<p>Wash U went too far by rejecting a student who receives Stanford early notification. Has Wash U become that much better than Stanford?</p>
<p>well at least we know there's still hope left for the rest of us who were also waitlisted by WashU.</p>
<p>well, I know someone who received a likely from Yale and got waitlisted. Another got into Harvard Early Action also waitlisted at WashU.</p>
<p>I'm not too surprised... it doesn't really mean that WashU became better than Stanford all of a sudden. To some extent, WashU admits students who will choose WashU instead of... well, other schools. A yield protection strategy. It does make many people mad, but also kinda smart. </p>
<p>Taken out of an interesting article... </p>
<p>"Why do we accept this shameless whoring to the college ranking system? In addition to crushing the self-esteem and toying with the emotions of countless high-school seniors for yet another month (but not that this is important), many of the first students to be waitlisted are the ones that are deemed "overqualified." If you get rejected or waitlisted in spite of being a valedictorian with a 1600 SAT score, a 4.0 unweighted grade point average, and a summer job training guide dogs for blind Southeast Asian monks, you can bet that's the reason why. WU assumes they won't be your first choice, and they don't want to take the chance of accepting you, losing you to Princeton, and dropping that 0.5%."</p>
<p>who wrote that article? it wasn't someone at the WashU admissions office, was it?</p>
<p>Is that how Wash U gets its rank up? Interesting!</p>
<p>apples- obviously not from the admissions office. I think it's a student-opinion article in an independent newspaper from Wustl.</p>
<p>I'm starting to hear some people call it WaitlistU</p>
<p>oh, thanks... it's interesting</p>
<p>that's the entire article i guess. </p>
<p>Posted by phil in another thread.</p>
<p>Also note the date--the article is 4 years old....it was written in 2003...Things have changed since then.</p>
<p>Yeah i did notice it. Just thought it was interesting to read. that's all.</p>
<p>This puts the WU Office of Undergraduate Admissions into quite the frenzy. They want WU to be picked first as badly as the kid with asthma wants for just once to be on the dodgeball A-team. If our yield doesn't improve 3%, we won't make number eleven in the U.S. News and World Report college rankings! What is the solution? The waitlist.</p>
<p>If WU waitlists a large number of students, they can then accept students off the waitlist who are likely to enroll because they elected to stay on the waitlist. Whew. See how it works? Some colleges have taken this to the extreme, such as Carnegie Mellon University, which has proposed requiring waitlisted students who choose to stay on the waitlist to sign a binding agreement that they will attend CMU if admitted.</p>
<p>You guys need a few more years to see reality. If there is one school that through the years has taken questionble candidates and rejected "over qualified ones" look no farther than Stanford. In the district I have taught in we could often list the top candidates and then turn it upside down to determine who wouild get in. Also the legacy and sports admissions into HYP will make anything that WashU does seem pretty honorable. Hopefully as time goes by you will realize that if you had the apps in front of you and had to make the decision the number of upset folks would not change. You might also stop believing rankings that indicate that a school like Wash U is somehow inferior to HYPS and a "safety". Pehaps the "It's okay to get rejected from HYPs but not Washu "will start to fade.</p>
<p>When I look at the students stats, Wash U has not exceeded Stanford yet. oldolddad, you are saying, Wash U does have higher qualification requirments?</p>
<p>I am saying that looking at a few stats does not tell the story as I have trouble evaluating even the HYPS admit/non admit by stats only. I think the Wash U admit stats are not far off and the difference between them and HYPS is not as great as folks think. The admission game has continued to become more chaotic as numbers increase and school have gone to EA etc. Also the top schools all try to "build" a diverse class. I think if we were privy to the actual process at each place we might better understand the selections and the constraints(but maybe not). I have seen folks rejected and/ or accepted all over the place and often what happens at one schoool is not related to the other. We would like it to be predictable and consistant but is not so(well maybe for a few kids). 23000 apps at these schools--is a lot. I have been looking at this from a teacher perspective for about 12 years. I do not see what Wash U is doing as anything but consistant with what I see at HYPS and other tops schools. For many kids you just scratch your head and go "Huh.. why?" But we are on the outside looking in and we have an incomplete data set. I am glad I am not on the admissions committee.</p>
<p>oldolddadd,</p>
<p>Stanford having Tufts Syndrome? Are you kidding me? That's really NEW to me. You are talking about a school splits evenly with Yale in cross-admit battle and is truly world-renowned. Oh yea, you said you were a teacher and hence your story must be credible???</p>
<p>
[quote]
I have been looking at this from a teacher perspective for about 12 years. I do not see what Wash U is doing as anything but consistant with what I see at HYPS and other tops schools.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>You must have forgotten the waitlist...</p>
<p>No sam,I said the rejects from schools like Stanford often have better stats than those who get in. I did not leave Wash U to go to another school so obviuosly I am not as objective as you. The data over 12 years from my district is pretty meaningless. Oddly enough though all the top stats kids who ever applied from my schoolgot into Wash U. Of course that sample is as meaningful as the sample on CC. Who knows.</p>
<p>Actually as another poster opined the wait list is up to the student. It is offered if they want to take it. Maybe not a bad approach. Different does not mean wrong or bad. And we still do not know how big the list really is or why they have one at all.</p>
<p>I didn't say it's wrong or bad either. But it's surely not "consistent" with most other schools. It's not a bad approach at all. It's a very smart one.</p>