<p>i know a person whose white that was invited to this weekend as well. i fail to see the purpose of such a weekend if you are just inviting people of all colors. if it really is just multicultural weekend with no emphasis on race except that all races are represented, than isn't it just admitted students weekend?</p>
<p>washU put so many people on the waitlist this year because they had a huge problem last year with too many people accepting the offer of admission. they ended up with a freshman class that was nearly 400 people larger than they anticipated. it caused lots of problems with housing (since every freshman lives on campus), and they don't want to have it happen again, so they accepted less and put more on the waitlist, anticipating a higher return.</p>
<p>WUSTL doesn't help their image of manipulating admission statistics when they refuse to publish their common data set numbers. The CDS <a href="http://www.commondataset.org/default.asp%5B/url%5D">http://www.commondataset.org/default.asp</a> is a collaborative initiative that collects admissions data from colleges and "urges" schools to make that data public. Almost all schools do as seen in this CC post <a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=76444&page=4%5B/url%5D">http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=76444&page=4</a> EXCEPT WUSTL. The data includes waitlist numbers from previous years and can be helpful in guestimating the chance you'll be accepted off the waitlist (my D was waitlisted). Why would WUSTL withold their data unless there's something fishy with the numbers?</p>
<p>There is definitely something wrong with that. WashU is one of (if not the) only top colleges that does not release its CDS.</p>
<p>The constant letters really hurt their reputation. I thought it was bad school who was trying to get me until I did the research and found out it is actually an excellant school.</p>
<p>Some serious reality challenged people on here.....does WashU have a major in "neurotic rankings syndrome?"</p>
<p>Anyone with a lick of common sense knows that rankings is a fools game. So why do people care? Because they think that a higher ranking equates to a better job and a higher starting salary. Wrong!</p>
<p>Location of the school has as much to do with that as anything. Local business, whether it is in New York, Chicago, St. Louis, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, Cleveland...you name it....all know their local schools and hire a high percentage of graduates and pay them the market rate for that job. There is no evidence a Harvard degree earns you a higher salary than someone from a lower ranked school, or even unranked school, for the same job in the same location.</p>
<p>Someone can have a fabulous education at a school that is off the radar screen of US News and World Report. They can grab a wonderful job and then go gangbusters. Or they can go bust.</p>
<p>People who define themselves by the parchment they hold are very superficial and self obsessed. That won't get them very far in the business world.</p>
<p>What if they go to work for someone from Iowa State? If you are marching around the office prognosticating about school rankings, I can assure you, you will be the chatter of the secretary pool (not a good thing, I can assure you!), followed shortly thereafter by the management team, and then perhaps a short trip to the personnel office for an exit interview.</p>
<p>Washington University in St. Louis is an amazing school. With amazing programs and amazing people in an amazingly beautiful city. But all this talk about its better or worse than Harvard, Princeton or Yale, or whatever is ridiculous.</p>
<p>If you want to go into the Foreign Service or if you want to be an expert on foreign relations and work for Henry Kissinger or Gen. Scowcrofts HIGHLY respected and HIGHLY influential consulting company, earning a HUGE salary, then most people go to Georgetown, George Washington or Johns Hopkins. Fact. Some go to Ivy's. Does that mean that a degree in foreign relations from WashU is no good or wont land you that job or if you get the job that you will be inferior to the others? Heck no! </p>
<p>Someone I know very well, in fact, started at the bottom of the totem pole in "international finance", with a degree in Russian from Iowa State. He had an illustrious career in the "foreign service" including several high ranking posts in the US Embassy in Moscow. Was he inferior to anyone from Harvard and Yale?</p>
<p>Where do WashU PhD's end up? Look down the street. Several of them TEACH at St. Louis University...a school not even on US News and World Report's radar screen. Does that make St. Louis University a bad school? Heck NO! Its an excellent school, that shares programs and cross registration with WashU and enjoys an excellent reputation, including number ONE in Health/Nutrition Sciences. </p>
<p>If some of these schools were so bad then why would a WashU PhD work for them? Ditto for Ivy PhD's. You can find Ivy PhD's at schools all over the country, all shapes and sizes, public and private, big and small, prestigious and unranked.</p>
<p>If people are THIS neurotic about rankings what does THAT say about THEM (cf. the school?)</p>
<p>Does your kid want to go to school with a bunch of neurotic people?</p>
<p>40 years ago MOST people didnt leave their home state. Now a high percentage do, though that is waning with the increased cost of a college education and record numbers applying to STATE schools, boosting THEIR admissions stats and making it harder and harder to get into those schools.</p>
<p>Be thankful you got in and be humble and respectful of others, no matter where they got in or chose to attend.</p>
<p>The reason why I applied to Washington University was because of its ranking, the same applies to all the other universities I applied to (I'm recognition greedy, considering the fact that I'm from a country where the ranking of your school gets you employed)
I'm grateful for WashU's "manipulative" marketing skills because thats how I ultimately found out how much more respect and recognition this university deserves and why I am going to pay a considerable amount of money for its undergraduate education (more than some of the IVIES)
Although many of my friends received mail from WashU, I was the only one who didn't. And strangely enough, out of those who applied to WashU I was the only one admitted (5 outstanding applicants).
So again, I'm really happy that WashU is high in the university rankings. And I hope that everybody will be happy with where they're going and try to understand that WashU is a great school and that people like me are lucky to have been able find it.</p>
<p>It seems like everyone at my HS with a 21+ ACT has been bombarded with mail from WU. A friend of mine with a 24 ACT/ 3.3 GPA was sent an application in the mail yesterday. It seems like they will do anything to get the number of applications up and consequently lower the acceptance rate.</p>
<p>Are you friends sending their applications to the Army also? ;)
Tell them to forget about Wash U, they won’t get in with those stats, if they received the brochures was because your school put them in the mailing list (it happened to mine, guidance wanted us to apply to the best colleges).</p>
<p>why are people using the words "flooded" "spammed" or "bombarded" when talking about the brochures WashU sends to potential applicants. Is it that bad?
As trapper mentioned, I think our school did the same thing of putting people's names on the mailing list, because all of my friends got different brochures and books etc, with WashU sending a "set" of mailing to one school for further distribution (they got it through our school).</p>
<p>Once again I'll state that I received more mail from Georgetown & Emory than Wash U, and my stats were in the high range for PSATs, SATs, and GPA. Every school has marketing campaigns - Just because you don't get bombarded by one school's mail doesn't mean that other people are in the same boat that you are.</p>
<p>If you have high stats and got into WashU, I applaud you. If you have medium stats and got in, I applaud you. If you have lower stats but got in because of some other reason like athletics, you are a violin virtuoso (on a Juilliard track, for example), or some other special status, then I applaud you.</p>
<p>The only ones that irritate me are the kids who get admitted because of Legacy or BIG BUCKS DONATIONS who simply don't qualify. That happens at a surprising number of schools though they dont like to admit it.</p>
<p>WashU is an amazing school. But the ranking system of US News and World Report is a fools game, and most college administrators agree with that view. Of course they want to recruit the best and brightest. That is their job. The demographics: lots of boomers had kids, and more kids are applying to college than ever before in our nation's history, are to blame for the problem, not marketing programs from schools. Marketing programs are helpful to educate people about oppportunities.</p>
<p>I would be a liar if I said that relative ranking was not a factor in my D's decision of where to apply to college. We got "spammed" if you will by a lot of schools, some of them small private women's colleges that actually have great reputations and some schools that are in the small Ivy book you can buy off the shelf at Barnes and Nobles. We read everything and she made her decision about where to apply, but it had more to do with other factors and a feeling about "fit" than it did about ranking. In short, rank was a one of several factors in our decision process, but it was always kept in check and always sort of a vague notion, not an obsessive compulsive thing that some people suffer. When you see people saying, "OMG (sic) what am I going to do, I got into Duke, WashU and Brown....how can I possibly decide....help me, help me...." its laughable. If they are smart enough to get into those schools they should be mature enough to sort out the differences and pick the best school for them.</p>
<p>I have posted a number of times my view that if schools got together and required kids to disclose where they have applied (to each school), state their preferences consistently, and perhaps to limit it to no more than 6-8 schools, we could vastly reduce the number of applications at a lot of these colleges and make it more equitable. As it is, you have a relatively small pool of kids (25-30,000) who apply to 12 schools, all with spectacular stats, and they have no intention of attending 10 of those 12 schools. Its about ego and prestige. That is a gross disservice to everyone, the student, the college, the other millions of kids applying..particularly the ones who WANT to go to that particular school. Its absurd.</p>
<p>I stick to the notion: 2 reach, 2 match, and 2 safety. If your stats are in the stratosphere, then 4 match and 2 safety, or 6 match.</p>
<p>How hard is that?</p>
<p>If colleges new ahead of time how many you have applied to, who they are, and what is your intended preference (personal ranking), they might make a very different decision on your application, and I say, "THREE CHEERS TO THAT!" I would rather see someone with a 2300 SAT and 4.9 QPA get rejected if they have NO INTENT on attending that school....thereby leaving a spot open for someone who does.</p>
<p>You're forgetting that applying to more colleges increases the odds of getting a big scholarship, especially for the top tier of applicants. That's why I would think most apply to 12 schools, not out of a desire for prestige.</p>
<p>Perhaps. But they obviously cant accept every scholarship from every school, and if they are scholarship material, they will probably get more than one from more than one school. And getting scholarships is also a prestige builder. </p>
<p>I dont want to rain on any kid's parade and make them feel bad for being a star performer. They deserve all the applause we give them, and then some. </p>
<p>But it is absurd to apply to so many schools when they have no intent on attending that school. Most kids know where they want to go, even setting aside the HYP "syndrome" (where they say if they get into one of those, they will go simply because its HYP).</p>
<p>I totally agree with you, friedokra. I don’t understand why kids apply to schools they don’t want to go, maybe it’s parents’ pressure, maybe school counselor advices, but I feel they are wasting their time and making this process more complicated than it should be.</p>
<p>Certainly it's ridiculous to apply to schools to which you have no interest ("I'd take a year off and reapply before I'd go there"). But I hesitate to criticize applying broadly.</p>
<p>In college football, they call it a spread offense -- put enough receivers down the field and one of them is bound to be open. In finance, it's called diversification -- while any given stock may be risky, buying enough different stocks can reduce your risk while preserving your returns. Obviously there are limits. Just as one shouldn't send an offensive lineman down the field (ineligible receiver downfield), or buy obviously undesirable stocks, there's no use in applying to schools you have zero interest in.</p>
<p>Of course, it's all moot if students have a poor means of selecting "desirable" schools (i.e. blindly following USN). Again, spreading your risk out over a bunch of poor stocks or sending a flurry of linemen downfield is not sane, either.</p>
<p>This becomes particularly important in graduate school admissions, where students generally err by being too picky. At the undergraduate level, even Harvard has an admissions rate of 9+%, a relatively low risk compared to most MD or PhD programs.</p>
<p>Regarding applying to more schools, those such as WashU and the like that send out tons of mail to recruit more applicants are only hurting the students, but it looks better to have more applicants and a lower acceptance rate as long as a ranking of colleges exists and factors such data. Many students lose, and perhaps even the school loses to an extent.</p>
<p>
[quote]
recruit more applicants are only hurting the students
[/quote]
</p>
<p>How, exactly?</p>
<p>(One theory: students misinterpret such brochures as being personally targeted, and they assume this means the school actually has interest in them. This then decreases their incentive to apply to less-desirable schools -- however they've defined desirability -- and ultimately may result in their applying to an inappropriate tier of programs.)</p>
<p>For example, look back at the WashU forum. Many kids that truly loved the school were waitlisted only to see others that had only slight interest in the school accepted. By the time WashU contacts those waitlisted that wanted to attend from the beginning, many are no longer willing to go. Of course, this is a problem at any school, but by recruiting (somewhat aggressively) so many students, it becomes difficult to see who truly wants to attend the school and who is applying simply because they received a brochure in the mail or because WashU is ranked 12 on USNews.</p>
<p>brand, for some of the good stuff you've contributed---whether pro or against WashU or any school it's usually reasonable. But that's just a load of BS. A school has the right to send brochures...wouldn't you want to get kids to know your school if you ran it? nobody is entitled to get in just by getting one. in fact, i never received ANY material from washu until i applied, and even after getting a lot afterwards, i just figured they were really nice and personable and wanted to attract the applicants after the had--i hadn't heard ANYTHING about the recruiting schemes until recently. And it doesn't matter who truly wants to go--they admit who they wish. We can't stop kids from applying, we can only get angry at them. It's the kids, not the schools fault.</p>