<p>thehotrocks</p>
<p>It sounds like you pay attention to rankings--I mean you are putting down WUSTL.</p>
<p>Right....for a guy who says to ignore rankings of top 25 colleges, he sure does like to use them.</p>
<p>I am putting down WUSTL for its unnecessary practices in increasing its own rankings. I obviously must refer to the rankings in order to discredit their importance.</p>
<p>the hotrocks - You are addressing intelligent, imaginative students. I find your use of "kiddies" unnecessarily condescending.</p>
<p>Right. Maintain only acceptable levels of condescension at all times.</p>
<p>Concerning Wash U's 30% yield---More students would opt to go to Wash U if they could afford to. I know of several students who had to turn Wash U down because of cost. These particular students really wanted to go to WU, but Mom and Dad said no---b/c of $$$$</p>
<p>Miss Molly is right. Currently Wash U is one of the most expensive schools in the world to attend. And the reason for this is quite simple: Wash U is a research institution. It is most well know for its graduate Medical Program which is currently making leaps and bounds of new findings every day in its enourmous facilities. If you do not believe me, feel free to check their website. Anyway, this extremely high price of education arises from many reasons: If you go into the numerous and lengthy financial statements of the top universities (which the average student in high school would never even consider a factor in the college decision), one will find that Wash U pays their professors well more than any other of the top 10 Universities (also the head of Wash U is the highest paid employee at any university...EVER). This has been extremely important in the past years for the fact that these higher salaries have attracted the top professors and thinkers from the other top schools. Wouldn't you want to be taught by the top professionals in the field? Afterall that is what college and the education that goes along with it is all about...getting the best education. Quite simply, that is what Wash U is doing. Furthermore, although Wash U may only be in the top 10 for largest endowments, if you got out a calculator and divided it by the the total number of undergrad & graduate students at the school, you would find that Wash U actually boasts the most endowment per student out of any school in the world...yes, more than Harvard (Harvard has a lot of students in graduate programs). So, yes Wash U has a large cost associated with it, but another thing to point out is the fact that Wash U is the top school in the country that actually gives out academic scholarships. No other school ranked above does so...they may give athletic ones or financial aid, but no academic grants at all. Therefore, in recent years, Wash U has been effectively stealing the best students who got accepted to Harvard and Yale, etc. through the use of very large scholarship money. Therefore with an influx of brighter students of campus, Wash U is able to become more intellectual and therefore more desirable by the academic community. There is nothing wrong with Wash U essentially paying the smartest students to go to their school. If the student so makes the decision to attend Wash U over Harvard, simple economics states that the utility achieved by attending Wash U must be greater than that utility produced by attending Harvard. Therefore from a utilitarian point of view, Wash U is a better school. Alright, I know many of you will disagree that Wash U is a better school than Harvard...and actually I would agree with you, but this is just from one point of view of the economics of utility. Overall, the point that I am trying to make is that Wash U, although recieving intense criticism on this message board, is doing something right to attract not only top students and professors, but also top investors though its research facilities. Honestly, where Wash U stands right now in the US News rankings is quite fair. Many of you may disagree, but also you must consider the fact that the majority of hits on this message board are from the northeast, california, or texas...all of which have their own spectacular schools to boast about. Obviously each group from these demographics will be more partial to their home univerisities just by the nature of human preferences and what is familiar. One the other hand, there are very few relative number of hits from the midwest area where #1 there are less people, and #2 there are not a large number of good schools. This effectively causes less people on this site to naturally support the midwestern schools. However if one looks at all the schools in the midwest that are good options, one may only have Wash U, Northwestern, U Chicago, Notre Dame, and few others. Honestly, for people who grow up in the midwest, these schools seem just as appealing as the big names on the coasts. I think that deserves quite a lot of respect. In conclusion, we should also give respect to the people who created the US New rankings. Obviously they were paid large amounts of money to research all these institutions and naturally these people were no random homeless people off the streets. They worked hard to perform their job to the best of their abilities. By saying that these rankings are somehow "wrong," "incorrect," "unjust," "infair," or anything of the sort is to insult these people, their intelligence, and their ability to perform their job. They ranked Wash U, as well as all the other schools the way they did, and I am sure they had good reasons to do so. We should give them respect for what they do. Additionally, we should give respect to Wash U for the institution that it is as well as the institution that it is aiming to be. There is nothing wrong with that.</p>
<p>^close the thread now, that is the best post i have ever seen on this site</p>
<p>Lazboards post is right on the money. I would add two things. First, if there is any "bias" in the US News Rankings, it is the "Ivy League" bias. Probbaly 75% of the prestige allure associated with the "Ivy League" comes from three of the eight schools-Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. That's not to say that Cornell, Columbia, and Penn are not top echelon schools, but, really, when you objectively compare Wash U to Brown or Dartmouth, for example, it is easy to see why Wash U might rank higher on the factors used by US News, such as endowment size, faculty resources, faculty salaries, not to metion selectivity, which is the factor that drives the Wash U criticism on this thread because of the perception that Wash U drives up its applicants through glitsy marketing (if true, probably only by 15%) and plays a yield game with its top applicants (if true, so don't at least half the schools in the top 20, if not all). If there was no Ivy league halo effect, by all objective standards, Wash U would be in an "Ivy academic league" with the current Ivies, as would Stanford, Northwestern, Chicago, Hopkins, Vanderbilt and Duke. Stated another way if the Ivy League wanted to expand its conference for non-athletic reasons tomorrow, these schools would be the obvious choices.
Second, doesn't everyone realize that only 1 point separates the majority of the top 20 schools on the US News rankings. Any statistical validation would be at least plus or minus 5 points (5%). Thus it is utterly silly to say that school 11 really is a 15, when it also could really be a 6.</p>
<p>FYI.... Mark Wrighton is not "the highest paid employee at any university...EVER." In fact, he probably wouldn't make the list of top 15 or 20 university chancellors/presidents. You can check this for yourself at <a href="http://charitynavigator.org%5B/url%5D">http://charitynavigator.org</a>. Notice how much more the president of Vanderbilt is paid.</p>
<p>I also question the claim that "Wash U pays their professors well more than any other of the top 10 Universities". Last I checked, Harvard's professors earned the most and I think Stanford's was second.</p>
<p>Just checked and that claim was indeed false:
Average faculty salary rank:
Harvard 129.9
Stanford 125.1
Cal. Tech. 124.5
Pennsylvania 118.5
Princeton 117.8
Northwestern 112.0
M.I.T. 109.9
Columbia 108.6
Chicago 107.3
Duke 106.7
Yale 106.6
Cornell 103.5
Washington U. 102.4
Emory 101.4
U.C. Berkeley 100.4</p>
<p>yeah, I bet HYP do pay their professors more... it's also more expensive to live on the east coast. the reason the chancellor thing bothers me is that people seem to imply that because he's paid so much, the university administration is like an evil coporate juggernaut (or somthing along those lines). this goes along with the whole aggressive marketing thing (a sham argument, in my opinion). frankly, the chancellor is paid a salary comparable to his colleagues at other peer institutions, just as WashU is ranked accordingly, among its peer institutions.</p>
<p>that said, I hope WashU pays its professors the most because I see onthing wrong with that... as noted above, it's a GOOD thing to attract top scholars</p>
<p>i kinda agree in the sense that many people I know have been selected for WashU even though they are not so qualified. a lot of more qualified kids actually get rejected because washu wants to keep that admittance rate low. the mechanism behind their selections is quite odd</p>
<p>Like I said, minus the "kiddies" part:</p>
<p>Most of the schools in the top 25 really offer similar, very high quality of education. Wash U is only overrated in the sense that it manipulates admissions to a high degree in order to bolster its ranking. It really should not have to do this as it is recognized as a superior school. Hell, everyone knows Georgetown is a great school and it's in the twenties and quite happy with that fact.</p>
<p>Most people know that Georgetown is extremely underrated by the US News rankings. It should probably be at least top 15, which it is according to other rankings.</p>
<p>would U like a school :
1) which has a good name and arent trying to improve OR</p>
<p>2) U would like a school which as a good name and still trying to better themselves.....</p>
<p>I think WUSTL falls in the second catogary and hence it gets my vote. I kow of the biggest companes who call up people to avail of their company's Cr.card facilities. Its rediculous to think That this company doesnt have customers !!!</p>
<p>And also if wustl is tryng to market itself(which is wise and sensible) u can be rest assured tht they would also marke themselves amongst recruiters....so who benefits at the end of the day ----the students...we......</p>
<p>U have the dean of admission from biggest schools come to my country just before admission season to speak with the press and in a way market themselves...do u thnk it is bad ??? wht do u expect ...a school shud sit on its heal and not make students aware of their improved policies or standards.....!!! ??? </p>
<p>hence its juvinile to imagine tht if a school markets itself its bad....ad besides if a school tries hard to get up the ranking U can expect quality sudents to apply there and hence can expect a class of talented students provided u get in...hence WUSTL has my votes against those schools who are renound and hence feel less obligated to improve facilities or reach out to quality students</p>
<p>u speak funnee</p>
<p>I am glad tht i could amuse u though I didnt intend to do so. cheers johnnydr87</p>
<p>k12345, the question goes a little more like this...
Would you like a University that:
1. Tries to improve through marketing/ investing in the school.
2. Tries to improve solely its image by manipulating statistics so the university can improve its ranking on USNWR.
... I'm not saying WashU doesn't fall under category #1, but no other school deserves to be in the 2nd category more than WashU. My personal experience: When you visit WashU they essentially pressure you into filling out the Part 1 of their app right then and there, even if you are unsure whether or not you will apply. The catch, whether or not you fill out the entire app, if you fill out the Part 1, you are counted as an applicant (even if you don't apply). Scandal.</p>