<p>I agree with Sam Lee. As long as you're hiding something, people are going to accuse you of shady practices.</p>
<p>I personally have no vested interest in WashU other than the fact that I receive too much spam from them and the fact I'll be apply to their med school come June. It's a great school in a cool city (St. Louis) and I'd be damn lucky to get in. However, it doesn't mean that it's beyond reproach.</p>
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To me, WashU should get their act together and submit CSD. That should silent all criticism if they are indeed clean. In particular, WashU has seemed to waitlist just about everybody not admitted and if that's the case, the waitlist was used to manipulate yield and admit rate, not just for managing risk of under/over enrollment. CSD tells us those numbers. Another thing CDS shows is the financial aid information. WashU's admission isn't need-blind. Maybe those generous merit-based scholarships come at the expense of poor students, who would have been admitted if they ask for less aid. Maybe all those nice facilities are funded by a pretty wealthy student body. Maybe the funds that could have been used for need-blind admissions were used on food, merit-based scholarhips...the kind of things that make current students happy. So just because students are happy..etc doesn't necessarily mean the tactics behind are okay. Again, these are just speculations that have been made. If you want people stop talking about them, ask WashU to get more transparent with them.
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<p>And this is the point. it's very clear that those numbers will only serve to validate what we already suspect is going on. if WashU had nothing to hide, they could silence all of their critics and release this data. the fact that they haven't tells us everything we need to know. its like a ballplayer accused of taking steroids and refusing to take a drug test, its like someone accused of murder and refusing to take a lie detector test... the power to silence their critics is in their hands, and the fact that the have not (can not) speaks volumes.</p>
<p>The ad hominem attacks of Washington University's adherents, and its flagrant lack of transparency with the truth about its admission practices, tell all one needs to know.</p>
<p>As to the curious argument that there is no land available, St. Louis is no Manhattan or Cambridge with respect to land availability and acquisition costs. Yet Columbia and Harvard manage to expand and improve there facilities as needed. See, for example, Harvard's Allston initiative. </p>
<p>What does rile people is that the folks at WashU seem to be driven by an eagerness boarding on zealotry in making decision after decision predicated on where it might place them in an artificial rankings hierarchy rather than what is best for their actual consumers, the students who attend.</p>
<p>In doing so, they delude applicants and generate a tumescent and misplaced self-satisfaction among their alumni and adherents. It's a fine school, but far more on the order of a University of Rochester than a Princeton.</p>
<p>Kyledavid80, you don't understand the reason for cutting 500 students even when it is very clear: they want to keep the school small so it doesn't lose its atmosphere that the students love so much.
If they add more students, the beautiful single suites will disappear and so the classes with 15 or less students.
Why you think WUSTL practices are dirty, because not everybody gets admitted? It's a highly selective school, that is the way it should be to be at the top.</p>
<p>Sam Lee, you already discuss the Wash U situation many times, it's like you can't let it go. Wash U posts its information about financial issues and student body in its web pages, should Wash U send this information in mass mailings to please you? I think this kind of discussion falls into nonsense, there are many “I’m entitled to be there” unsatisfied students and parents that believed that they were exceptionally out of this world human beings and they should be granted the honor to be accepted so they could go anywhere else full of pride.
It's funny that you still are talking about the wait list to manipulate their yield when it was explained to you a thousand times that NO ONE GOT OUT THE WAIT LIST and they accepted more than they should have done (and that is the reason why they were over enrolled and they want to accept less in the oncoming years), so it's clear, they didn't have the yield issue in mind.</p>
<p>Redcrimblue have you been to WUSTL lately? Of course not, or you would notice that there is no more land available, it's like that for your happiness the Forest Park should be part of WUSTL )it's like say that Columbia should acquire the Central Park).
Conclusion, students and their parents are very happy with WUSTL, they only unsatisfied are the ones that can't be part of the student body, being this way the more bashing means more free advertisement and more people is interested in going to Wash U. The ones that don't care about Wash U, don't talk about it, they enjoy their colleges and their are happy were they are going.</p>
<p>I too would like Wash U to release a Common Data Set, because I think that such transparency is helpful for parents and students.</p>
<p>As to manipulation of rankings, it is going on all the time and I don't understand why Wash U seems to engender such negative comments. The fact that Wash U seems to put a high percentage of kids on the waitlist rather than reject them doesn't seem to me such a heinous crime. I think that Wash U, which has tried mightily to raise its yield rate, is in a little bit of a bind. It is often used as a backup for the ivies and highly ranked non-ivies and its yield rate is something like 34% (much lower than similarly ranked schools). I think that the waitlist ploy is an attempt to make sure that it has enough qualified and skilled kids on the waitlist to deal with the poor yield (for example, it might keep four oboeists on the waitlist in case it is turned down by the first three). I have no problem with this, as I don't see who exactly is being hurt by it (if you're not interested in Wash U., you can remove your name from the waitlist).</p>
<p>Schools are attempting to manipulate the US News data all the time, in small and large ways. I remember a year or two ago, I read an article about Cornell alumni who were banding together to help the University improve its rankings. In addition, I pulled this off the web vis-a-vis Cornell (and by the way, I doubt that Cornell is the only offender and I think that Cornell is a terrific school).</p>
<p>"The study notes Cornell University's reaction to the rankings, describing how the university sought to improve its position by "purging its alumni lists of individuals who never graduated before reporting this fraction of alumni who contributed funds to the university. This improved Cornell's reported alumni giving rate--one of the factors used by USNWR in its ranking of institutions, but had no effect on Cornell's underlying academic quality."</p>
<p>It seems to me that it is the US News ranking system that should be the focus of all these negative comments. It skews things terrifically and many students are guilty of giving it undue sway (for example, even though I am an alumna of Princeton, I think it is silly to say that Princeton is better than Harvard or Yale--they are all top schools with fabulous students). The system values things that favor wealthy schools-endowment--and schools that have active alumni that can be mobilized. There is not much evidence that the schools high on the list have better teachers or provide that much a better education.</p>
<p>Rather than excoriate Wash U, it seems to me that we should be thinking about why all of us, students and schools, give so much credence to these rankings.</p>
<p>If Wash U. accepts zero students next year, that will REALLY improve their selectivity and their rankings!</p>
<p>Everybody keeps saying the same about yield and the wait list even when no one got out of the wait list last year (only 24 the year before) and it seems that it will be the same this year. If Wash U prefers to keep the ego of their applicants up but not saying, "you're rejected", what is the matter with that? I'd rather say I was waitlisted than rejected and at the end, either way I will be going somewhere else.
I heard so many times that Wash U grabs the Ivy rejected students, and it is not true, there is no Ivy rejected kids by the time Wash U releases who is in and who is out, and many kids were accepted at the Ivies and choose to enroll at Wash U (my kids as an example, even when we live closer to the Ivies than Wash U and we wouldn't have to deal with flights schedules).</p>
<p>I don't understand why there is such commotion about this school and no one cares about the rest of the schools, I don't think people check CD about every single school, and I don't think people who talk about that have checked the Wash U web site or have called them for the information, if you ask, they tell you everything you want to know, I did that when my first kid was about to apply there and I had my questions answered. You all could do the same if you are really interested in Wash U, it is not that difficult, and they even have 1-800 numbers.</p>
<p>I think just one would do the trick. Reject all others, get your acceptance rate and yield down to .0001 and 100%. Just make sure you give the "lucky" applicant enough "merit aid" to drive his or her Ferrarri to his or her private jet. Don't, of course, require class attendance.</p>
<p>I don't care if Wash U is in the middle of Glacier National Park. If they wanted to expand their facilities they could do so.</p>
<p>See this link, in which a river is leapt and an entirely different town is implicated: <a href="http://www.allston.harvard.edu/%5B/url%5D">http://www.allston.harvard.edu/</a></p>
<p>And if Wash U really cared about its students, it never would have admitted 500 too many in the first place.</p>
<p>well said midatlmom. Now if all the CC community would quit buying the rag and citing its ranking in threads, kids would be much better off in making rational decisions on where not only to attend but where even to apply. When I see kids trying to decide between huge state research schools and medium to small LAC then I know they didnt do their homework properly and prob spent to much time on meaningless "rankings".</p>
<p>It seems to me that so much of this WashU bashing is because people have so much trouble accepting or allowing a "newcomer" to join the ranks of the elite schools. Shouldn't there be room for a school to improve their student body, facilities, faculty...etc. and become "elite"? </p>
<p>Getting and staying high up in the rankings is the only way these days to get people's attention. High performing students who are prestige minded (which seems to be almost everyone on CC) would never consider a school that doesn't make it high in the rankings. Especially one like WashU which has weak name recognition due to its relatively recent rise. WashU NEEDS to keep itself high in the rankings to continue improving its name recognition and attracting top students. </p>
<p>With the growing population and increasing difficulty of gaining acceptance into top collleges, we should all be embracing the addition of more top schools instead of trying so hard to bash them and convince people that they pale in comparison to the all hallowed Ivies. Having more top schools benefits everyone. Let WashU thrive and continue improving. They are a private school, if they feel that they need to reduce their student body by 500 to improve the quality of life and education and get a "selectivity" benefit as a by-product, good for them. Don't worry prestige mongers, WashU's rise will never negatively impact the Ivies or other elites.</p>
<p>This thread is amazing. It is still unclear to me why the animosity against WUSTL. All schools pay attn. to their rankings. MANY schools try to adjust their policies to maximize its effect on the public's perception of their quality in different ways.</p>
<p>Why does Middlebury admit in Feb?; lower stats on those students are not included in the rankings, and they also could (more easily) expand their campus to accomodate a bigger freshman class every year.</p>
<p>Why doesn't UVA EVER publish or discuss in person the stats of OOS applicants? They want to maintain a high # of applicants to improve their selectivity and if the ave. stats are published and are very high, then many less qualified (statistically) students would not apply and their selectivity would worsen.</p>
<p>Also Williams, Amherst, Princeton, Dartmouth, etc., etc. can ALL increase the size of their class, but make the rational decision as to how big of a class they want. That's OK, but it's not OK for WashU to do the same. I WANT all colleges to manage the size of their classes to better deliver quality education, etc. Just think, Williams could triple the size of their admitted freshman and still admit less than WashU-they must be trying to improve their stats.</p>
<p>Also: students try to "adjust" their stats to get into college (dropping low grades, re-taking standardized tests, not reporting lower scores (ACT v. SAT), taking easier courses to boost GPA, "buying" summer programs that look good on the app. Why the screaming when colleges (most, if not all of them) do the same thing?</p>
<p>I think I can rationalize some of the hatred for WashU.</p>
<p>Out of the total ~20,000 students that applied, 4,400 were accepted and though WashU doesn't disclose this, or at least hasn't disclosed it to US News and World Report in the past, my college counselor says they wait-list around eight to TEN THOUSAND students, when they only accept around 134 off the wait-list. WashU is the QUEEN of the wait-list, and consequently could result in some animosity toward the school.</p>
<p>wow. I always disliked their use of the waitlist, but if those numbers are accurate that is disgusting and really lowers my view of the school.</p>
<p>Yea Cressmom, like we're going to call up the school and say "Well on CC, some members were bashing your school citing that you do no release data to hide shady practices. Is this true?"</p>
<p>Remind me again why it is so much worse to waitlist alot of people rather than simply rejecting alot of people. If WashU simply had a waitlist of 1,000 and outright rejected 7000 - 9000, would that make everyone happy?</p>
<p>The New York Times reported that schools are increasing the size of their waitlists because yields are becoming harder and harder to predict. So, WashU plays it very safe . Again, what's the big deal? They still can only fill 1350 places out of 20,000+ applications. If you'd rather be rejected, just consider your place on the waitlist as a rejection and move on.</p>
<p>Thanks for the clarification, interesteddad. Financial practices tend to make my head spin. :eek:</p>
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It seems to me that so much of this WashU bashing is because people have so much trouble accepting or allowing a "newcomer" to join the ranks of the elite schools. Shouldn't there be room for a school to improve their student body, facilities, faculty...etc. and become "elite"?
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Possibly. Goodness knows I've heard a lot of Duke=overrated comments along those lines. I think the main problem, though, is that US News puts WUStL so high (in which people put more stock than they think), but there's no way to verify it numerically. Not even the middle 50% of SAT scores for WUStL have been released. Applicants are supposed to just trust US News that WUStL is really, really selective. I really don't see how it's at all relevant to this thread, but I do think that's the main problem posters have with the school.</p>
<p>The Naviance program lists WUSTL's middle 50% at 1310-1470 for last year. USN&WR uses that data also, so they must get it from somewhere.</p>
<p>Just wondering warbuler, where did you hear that Dukes overrated? I think its fine, its just as good as the Mid tier ivys.</p>
<p>Cressmom: 500 students won't make that big a difference. Perhaps some of the single suites will go (even though the university could change its infrastructure to maintain them and more students), but the classes under 15 students wouldn't change very much; it's only 500 students. However, a difference of 500 has much more potential to help in rankings. And no, I and others don't think WUStL has dirty admissions practices because of their selectivity; it's because of their heavy use of the waitlist to lower their acceptance rate and improve their yield.</p>
<p>fhimas88888888: I'd like a source for that data.</p>
<p>Oh wait, forgot--there's no CDS to source it. =p</p>
<p>kyledavid80, for the thousandth time... for the past few years, WashU has barely used their waitlist. Last year, no one got off the waitlist and they landed up over-enrolled by 150 freshman. So, their waitlist has played NO ROLE in lowering their acceptance rates and improving their yield for a while now. (This year however, they do plan to use the waitlist. They under-accepted in order to protect against over-enrollment and will fill in with the waitlist)</p>