<p>If you want to understand your waitlist data on Naviance (or any other data you might be able to find), you must understand how many students asked to be put on the waitlist and how many students pursued the waitlist (showing the commitment to want to go to Wash U if accepted). Without this, you do not have reliable data to compare Wash U to any other University.</p>
<p>ST2, I never admitted that was a fact, did I?! All I said was some applicants (who posted on a thread here), were disappointed with their FA/scholarship offers. In the future, you might want to distinguish an anecdote from a factual exclamation. </p>
<p>I will admit I do not know too much about Wash U’s Financial Aid program, but just because a college “increases the amount of financial and merit aid” does not mean that there aid is yet comparable/better than aid offered by similarly ranked schools. Every college loves claiming that they increased funding for FA and merit aid. For all we know, they might have added just a couple thousand more into the pot.</p>
<p>curiousgeorge58:</p>
<p>To clarify, those 60 applicants accepted a spot on the waitlist; my school only tracks (internally) those who choose to remain on the waitlist. The actual number of waitlistees (is that a word?) was close to two hundred.</p>
<p>This will be a very strange and unpredictable year for WL at most schools. Given the economy, the best anyone can do is take a semi educated guess - based on past statistics - which may or may not have any value. So as they say in statistics - that is a definite maybe. That being said, I would look for WashU to accept between 50 to 100 students from the WL this year. But as previously stated, this is an almost impossible year for predictions based on past performance. On top of everything else, you have to consider summer melt. As more WL get used, how much should a school adjust for summer melt? Again a very interesting unknown that needs to be factored into this already confusing year. In past years, a school could relax a bit after May 1 - don’t know if that will be the case this year.</p>
<p>@waitn184 - You are right, it was anecdotal. So let’s look at the top 20 in USNWR rankings and see about merit aid. I hate using rankings for selecting a school, but here they are useful.</p>
<h1>1 Harvard - no merit aid</h1>
<h1>2 Princeton - no merit aid</h1>
<h1>3 Yale - no merit aid</h1>
<h1>4-5 MIT - no merit aid</h1>
<h1>4-5 Stanford - no merit aid</h1>
<h1>6-7 Cal Tech - no merit aid; just discontinued merit based aid this year</h1>
<h1>6-7 Penn - no merit aid</h1>
<h1>8-10 Columbia - no merit aid</h1>
<h1>8-10 Duke - no merit aid</h1>
<h1>8-10 Chicago - no merit aid</h1>
<h1>11 Dartmouth - no merit aid</h1>
<h1>12-13 Northwestern - no merit aid</h1>
<h1>12-13 Washington University - numerous merit based scholarships</h1>
<h1>14 - Cornell - no merit aid</h1>
<h1>15 Johns Hopkins - limited merit aid scholarships (20 Hodson Trust @$24K, 2 Westgate’s in engineering @ full tuition, unknown number of Baltimore scholarships @ full tuition, but have to be Baltimore resident and there is a need based component)</h1>
<h1>16 Brown - no merit aid</h1>
<h1>17 Rice - numerous merit based scholarships</h1>
<h1>18-20 Emory - numerous merit scholarships</h1>
<h1>18-20 Notre Dame -no merit aid</h1>
<h1>18-20 Vanderbilt - numerous merit scholarships, about 300. It was not immediately clear if these are all full tuition, partial tuition, or some mix.</h1>
<p>So I think by ANY objective measure, Wash U stacks up very well. They are the highest ranked school to offer merit based scholarships (now that Cal Tech has discontinued theirs) and offers much more than JHU, and about the same as Rice, Emory and Vandy. So I think that pretty much discredits your statement about Wash U lacking in scholarships compared to peer institutions.</p>
<p>And since this gives me a chance to do a short OP-ED, I will rail against Duke, Northwestern and Notre Dame. I think it is shameful for a university to give full rides for being good at a sport (a form of merit), and yet not give at least an equal number to students that excel at academics. Remind me again why these institutions exist? At least Harvard et. al. are consistent in that they don’t give aid for either kind of merit, and Vandy and Rice are consistent in that they give both. I think it is a travesty of a policy that Duke, NU, and ND have.</p>
<p>Is it ture that waitlist in WUSTL means rejected? Can we trust the data on Naviance?</p>
<p>^^^ No, for reasons I stated above you cannot. Are the odds great? No, but they do usually accept some off the waitlist so by definition it cannot mean totally rejected. As ST2 and others have said, this year is a bit of a black hole mystery because no one knows what effect the economy will have on a student’s (and parents’) choice.</p>
<p>@ fallenchemist, Just for future reference, Duke directly offers scholarships through it’s AB program ([A.B</a>. Duke | Memorial Scholarship Program](<a href=“http://www.abduke.org/]A.B”>http://www.abduke.org/)) and via the Robertson foundation in the form of the Robertson Scholars program ([Robertson</a> Scholars: Homepage](<a href=“http://www.robertsonscholars.org/]Robertson”>http://www.robertsonscholars.org/)). Given, the number of students in those programs is probably dwarfed by the number of athletic scholarships that they offer, but I think that it’s worth noting.</p>
<p>Chicago also offers merit aid, BTW, which would make it the highest ranked school to offer merit aid. It offers quite a lot, actually- I think that it’s around 100 partial scholarships and 30 full scholarships.</p>
<p>[University</a> of Chicago College Admissions | Merit Scholarships](<a href=“http://collegeadmissions.uchicago.edu/costs/scholarships.shtml]University”>http://collegeadmissions.uchicago.edu/costs/scholarships.shtml)</p>
<p>tumbletiger009 - Very good and valid point. In regard to WashU, I would just like to point out that approximately 7 - 8 percent of the WashU entering freshman class is usually awarded a merit scholarship of some kind. That number is among the highest percentages of merit awards for entring freshmen for schools of equivilent academic rigor.</p>
<p>tumbletiger and infinity - I stand corrected. I obviously erred in my searches on those two schools, and I appreciate your pointing that out. I would be curious to know how many scholarships that represents at Duke, and how many are full and how many are partial. So Chicago is more limited in merit scholarships than Wash U, Vandy, Rice and Emory, but it is certainly not zero. Nonetheless, I think it still leaves my conclusion unscathed, LOL. Wash U stacks up very well in merit scholarships.</p>
<p>So the corrected table reads:</p>
<h1>1 Harvard - no merit aid</h1>
<h1>2 Princeton - no merit aid</h1>
<h1>3 Yale - no merit aid</h1>
<h1>4-5 MIT - no merit aid</h1>
<h1>4-5 Stanford - no merit aid</h1>
<h1>6-7 Cal Tech - no merit aid; just discontinued merit based aid this year</h1>
<h1>6-7 Penn - no merit aid</h1>
<h1>8-10 Columbia - no merit aid</h1>
<h1>8-10 Duke - some merit scholarships via A.B. Duke Memorial Scholarships and Robertson Scholarships, unknown how many</h1>
<h1>8-10 Chicago - 30 full tuition scholarships, 100 1/3 tuition scholarships</h1>
<h1>11 Dartmouth - no merit aid</h1>
<h1>12-13 Northwestern - no merit aid</h1>
<h1>12-13 Washington University - numerous merit based scholarships</h1>
<h1>14 - Cornell - no merit aid</h1>
<h1>15 Johns Hopkins - limited merit aid scholarships (20 Hodson Trust @$24K, 2 Westgate’s in engineering @ full tuition, unknown number of Baltimore scholarships @ full tuition, but have to be Baltimore resident and there is a need based component)</h1>
<h1>16 Brown - no merit aid</h1>
<h1>17 Rice - numerous merit based scholarships</h1>
<h1>18-20 Emory - numerous merit scholarships</h1>
<h1>18-20 Notre Dame -no merit aid</h1>
<h1>18-20 Vanderbilt - numerous merit scholarships, about 300. It was not immediately clear if these are all full tuition, partial tuition, or some mix.</h1>
<p>I figured it was worth correcting since this subject comes up a lot.</p>
<p>Fallenchemist: We are in same position. D got accepted to many prestigious schools (wash u, emory, carnegie mellon etc.) but none of them are giving substantial financial assistance. While we are “middle class”, H’s job is very insecure, and frankly we don’t have 40k+ in disposible income/year. As a result she is very likely going to a very good oos state school that offered a full ride. Honestly, we are a little disappointed she won’t have the experience of going to a private, very challenging school BUT college is what you make of it and there will be bright students/good professors no matter where she ends up.</p>
<p>lisa - totally true, I think. Probably she will be in some kind of Honors program or Honors college at the OOS school? My D was very close to picking one of those as well, but then took the full tuition offer from Tulane. But it was a closer decision than you might have thought. Clearly being around as bright a peer group as possible is very vaulable, but it is not of infinite value, and we can only do what we can do.</p>