<p>I agree people are more than stats, as others have said, but WashU is not consistent. I was admitted to MIT not for stats, but my essay really helped. I was waitlisted at WashU when kids in my school with less of a resume were accepted. Please don't take this as complaining, for I am happy other kids got in. I would never have gone to WUSTL, while this was a 1st choice school for these students. </p>
<p>However, it is a known fact wustl cares a lot about demonstrated interest. I interviewed, but didn't really do anything else. I don't have a problem with this. The thing I have a problem with is the number of kids they waitlist. For the second year in a row, my school had more waitlisted kids than accepted kids, and essentially nobody got rejected in my school.</p>
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Seeing as US News so longer ranks schools based on yield, why the hell would they want to reject your friend?
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<p>Because it shows up in the "admit rate" which US News does consider. People often forget yield and admit rate are interrelated. From what I gather, WashU's strategy may be this: they mass-mail to get as many people to apply as possible even some of them are clearly underqualify; they reject those they think are likely getting into HYPMS (or Duke) and treating it as safety, 2nd or 3rd choice..etc and admit the "very interested" and bunch of others "maybe"; they also use merit-based scholarships to try to lure the very top applicants away from HYPMS; the idea is to get the yield as high as possible and aggressively keep the admit rate low. To counter the risk of underenrolling, WashU sets up a long waitlist. Most schools have much shorter waitlist because their estimates are more middle of the road instead of being too aggressive. In the event of having too many students declining which can happen when admit rate is dangerously low, the large pool of waitlists gives WashU the insurance it needs and allows it to choose only the ones that do the follow-up and express desire to attend if they get off the waitlist.</p>
<p>I was waitlisted too, and I already informed them that I wanted to remain on the waitlist. If I decide I would rather go somewhere else, but am accepted off the waitlist, am I required to go to Wash U?</p>
<p>Ha, you have awesome numbers achoo, they definitely didnt keep you out. So there are some kids with better scores, that doesnt make them smarter or better people. For every kid with a higher score than you there is probably about 50 kids who wish they had scores like you. chill out. it might have been somehting else like ECs or essays, i dont think youll ever know, but i kno my friend got in with lower stats than you and he showed no interest and probably wont even go to washU.</p>
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Because it shows up in the "admit rate" which US News does consider. People often forget yield and admit rate are interrelated. From what I gather, WashU's strategy may be this: they mass-mail to get as many people to apply as possible even some of them are clearly underqualify; they reject those they think are likely getting into HYPMS (or Duke) and treating it as safety,
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<p>Everyone gets mass mailings from selective colleges. Every college will try to get as many applications as possible. And Wash U cannot a ) predict that an applicant applied to Harvard , Yale or Princeton b) know he would rather go there AND b) know the applicant would get into Harvard, Yale or Princeton.</p>
<p>The strategy would probably backfire -- they'd reject qualified candidates, lower the quality of student body, and go down in the rankings.</p>
<p>WUSTL sends out more mail than any other college. They also have a supplement that takes 5 min to fill out. In other words, it is very easy to apply to WUSTL. </p>
<p>WUSTL rejects kids who they believe are using WUSTL as a saftey b/c they want to maintain a higher yield. The rankings have very little to do with the quality of the student body, and much to do with acceptance, retention, and yield rates. </p>
<p>For example, a kid who will attend WUSTL with a 2000 is much better than an acceptee with a 2300 who will not attend WUSTL.</p>
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Wash U cannot a ) predict that an applicant applied to Harvard , Yale or Princeton b) know he would rather go there AND b) know the applicant would get into Harvard, Yale or Princeton.
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<p>I think everyone here knows every selective college does mass-mailing. I was talking about the the degree and extent. You mean you never heard of Tufts Syndrome? When I see an applicant with great stats and ECs (Harvard caliber), I don't need him/her to write it out to think he/she must be applying to at least one of the the HYPMS. Anyway, isn't that there's a space somewhere in your application to list other schools you apply? They cannot do those with 100% certainty but that doesn't mean they can't make prediction. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yield_protection%5B/url%5D">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yield_protection</a></p>
<p>I've always heard you shouldn't tell where else you are applying. I think the application forms I've seen have all said answering is optional. Indeed, in interviews, my daughter simply smiled, declined to answer, and the interviewer moved on. I don't think they can insist on an answer.</p>
<p>I don't know of other forms or ways colleges might find out.</p>
<p>I knew a man who wrote on Wikipedia that Martin Luther King was a homosexual. It took them two weeks to fix it.</p>
<p>And if you can spot more than 40 or 50 "likely" Harvard admits in any pool of applications, you must be god. There is no other way to predict with that kind of certainty.</p>
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And if you can spot more than 40 or 50 "likely" Harvard admits in any pool of applications, you must be god. There is no other way to predict with that kind of certainty.
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<p>"Likely" by definition implies less than 100% uncertainty. The admission officers won't lose his/her house or get his/her head chopped off if he/she guess it wrong. LOL! Yes, you can spot quite a few "likely". My friend taught a SAT school and one of the girls in his class got 2400 on SAT. He said few months ago he would be surprised if she got rejected by Harvard. The girl did get in. Just because you think you can't doesn't mean others can't.</p>
<p>By the way, it's probably more appropriate to discredit Wikipedia using facts. Wikipedia isn't all accurate but, as far as I know, it's not as trashy as you try to portray.</p>
<p>Wikipedia was actually judged as accurate as Britannica, with a 6% error rate (or something like that), in humanities I believed according to some article</p>
<p>And of course immature stuff like MLK Jr being gay is going to show up from time to time, it was probably some teen who thought it would be a great joke</p>
<p>Actually, if I am not mistaken, anything published on wikipedia is proofread and verified beforehand. That's why I doubt silly joke like that would ever be on that site.</p>
<p>You're mistaken. It's happened a few times before. It's getting harder to do that now, though. There's a system where you gain credit by posting credible encyclopedia articles, and the more credit you have, the more likely your article will be the one used...... It gets quite complex, from what I hear....with people voting on which encycopedia interpretations to use, etc.</p>
<p>Well I remember a high school student in one of my classes putting a picture of another classmate under Adolf Hitler's article and editing Hitler's thing so that it said something like "his real name was [insert name of teased classmate]".. so it is possible, but as johnnydr said they are probably cracking down</p>