<p>I've been posting for a little while now, and there seems to be a negative attitude towards WUSTL. I have just recently started looking into it as a possible school to apply to, but the way WUSTL receives little attention on here, you'd never guess it was ranked #11 in the nation by US News. So what I'd like to know is, why is WUSTL so highly regarded by many and yet not very well known. I understand the people that have done their research are aware of WUSTL and its strength, but for a school ranked so highly, I would expect to see more people clamoring to get in.</p>
<p>P.S. This will have little or no effect on whether I apply or not...in fact, I am quite positive I will apply for transfer b/c I like the school and it has a generous acceptance rate. I'm just wondering why the names of schools above and below WUSTL are drilled into people's heads on these boards, and very little is said about this fine school.</p>
<p>WUSTL has maded huge leaps in the rankings in the past few decades. (It's #3 by Princeton Review, where it was not even talked about a decade ago) Some of the schools below it and those ranked above it have been top ten schools for over a century, and have the "ivy league" brand name to them. Because of this, people are more familiar with these schools and apply to them because they are more well known by the general public. WUSTL uses mass mailing, so that they can become more well known by the public. I was one of the people who had never heard of it until I started to get all those brochures in the mail.
I personally believe that in the next decade or so, WUSTL will become as famous as the rest of the top schools through there aggressive marketing campaign and excellence.</p>
<p>The negative attitude by CC'ers is that they believe that WUSTL manipulates the rankings by waitlisting too many people and then accepting them later to boost WUSTL's stats. While this may have occured in prior years, the fact that no one was taken off the waitlist this year and the school was overenrolled by 100 people proves that this is not the case.</p>
<p>There was a statistic somewhere else that showed the difference in acceptance rate at Wash U ten years ago vs. today. I think there was a 40% difference in acceptance rate (~60-->20).</p>
<p>It's still a relative newcomer on the scene, so it doesn't quite have the respect of its peers.</p>
<p>Also, it's in St. Louis---not the northeast, the west coast, or one of the US's world class cities (just one of its major cities).</p>
<p>I'm not sure where you found that it was ranked #3 on princeton. Here are the princeton rankings for various areas:</p>
<p>#16 School Runs Like Butter Academics
#11 The Toughest To Get Into Academics
#8 Best Campus Food Quality of Life
#6 Best Quality Of Life Quality of Life
#13 Dorms Like Palaces Quality of Life</p>
<p>I wouldn't take it too seriously. It seems every major college gets into the rankings somehow.</p>
<p>I think that Gandalf meant that WUSTL's med school was #3 in the nation.</p>
<p>The #3 comes from the PR book in their ratings for each school. Academics, Quality of Life, and Selectivity 1-100 for each school. WUSTL suprisingly had the third highest average of these ratings out of all the schools in the book (I think it even had a higher average than Harvard). My dad for some reason decided to do all those averages.</p>
<p>Gandalf really hit the nail on the head. When making my decision and, even more since choosing WashU, I certainly noticed some ill-will. Unfortunately, a great number of CCers have connected WashU to "tufts syndrome" and mass advertising leading them to believe it is overrated. I've actually talked to a few who make this claim (or similar ones) and most have little issue stating that it truly is a great school. Of course, this isn't posted nearly as often. Also, keep in mind that most negative posts along these lines are made entirely on popular assumption, not on actual knowledge of the school. They are to be taken with a grain of salt.</p>
<p>In the next few years I am confident that it will begin to accumulate more national recognition and continue to climb. This year's class certainly isn't breaking momentum as its acceptance rate (speculated to be at 18-19%) is down and its yield has increased (or at least the adcoms were suprised). Most who do their research see that WashU is right where it should be in the rankings and that the next level of recognition will come with time.</p>
<p>thanks for the responses I am really impressed with the school so far.</p>
<p>WUStl is an excellent school, but it is, without doubt, overranked. I think it is discussed appropriately on CC - about as much as schools like UCLA and W&M. Some prospective applicants turn their noses up at the mass-mailing advertising techniques applied by the school, while others are turned off by the anecdotes of overqualified applicants being WL'd or denied.</p>
<p>Care to back up your assertion with some facts, son?</p>
<p>"WUStl is an excellent school, but it is, without doubt, overranked."</p>
<p>Is it the standardized scores that are out of sync with its ranking? No.</p>
<p>The programs? No.</p>
<p>The yield rate? No* </p>
<p>The mass mailings? YES, YES, of course!</p>
<p>*(Wash U was oversubscribed by ~100 people this year. There was no waitlist.)</p>
<p>Washington University is, in no way, shape or form a better university than Cornell, Brown, Rice and <em>especially</em> the University of Chicago. Please. It's not overrated, just overranked.</p>
<p>Thank you for supporting your argument. </p>
<p>Your time has expired.</p>
<p>Ok, let's rank the top 10 non-ivies by peer assessment score:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>(tie) Stanford 4.9 </p></li>
<li><p>(tie) MIT 4.9 </p></li>
<li><p>Berkeley 4.8 </p></li>
<li><p>Cal Tech 4.7 </p></li>
<li><p>(tie) Hopkins 4.6 </p></li>
<li><p>(tie) Chicago 4.6 </p></li>
<li><p>(tie) Duke 4.6 </p></li>
<li><p>Michigan 4.5 </p></li>
<li><p>Northwestern 4.4 </p></li>
<li><p>(tie) UCLA 4.3 </p></li>
<li><p>(tie) Virginia 4.3 </p></li>
</ol>
<p>Where's WUStl? Oh, wait, WUStl has a peer assessment score of 4.1, which puts it tied for 22nd in the nation. What gives? Apparently academes don't regard WUStl as highly as you do. In fact, besides its medical school, what other top graduate programs does Washington University have? </p>
<p>I'm not going to dispute that WUStl is an excellent school, but blatant WUStl trolling is uncalled for.</p>
<p>You're absolutely right, your peer assessment scores single handedly cancels out the standardized scores, yield rate, and endowment.</p>
<p>WUSTL is a relative newcomer in the field of "elite" schools, frankly, so it hasn't had as much time to build up peer assessment. With the students and professors and administration it's actively recruiting (with either more scholarship or more salary), it'll get there. When my brother applied in 96, the acceptance rate was around 55%. When my sister in 2000, it was round 33 percent. This year it's around 20%. That figure should demonstrate how much progress its made in fairly recent years.</p>
<p>Graduate programs? I'm not certain. I haven't paid much attention there. I know it is ranked 11th in undergrad business, 11th in the college of arts and sciences, 2nd in the George Warren Bowen School of Social Work.</p>
<p>
[quote]
I know it is ranked 11th in undergrad business, 11th in the college of arts and sciences, 2nd in the George Warren Bowen School of Social Work. I'm not 100%, but I believe the political science program ( my other major) was ranked in the top 15.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Wow, that's great, 11th in a vocational field not even found at most top schools, 11th for a&s (w-t-f?), 2nd in social work (wow?).</p>
<p>Indeed, WashU is a school on the rise, but so too are many other schools. It without doubt provides an excellent undergraduate education, but you must acknowledge that they are very much playing the rankings game. Spamming, yield protection, large scholarship programs, etc. are all in extensive employ. WUStl is perhaps in the range of William & Mary, the University of Michigan or maybe Vanderbilt, but I repeat - it should not be ranked higher than Chicago, among others. And while WUStl's endowment is impressive, much of that money is likely tied up in the (fantastic) medical school.</p>
<p>Again, you ignore other factors that bring Wash U's prestige similar to that of its nearest competitors.</p>
<p>Also, I just googled this: yield protection was <em>not</em> used as a factor in the US News ranking. (I figured I heard that somewhere.) </p>
<p>What does that mean? The number of "overqualified" candidates who apply and are waitlisted to increase yield.....doesn't play a part in the rankings. Also, a major component of your argument, that Wash U's playing admissions games to boost rankings, was pretty much obliterated. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yield_protection%5B/url%5D">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yield_protection</a></p>
<p>So...it would be logical to assume that emphasis that was formerly placed on "admissions games" is now placed more on what you would consider "important" factors: standardized scores, endowment, academics. And yet it's still ranked 11th? Oh the screaming injustice.</p>
<p>Another point: of course Wash U has a massive mailing program, and of course it has a major scholarship program. If you're a school trying to gain prestige and you don't have the history of prestige that your competitors have, you'll try to find a way to compete. Money talks. That's how they stole the provost from MIT (and now other top schools are trying to lure him after all he's done for WUSTL) and other great professors. That's how they convinced many of the best students to attend (scholarships). That's how they're getting ahead in the rankings: attracting talent.</p>
<p>Your post indicates that you don't even understand what yield protection is.</p>
<p>From wikipedia: "Yield protection is an admissions practice where a university or academic institute rejects or waitlists highly qualified students on the grounds that such students are bound to be accepted by more prestigious universities or programs and thus almost certainly would not enroll, thus increasing the yield rate and lowering the admitted rate."</p>
<p>Where have I gone wrong? Lowering the admittance rate by waitlisting overqualified candidates. Check. Increasing the yield among those admitted because they got rid of those people who weren't on planning on coming anyways.....check.</p>
<p>My statement stands.</p>
<p>I think.</p>
<p>Yes. A deplorable practice that a school of WUStl's supposed stature shouldn't have to resort to.</p>
<p>I understand USNews values certain criteria in its rankings, and that some schools have maximized their scores in each area, but WUStl is very much overranked at #11.</p>
<p>LOL. So I was right about yield protection.</p>
<p>And you ignore the fact that yield protection doesn't play any part in US News rankings.....you just say it's something a school like Wash U "shouldn't have to resort to." In fact, I'd argue that every school does that: rejects very qualified applicants simply because they don't seem like a right fit for the school or they don't show interest. Wash U just "waitlists" them instead of "rejecting" them---pretty much the same thing.</p>
<p>Now that we got that point out of the way, I wouldn't blame Wash U for waitlisting overqualified applicants who don't show interest. Some other guy said it in another thread: why poison the atmosphere of Wash U with kids who don't want to be there? </p>
<p>Obviously, Wash U doesn't reject all very qualified candidates. All you have to do is look at this RD thread: <a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=155183&highlight=official+decision%5B/url%5D">http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=155183&highlight=official+decision</a></p>
<p>One 2400 accepted. Several 2200+ and 2300+ accepted (and waitlisted).</p>
<p>Of course the USNews rankings take yield protection into account - albeit indirectly. Yield protection favorably impacts yield and acceptance rate at the expense of not admitting more desirable applicants. And of course it would be ridiculous to claim that WUStl rejected or waitlisted all highly qualified applicants.</p>