<p>nervous1: I have yet to see a source supporting the number taken off the waitlist.</p>
<p>kyledavid80, the school was over enrolled last year, I think common sense says they didn't use the waitlist. Also, here's a thread from last year in which students who were in contact with admissions said no one was going to be admitted off the waitlist: <a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=187316%5B/url%5D">http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=187316</a></p>
<p>Here's an excerpt from the letter from the director of admissions in post 17: "With the National Candidates' Reply Date of May 1 behind us, we have assessed our enrollment situation for the incoming freshman class. Due to the number of students accepting our offer of admission, we regret to inform you that we are unable to offer any additional places in the freshman class."</p>
<p>"If WashU simply had a waitlist of 1,000 and outright rejected 7000 - 9000, would that make everyone happy?"</p>
<p>Yes, in fact, it would. A wait-list is nothing more than a nice tool of the institutions who (in some eyes) take advantage of the hearts and minds of students so institutions can create a well balanced class. Many institutions create copies of their admitted student body in hopes that if one member decides to go elsewhere, they'll have a nice 'understudy' to take the other student's place. </p>
<p>"fhimas88888888: I'd like a source for that data."</p>
<p>All I can say is that my college counselor is well known throughout the college counseling community and really knows his stuff. When next week starts, I'll ask him if he can cite his source.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Of the 22,000 that applied, fewer than 20 percent will be offered admission. Tarbouni is hopeful that Admissions will be able to make further offers of admission in May off the waitlist, an event that did not occur last year. </p>
<p>"Use of the waitlist is provided, of course, that we have not exceeded the freshman class we are planning," said Tarbouni.</p>
<p>By placing more of the students on the waitlist and accepting them as space is available, the Admissions Department hopes to prevent over-enrollment. Of the 20 percent to be accepted, early decision represents approximately 35 percent of the class. </p>
<p>Tarbouni declined to comment on the SAT and ACT averages of the incoming class.
[/quote]
<p>Emphasis mine.</p>
<p>The postings I have read on this thread are totally crazy. Everybody is so concerned about rankings that they refuse to even consider the fact that Wash U is actually over-enrolled. I am a sophomore at Wash U who has actually witnessed the effects of this problem- most importantly the problem with housing. </p>
<p>This year, there were about 200 extra freshman who matriculated than in previous years. This obviously caused some serious problems for housing- dorms which were traditionally designed for sophomores had to be converted (or individual floors needed to be converted) to freshman dorms. The over-enrollment of the freshman class has had a significant affect on the upperclassmen because it has become extremely difficult to find decent housing on campus. </p>
<p>Wash U is responding appropriately to the situation- not trying to improve their U.S. News ranking. And for those high school students who know the U.S. News and World Report Rankings by heart, please don't apply here. I left the East Coast to escape that mentality- I came to Wash U because of its strong academics and incredible student body, NOT its name or rank.</p>
<p>
[quote]
I left the East Coast to escape that mentality
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Hear. Hear. Might have to leave CC to escape that mentality as well. </p>
<p>It cracks me up when posters refer to "shady practices" as though these college administrators are selling useless swamp land in Florida or pushing tainted baby formula on a third-world country. Marketing a good product is not shady. Using the waitlist is not shady. Offering merit scholarships to high-scoring students is not shady. Cutting back on enrollment to offer a better education and quality of life to admitted students is not shady. </p>
<p>It's interesting that WashU's use of the waitlist is sinister and destructive, but when Penn, Northwestern and others do the same, they are simply taking care of the business of the university. </p>
<p>From an April 11 article in the Wall Street Journal:</p>
<p>
[quote]
The waitlist has become an increasingly important part of the admissions process as schools seek to maximize their closely watched yield figures. About 35 percent of colleges and universities maintain a waitlist and the number of students offered slots on the lists has been rising. .....Colleges say they are more uncertain than ever this year about their yield as they see more applications per student and are forced to vie for the same pool of talent. A few years ago, students applied to six to eight colleges, but the typical range now is 10 to 12. To broaden its options, Amherst College offered 1,450 spots on the waitlist this year, up from 1,258. With students likely to be on multiple waitlists, "We know we're going to lose a bunch," says Tom Parker, dean of admissions. Northwestern University offered waitlist spots to 2,700 students this year, an increase from 1,750. "We find it more challenging than usual to model how many of the admitted students will enroll," says Keith Todd, director of undergraduate admissions. The University of Pennsylvania -- which offered waitlist spots to 2,800 people, up from 1,800 last year -- says it calls a handful of candidates on the waitlist to gauge the likelihood that students will accept offers. "When you go to the waitlist, you want to have students who really want to be here," says Lee Stetson, director of admissions. "You don't want to go through the selection process all over again."
[/quote]
</p>
<p>The WSJ managed to do a whole story about college waitlists without even thinking of WashU, imagine that. Clearly, when Amherst, NW, and Penn use waitlists they are broadening options, wisely managing enrollment, applying smart strategic management techniques to a tough competitive business environment. WashU, however, is practicing some shady dealings. That's just ridiculous. </p>
<p>If posters can't understand how Washu deserves to be where it is in the rankings, despite the recitation of objective data and international surveys, it's because they haven't gone there to check it out. Simple as that. Seeing is believing.</p>
<p>
[quote]
If WashU simply had a waitlist of 1,000 and outright rejected 7000 - 9000, would that make everyone happy?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Yes! There was a time when getting on the waitlist at a school instead of rejected was an accomplishment as there was a glimmer of hope. It is awful to waitlist 6000+ people when, historically, only ~100 have gotten off the waitlist. A simple rejection would suffice as there are many applicants that would prefer to know and move on.</p>
<p>^ Agreed. I only brought up WashU because my CC called it the "QUEEN of Wait-lists." Other than my CC, I have no evidence.</p>
<p>
[quote]
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.
[/quote]
Funny you should mention that. Amherst, Princeton, and Dartmouth are all in the process to increase their class size to be more competitive with the other schools despite the toll that it will take on their selectivity. If williams were to expand any more, it wouldn't be a liberal arts college. It seems as though wustl is the only "top" school that is taking a step backwards.</p>
<p>How is it a step backwards to improve the quality of education and living conditions for a smaller target of enrolled students? </p>
<pre><code>How can you say that the course of action that is best for Amherst, Dartmouth, and Princeton is also the best course for WashU? Are you suggesting that the actions Amherst, Dartmouth and Princeton might take are without regard to impact on selectivity out of some special nobility on their part? Don't you think that it's simply because their status as Ivy League (and tippy top LAC) means that they can make future plans, to expand or not, without much concern for impact on selectivity. WashU may deliver an education and college experience on par with some of the Ivies, but it does not have the power and security of the Ivy siren call to provide the backdrop to its business decisions.
</code></pre>
<p>
What about Rice with 3000 students? Or Caltech with 900? Eliminating 500 students would still leave WUStL with a student body considerably larger than most of its peers.</p>
<p>
<p><a href="http://www.commondataset.org/default.asp%5B/url%5D">http://www.commondataset.org/default.asp</a> </p>
<p>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 </p>
<p><a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=76444%5B/url%5D">http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=76444</a> </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Thanks for reminding other participants here about the Common Data Set project. The project is designed to REDUCE the work of college staff by making a uniform survey that meets the needs of college guidebook companies and is consistent with mandatory federal reporting categories. As you correctly note, many colleges publish their Common Data Set data on their college Web sites. All colleges of any size are already gathering these data anyway, so the only issue here is whether or not a college chooses to let members of the general public see the data in a format comparable among different colleges. </p>
<p>Thanks to interesteddad for the link to the Questbridge list (based on another data source) of college endowments ranked on a per-student basis. </p>
<p>Sounds like many people are getting carried away about the CDS!</p>
<p>WashU is a great school! I know two current students as well as many recent graduates, all love the school. Academics are outstanding. Student housing is a big issue, many students cannot get on-campus housing at all. Renting an apartment is not always the best for college kids because of the year long lease. Living on campus is a good part of the college experience.</p>
<p>I hate for them to reduce enrollment, but they have to do something about the lack of housing and classes that are creeping up in numbers. They really are out of land there. They cannot buy Forest Park or keep buying nice homes in the neighborhood just so they can expand. The charm of the area around WashU would be lost. Also, if they just keep getting bigger and bigger they would lose much of the appeal they have with the size of their student body.</p>
<p>i dont know why people are all hating on washu. so it waitlists a bunch of people...who cares? it would be 1 thing if washu artificially lowered its admittance rate if it took say...750 people off a waitlist of 6000 people for a class of 1500...but it doesn't. It takes what, 75 people at most probably...not that big of a deal.</p>
<p>its funny that people are so upset that washu ranks highly and has moved up in the rankings "quickly" (whatever that means). If I recall, in the late 80s UPenn was barely top 20, yet was no. 4 last year just behind yale? why doesn't anyone complain about that? i guess washu is just in the wrong athletic conference for this website...</p>
<p>USC had done the same thing. The quotes are from Tim Brunold, associate dean and director of undergraduate admissions.</p>
<p>This is from an article in the Daily Trojan, <a href="http://media.www.dailytrojan.com/media/storage/paper679/news/2007/04/11/News/Usc-Accepts.25.Percent.Of.Undergraduate.Applicants-2834310.shtml%5B/url%5D">http://media.www.dailytrojan.com/media/storage/paper679/news/2007/04/11/News/Usc-Accepts.25.Percent.Of.Undergraduate.Applicants-2834310.shtml</a></p>
<p>
[quote]
"We admitted 170 fewer freshmen than last year, and that was intentional," </p>
<p>"We're very pleased that capable students are attracted to USC, but it's also disappointing to us that we don't have the space to admit everyone who could do the work," he said. "This presents a real challenge - it makes our job harder."</p>
<p>Brunold "predicts that the "mania" of the current college admissions process will calm by the year 2010."</p>
<p>"In a few years ? there will be a reduction for five to seven years in the number of students who want to go to college, which may ease a little bit of the tension," he said.</p>
<p>The decrease in the number of college applicants that Brunold predicts will result from a "demographic shift," he said.</p>
<p>The "hyper-selectivity" that elite universities are using to judge applicants concerns Brunold and his colleagues.</p>
<p>He said he fears that "students lose sight of the whole purpose of the process," which he said he believes is about "students finding the best fit for them."
[/quote]
</p>
<p>"The WSJ managed to do a whole story about college waitlists without even thinking of WashU, imagine that. Clearly, when Amherst, NW, and Penn use waitlists they are broadening options, wisely managing enrollment, applying smart strategic management techniques to a tough competitive business environment. WashU, however, is practicing some shady dealings. That's just ridiculous."</p>
<p>All those schools (and NU in particular) have seen a large increase in applicants, so relying on past experiences with yield %'s has become somewhat less reliable, hence, the greater reliance on the waitlist than what has traditionally been the case (btw, NU has also had experiences with having more students than estimated enrolling).</p>
<p>This is quite different from what WashU has been purported doing w/ the waitlist.</p>
<p>In addition...</p>
<p>
[quote]
Washington University is hardly the only highly ranked university to give merit aid to top students who may not need help to pay for school -- Vanderbilt, Rice and Emory all devote a greater share of their financial aid budgets to the same end -- but the issue has become a volatile one among elite institutions. </p>
<p>Many of them scorn merit aid as a not-so-subtle means of buying a better class, sometimes at the expense of lower-income students who need financial assistance. </p>
<p>"It's very frightening," said Heather McDonnell, director of financial aid at Sarah Lawrence College, referring to those few top institutions, like Wash U., that spend at least 15 percent of their financial aid budgets on merit aid. "If we were at a meeting together, I'd be growling at them." </p>
<p>Still, Wash U. officials say they see no shame in providing merit aid, nor have they ever. Even in its "streetcar" days, when virtually all its students were local, the school helped build its academic reputation by offering full scholarships to every valedictorian in St. Louis.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>
[quote]
Then a funny thing happened a couple of decades or so ago. "Merit-based student aid" began to take off.</p>
<p>Both public and private colleges, largely those in lower tiers, began offering simoleons to the sons and daughters of doctors and lawyers who didn't need the dough but whom the institutions desperately wanted to improve their student profiles.</p>
<p>Since then, the growth in merit-based aid at these places has outpaced that of need-based aid in an effort to attract these upper-middle-class students with higher board scores who will make a school more competitive. While some merit money is mixed with need, the trend is clear and results scandalous.</p>
<p>College rankings exacerbate this development. Blame rankings on those odious annual lists U.S. News & World Report dreamed up to sell magazines. Otherwise sane academic leaders drank the Kool-Aid to look better.</p>
<p>Listen to Tufts President Lawrence Bacow, who offers zero merit dollars: "It is far from clear to me how society is better off when scarce financial aid resources are diverted from the neediest students to those who are not needy by any measure, simply to redistribute high-scoring students among our institutions." Bingo.</p>
<p>Baum, among many, cites Washington University in St. Louis for its extensive use of merit aid: "It didn't have to do it. That's a choice. That's about rankings." (Washington U. would not give me numbers on its student aid.)</p>
<p>One merit aid addict is in recovery. Like Washington U., the University of Rochester is known for its heavy use of merit dollars. But it has shrunk them dramatically in the past three years after the arrival of Jon Burdick as head of admissions and financial aid.</p>
<p>The dirty truth is that the merit-based aid strategy often works -- Washington U. is now a hot school -- which is why kicking the habit is so hard. The cry at merit-addicted schools is: How else do we raise scores?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>ok- i go to wash u. i have a question for people who are so sure that wash u is a "running joke" amongst the "elite." why do you even care? what is the problem? if you dont like the way ranking systems work, then find a new ranking system. it's the same system that is used to rank princeton as "the number one school in america." it really is hilarious to come back to these forums and see that as wash u gains popularity, people feel the need to bash it. if ranking systems are so arbitrary and the elite schools "dont care about them," go have a tea party with your "elite" buddies instead of talking nonsense about a really good school</p>
<p>
[quote]
"It's very frightening," said Heather McDonnell, director of financial aid at Sarah Lawrence College..."If we were at a meeting together, I'd be growling at them."
[/quote]
LOL!!! Oh, the mental image that conjures up.</p>
<p>haha it's very funny that schools are so threatened by others like WashU that offer merit aid. If they care so much, why not conjure up some funds from their satisfied alum base? ;)</p>
<p>From a purely "Sun Tzu Art of War" point of view, you kind of have to sit back and admire WashU - I mean say what you want but they do whatever it takes to get ahead - damn principles or the moral high ground - principles and the moral high ground ain't getting you higher in the rankings - it just doesn't pay the rent baby. And the proof is in the pudding boy... they've shot up from no. 24 in 1991 to no. 12 this year (and that's what really counts at the end of the day, right?)</p>
<p>Basically, if I was backed up in the corner staring down a bunch of thugs, who do I want by my side, a bare knuckle brawler like WashU or a happy-go-lucky bloke like Brown? Gimme WashU baby.</p>