<p>One of these took the spot offered (and turned down their planned attendance at the University of Rochester), and the other one didn't (and decided to attend Emory University, where they had already sent in their acceptance slip). Since both of these parents had written to me back and forth at least 5 times prior to telling me of the unexpected WUSL offer, I highly doubt any kind of planned WUSL bashing is taking place--so excuse me if I find your "excuse" for not believing in this practice--especially given the strong evidence to the contrary, including the multiple scattergrams already produced. </p>
<p>P.S. If it really important to you, I'll be glad to write both of these parents and see if they would be willing to post here directly themselves on their children's experience in this regard. Also, I don't care about whether WUSL is overrated or underrated--I just wish to substantiate what seems to be a well-known WUSL practice.</p>
<p>Harvard, Yale, and Princeton are overrated in the sense of the huge perceived chasm between them and whatever schools come in the 4th-10th spots.</p>
<p>Georgetown is underrated, period.</p>
<p>Everything else is either fine or misplaced but irrelevant to yours truly.</p>
<p>"Harvard, Yale, and Princeton are overrated in the sense of the huge perceived chasm between them and whatever schools come in the 4th-10th spots."</p>
<p>Yes! Absolutely. This veneration of HYP is odd. They aren't the Holy Trinity.</p>
<p>"Georgetown is underrated, period."</p>
<p>Also agreed! That's the only one on the USNWR list that I feel strongly is misplaced.</p>
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I endeavor you to name a single department, save medicine and its accoutrements, in which Wash U is discernably superior to Northwestern.</p>