<p>In what appears to be another in an ongoing line of efforts to push itself up in the USNWR rankings, Washington University in St. Louis plans to reduce its undergraduate enrollment by 500 students, thereby making it more "competitive" while denying those students the opportunity to be educated there. </p>
<p>I guess one could view it like that, but it's actually due to overpopulation. WashU isn't meant for so many students and they are having some real problems with housing, forcing students off-campus and being unable to provide first-time students with a spot on campus. I'm actually glad that they're trying to take some control over the situation.</p>
<p>While I was deliberately provocative with my post, it does seem to me that they could acquire land, build one dorm and hire a few more faculty rather than slash the enrollment.</p>
<p>WashU going for the USNWR Gold! Yeah, baby! </p>
<p>Here are some other action items sure to make it on the WashU agenda:</p>
<p>1) Drop "in St. Louis" by 2009 rankings
2) Purchase a higher Peer Assessment on eBay
3) Name change from WashU to Stan-vard College</p>
<p>Funny, the_prestige.</p>
<p>Brand, I assume you go there. Don't defend your college so vigoriously, its embarrassing.</p>
<p>WashU has been trying to push thier way up the ranks for years. Now its so high its a running joke among the elite. Real colleges don't care about the ranks, not enough to cut thier student body and have a waitlist of 2000.</p>
<p>WashU is really making a joke of itself, it seems as if all they care about is ranking, and that is coming at the cost of every other aspect of there system, I mean cutting 500 students is cutting 125 spots a year which prob means accepting ~400 less kids (idk their exact yield), but they will just end up on the giant waitlist anyway... I just don't get WashU</p>
<p>Why not read the article before making biased posts.</p>
<p>"The University was designed to be smaller than it is and the University has made the decision to bring the student body back to its target size," said Nanette Tarbouni, director of the office of admissions.</p>
<p>"This has nothing to do with any other college or university," said Tarbouni. "The intent of this is not to manipulate or improve yield, but rather to meet a freshman enrollment goal consistent with what our University was supposed to be."</p>
<p>what is even more crazy is that in the letter, it says we are not concerned with yield. ok.......</p>
<p>Could you imagine if US news didn't have a PA score as part of the ranking. You could then just have new schools that have 100 kids per class. These schools could buy 100 kids with SATs in the 1500s and then it could find itself in the top 20 in no time!!!!! Yeah for innovation :)</p>
<p>
[quote]
Why not read the article before making biased posts.</p>
<p>"The University was designed to be smaller than it is and the University has made the decision to bring the student body back to its target size," said Nanette Tarbouni, director of the office of admissions.</p>
<p>"This has nothing to do with any other college or university," said Tarbouni. "The intent of this is not to manipulate or improve yield, but rather to meet a freshman enrollment goal consistent with what our University was supposed to be."
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Of course this is what they are going to say! </p>
<p>C'mon now! As shameless as WashU is, they aren't THAT stupid. What I find interesting is that they have to even MENTION things like "manipulate" and "improve yield" -- as if they already KNOW that the rest of the world is going to totally call them on this -- and they'd rather explode their own grenade to try and take away any potential impact of anticipated criticism... It's very telling. If they made this move PURELY based on what they believed was a non controversial move back towards their original class size, then why the defensive comments? If you aren't guilty of anything, why bring it up?</p>
<p>Let's look at this it another way, if Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford or MIT reduced their class size, do you think that they are going to mention things like "manipulation" and "yield improvement" in their press releases?</p>
<p>You're reading too much into that. This is a newspaper article, not a press release. As someone who has worked with the newspaper before, I can almost guarantee that this quote is a direct response to a question asked by a reporter who is aware of these impressions associated with WashU admissions. She's not "exploding her own grenade."</p>
<p>
[quote]
She's not "exploding her own grenade."
[/quote]
</p>
<p>It's quite a clever way of exploding one's own grenade without making it look like you are... getting the school's newspaper to release this information... it's brilliant actually.</p>
<p>WashU might as well cut its enrollment down to 100. Enroll 10 RD and then the rest from the waitlist. Make sure to send out brochures to everyone and their grandmother. We don't want to miss out on those grandmother apps. That'll probably lower the acceptance rate another 10%.</p>
<p>This is a normal situation that happens at a lot of colleges (it is just that WashU is under magnifying loop on this board criticized by people who were probably rejected or waitlisted).</p>
<p>Last year UMichigan cut their freshman class enrollment by 500 because they overenrolled the year before and had huge problems with dorms, etc. Did they also do it to increase their rankings ?</p>
<p>WashU overenrolled somewhat for several years and they just had to make a decision on how to deal with it.</p>
<p>Some other colleges in the same situation would just let it go (at the expense of quality of education and life of students, having bigger than intended classes, not being able to guarantee a dorm room for freshmen, etc.)</p>
<p>In this case WashU made completely appropriate operational decision to remain the size it was intended to be. If anything WashU administration knows better than most of other schools on how to run their business (they have the best dorms, great food, flexibility in class-scheduling, double-majoring, etc.). This is not easy to do. </p>
<p>It looks like there is a lot of 18-year olds on this board who know really well how to run a university.</p>
<p>Not all of us are 18, not all of us are so easily snowed. Many, including norcalguy and I and I expect other posters already in this thread, would have had no trouble at all gaining admission at Wash U. </p>
<p>This is a transparent attempt to do exactly what many here speculate. If Washington University cared about the quality of education and life of students, it would not have overenrolled. Rather than meet the needs of those students, however (who must by your definition even now be suffering as they have in years past through worse dorms, lesser food, poorer class scheduling, oversized classes, poor faculty attention, and the inability to double major), the St. Louis school has decided not to meet those needs by adding one dorm and an apparently necessary classroom building, with a concomitant small number of faculty and staff. </p>
<p>Instead, sensing it might continue to have to admit students it no longer wants in its efforts further to manipulate the ratings process, it has chosen this anti-student route. Other, better schools, maintain or, as in the current case at Princeton, are increasing enrollment.</p>
<p>redcrimblue, when you grow up and your employer will empower you to organize or manage anything more than shoes in your closet you might realize that things in real life sometimes are not as easy as they seem.</p>
<p>In real life you can not precisely manage number of people that you enroll because you don't know how many of the accepted people will matriculate. Adcoms usually base their decisions on last year matriculation rates. In WustL case matriculation rates in the last years were significantly higher than expected which attributed to a bigger class. </p>
<p>Also in real life it would involve a lot more than adding a dorm and hiring 20 professors to just "expand" the university to function efficiently with higher number of students than intended. WashU decision was to concentrate on quality and they did it by building new dorms to replace old ones, etc.</p>
<p>If you are smart enough that "would have had no trouble at all gaining admission at Wash U." why would you even waste your time with these senseless allegations regarding university that you did not even bother to apply?</p>
<p>True - not everyone here is 18. As for being easily snowed - it seems to be the case that many are. As for "would have had no trouble at all gaining admission at Wash U" - maybe - maybe not. Based on no actual knowledge of posters background - that is a ridiculous statement. From my experience I know of very few people that "easily gain admission to WashU".</p>
<p>I wonder how many of the people making some of these negative posts have any actual experience or first hand knowledge of WashU. WashU has a very active building program to improve the present very good quality of life on campus. As for meeting student needs, I believe you will get a very positive reaction from students as to the quality of life on campus. WashU would rather spend their money on improving the good campus experience even more than expanding the size of the school. I believe that most existing students support that decision. That objective is much more important than pleasing a bunch of CC posters who have made up their mind based on hear say.</p>
<p>Rescrimblue, there is no more land to be acquired near Wash U, if they could have that option I'm sure they would take it. Overpopulation affects more than housing, the classes are forced to be larger and they want to keep them small, it forces to have long lines to buy meals, and less faculty body to attend more students.
Wash U is already large enough, and I don't think they are obsessed with ranks, because they don't bother to release how many are applying year after year by March as most of the colleges do, they don't care about yield either, they could accept less people having an open wait list to fill every spot available, and they accept more kids than they should and nobody gets out the wait list (less than 60 students during the last 5 years and nobody last year).
One thing they know very well and they use it, it's the fact that everybody is talking about Wash U more than any college, so they have free advertisement mouth to mouth making people to know that Wash U exists. We all should reclaim a salary for that.</p>
<p>I've posted similar information on a prior thread, but it bears repeating:</p>
<p>WUSTL doesn't help its 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%5B/url%5D">http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=76444</a> EXCEPT WUSTL. Why would WUSTL withold their data unless there's something fishy with the numbers?</p>
<p>Ah - yes - the infamous conspiracy theory. There must always be a dark sinister reason behind anything we don't like or agree with. If life were only that simple.</p>
<p>WashU openly reveals the number of applications that they receive every year. Beyond that why should it matter - except possibly to people on CC obsessed with rankings. Especially why should it matter to people who supposedly "have no interest in WashU". This theme of WashU bashing seems to be tuning into a "cottage industry" on CC. Time to give it a rest and for people to move on with their lives. Although Cressmom did have a good point "everybody is talking about Wash U more than any college, so they have free advertisement mouth to mouth making people to know that Wash U exists." The people that are really interested in WashU will visit - see and experience the campus atmosphere and make up their own minds.</p>