<p>Wash U gets a pretty bad rap on CC. College admissions is a very competitive process and I really don’t see why any school should be marked down for competing hard. My personal view is that a large part of the backlash is the fear that some school from outside of the Educational Establishment is playing the game a little too well. </p>
<p>Over the last two decades, Wash U has very smartly improved its student profile and the quality of its undergraduate offering and its financial position. Wash U now has vaulted over many of the traditional powers in areas like student selectivity (Wash U is now ranked 6th), Faculty Resources (Wash U is ranked 6th), and Financial Resources (Wash U is now ranked 4th). But for the poor Peer Assessment score (Wash U is ranked 23rd) the school would be ranked even higher than its current USNWR ranking of 12th.</p>
<p>But if WashU and Penn avoid accepting applicants that are not in the top 10% of their class to improve their own ranking, are they not inadvertently making their selves more selective? ;)</p>
<p>the biggest issue i have with washu, and why it gets a bad rap, is that it selectively waitlists students that it would in fact like to have in order to guage their interest (since it falls so far down on the revealed preference list).</p>
<p>in this way it bolsters its admissions statistics and class profile artificially higher than what its status as an institution would otherwise warrant and... (here is the real issue)... at the expense of students.</p>
<p>it's not really fair for students to have to spend months in limbo on a waitlist, not knowing where they are going, not because the school is unsure of enrollment numbers, or would like to have them and simply is uncertain if they have room, but because they are self-servingly trying to boost their ranking.</p>
<p>I completely agree with that.</p>
<p>elsijfdl,
I can see how that leads to a lower acceptance rate, but that is worth only 1.5% of the survey ranking. Not a huge deal. </p>
<p>As for the waitlist management and yield issues, I don't feel that I know enough about this other the (copious) anecdotes that I have read and heard about. Perhaps their methods are a bit disingenous and turn some people off. But their students seem to love the place, they are generally bright as heck, they are certainly intellectually competitive with virtually any college in the country and the school does put its money down to support undergraduates. </p>
<p>Do they have historical prestige? Not compared to those in the Educational Establishment, but if their student strategy works, then it won't matter as their students and alumni will be just fine and all of the sniping that they get will be seen by the outside world as unjustified partisan comment. Competing with the Ivies on their terms is a losing game and Wash U is trying to change the game. I admire their institutional intelligence and the students that they have enrolled.</p>
<p>I also completely agree with hawkette. :) Such good posts.</p>