<p>I checked my decision ten minutes ago and turns out I got waitlisted.</p>
<p>I have decent ecs (11 years dance, life scout, 8 years piano, 6 years guitar, varsity parliamentary debate, 300~ volunteer hours, job as a tutor, etc.), decent essay and recs, 3.8 gpa uw (4.2 w), 2240 sat, 35 act, and 790 biom/790 ush/760 math2.</p>
<p>I applied to these other schools as well:</p>
<p>UCs
USC
UOP (got in with fairly large merit scholarship)
Cornell
Columbia
Yale
Boston U
Tulane
HMC
and a couple more...</p>
<p>So does this mean I shouldn't have my hopes up for the majority of my list?</p>
<p>WUSTL has a long tradition of waitlisting many students who have stellar stats yet not show enough interests (or any at all). Your stats look pretty good and I think only Yale and Columbia can be reach (they are reach for everyone). All others are either safety or match. If you really care about WUSTL, send them an email about your interests and (if possible) visit the campus. They will help you move off the list. Again, you being waitlisted is not a bad indicator but may even be a good one of being somewhat “overqualified.”</p>
<p>I had 2290 SAT I, 1480/1600 SAT II, 11 A’s in my Olevels and good Alevel predictions. I was accepted to UMich on the 1st of March, and waitlisted by WUSTL yesterday. I thought I did show interest as I was in touch with an admissions counselor (Elise Miller?) as early as July 2012. But I didn’t stay as active as I might’ve been. I submitted my Data Sheet pretty early on as well.</p>
<p>WashU does have tufts syndrome, and you can be over qualified if you are an Ivy League potential and didn’t show interest in WashU, they may think you were using them as a safety-ish school</p>
<p>No, not necessarily. A few great applicants from my HS were waitlisted ,as well as me. I was accepted EA at MIT and Caltech (As well as U of I and UMich).</p>
<p>Your stats look good, so I’d think you would be a competitive applicant at most if not all of those schools. Be confident, and good luck!</p>
<p>For you, no, I wouldn’t think so. If there was something about your application that was questionable that you thought your schools would overlook, then maybe, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.</p>
<p>On another note… “tufts syndrome” doesn’t exist. No one gets waitlisted for being overqualified, or at least it’s not that simple. How can one even be overqualified for Wash-U? As SoCalDad2 points out, their 75th percentiles for test scores are basically perfect scores.</p>
<p>Now, they do recognize that they’re a backup for many Ivy applicants, and if a student with killer grades/test scores/ECs has a questionable essay and shows no interest, they could be headed to the waitlist. But, that’s not being waitlisted for being overqualified. That’s being waitlisted for not seeming to care about acceptance.</p>
<p>Wash U. received 30,000 applicants, and they had about 30 days (excluding weekends) to review them. I think that comes down to 1,000 applicants a day. They screen applicants twice as fast as does other schools.</p>
<p>I don’t know if this means anything, but I don’t think they could do a very good job of picking out which applicants are truly strong…</p>
<p>Harvard tries to pick out which applicants are truly strong. WUSTL doesn’t. WUSTL needs to pick out the applicants that are “truly strong” AND will attend, which is a much more difficult task than Harvard’s.</p>
<p>WashU doesn’t require a supplemental essay , so that ‘questionable essay’ would be the Common App essay that would go to all schools. I think it may be partly yield protection for those 2400/4.0 who may have shown no interest but more likely it is trying to create a class from a pool of highly qualified candidates. There is a randomness factor to it, as with all highly selective colleges. Even if that factor is extremely small, it exists.</p>
<p>The only problem with some of the logic here is all the acceptances posted where there was zero interest shown, so that obviously is not the only or most frequent determining factor. I think the point about having so little time to sift through 30K apps in a good one, but even then you are sifting through at least 25K very strong apps.</p>
<p>There is no such thing as “overqualified” for a school like WUSTL. There are the “qualified” and the “underqualified”, but not the “overqualified”. The reason why many “qualified” applicants were rejected or waitlisted is probably mainly due to lack of interest, not WUSTL rejecting “top” applicants, because those students wouldn’t enroll there.</p>
<p>Agree with finalchild. There does seem to be a randomness to the process, with many saying they were accepted after showing no interest, and many highly qualified did show interest and were waitlisted. They obviously can’t accept everyone, but I don’t think it’s as simple as showing interest or not. Looking at Naviance for our HS, the kids with the top test scores over the previous 5 years have all been waitlisted, while those with slightly lower test scores were accepted. It was not my D’s first choice, but in her top 5, and she hasn’t heard from many of those yet. She visited, had a great interview, and applied for scholarships. She did not apply to Ivy’s, but did to some highly selective LAC’s.</p>
<p>That is exactly what tufts syndrome is, you are more than qualified to be accepted, but you are rejected cause of no interest since it is your ivy “backup”. I know people who got into HYP but were wait listed at washU. Another proof is that WashU wait lists thousands of applicants because of this. Ivies don’t care about interest.</p>
<p>You guys keep saying that Wash U cares about interest, and maybe they do in some cases, but there are data right here in this forum of many kids getting accepted who showed no interest at all, and in some of those cases with lower stats than kids who did show a lot of interest. I agree that kids cannot be “overqualified,” but don’t simplify in the other direction either.</p>
<p>I’ve gotten accepted into 3 ivies, 2 of which are HYPSM, but was waitlisted at WashU. Keep your hopes up! W/L is not an indicator of other acceptances.</p>