I saw that Wash U dropped several spots in the USNWR 2017 Rankings. I think it’s now ranked at #19. I can’t remember what it’s 2016 ranking was but it definitely dropped. I know the rankings really don’t matter, but I still can’t help but look at them. What does everyone think about this drop? Also, Emory is now ranked at #20. I know Emory is a great school, but I’ve always thought that Wash U was at the next level (much better). Any thoughts on this? Thanks!
Colleges move up and down. That’s normal. They are all very good colleges and there are quite a few good ones too. WashU is a top 20 university. Just pick the college that fits you. They say happy students are successful students. The culture varies greatly among these colleges so pick what fits you best. You don’t want to be miserable and have to start over and transfer. My D loves WashU and is thriving. Good luck!!!
Totally agree with @newjersey17! Our student is a sophomore at WUSTL and absolutely loves it. Working very hard but is very engaged on other activities outside of classroom. The rankings move all around for a variety of reasons, including a bit of gaming. Best of luck to you!
WashU is a great school. I think academically its a lot harder then Emory. My daughter spoke to some kids from her high school that chose Emory and they said they picked it because it was easier then WashU. But who knows. I agree with above posters. You need to be happy. My daughter is a sophomore at WashU and absolutely loves it. Her best friend is a sophomore at Emory and loves it as well. Can’t go wrong with either. Also depends what you’re planning to major in. My daughter didn’t like Emory because their business school is only 2 years and that’s not what she wanted.
Here’s another ranking: The WSJ came out with their ranking.
1.Stamford
2. MIT
3. Columbia
4. UPenn
5. Yale
6. Harvard
7. Duke
8. Princeton
9. Cornell
10. Cal Inst. Tech
11. Washington University in St. Louis
11. JHU
13. Chicago
13. Northwestern
@newjersey17 Thanks for posting this – I was only able to see the first 10 since i am not a subscriber of the WSJ. So happy to see WashU at #11. Can you post the rest of the top 20? Thanks again.
I think Washington U and Emory are academic peers, at least reputationally.
The WSJ formula is quite different from the USNews formula. I frankly don’t trust a ranking that puts Princeton at #8 and Harvard at #6. Princeton has the biggest per-student endowment and is the most undergrad-focused of the HYPSM peer group and Harvard is also incredibly rich and is… Harvard. Having UChicago all the way down at #13 is also a non-starter.
Washington U’s academic and reputational peers are, I believe, Rice, Vanderbilt, Georgetown, Notre Dame, Carnegie Mellon, and Emory. Wash U is more selective than Emory, but again, i’m basing that group on academic (and overall) rep. These are very good schools that continue to earn the respect they are given.
@momworried : Again, bumping another one because I do not want people to get the wrong impression of Emory or WUSTL. HS seniors choose schools for silly reasons at times for which there is no evidence. Are we talking about STEM or the school as a whole? Regardless the two are extremely comparable and I have seen a lot of the STEM coursework (which is easy to compare as the course materials are more likely to be found online than any other discipline) at WUSTL and it is like the most comparable to Emory among the schools ranked between 15 and 20, mainly for life sciences. They both appear more rigorous in some ways than most of the other schools because they place more emphasis on science education/teaching in science (more instructors than normal at both tend to write difficult exams or do extra things other than lecture. There is less emphasis on rote memorization of details and more emphasis on applying and higher level thinking among a huge chunk of instructors at both that is not as common at some comparably ranked schools…you can tell they were trained or encouraged to do this).
I saw no evidence that WUSTL was more rigorous in areas where the schools SHOULD be comparable. I would expect things like physical sciences to be much harder because WUSTL has an engineering undergraduate entity, but generally things like biology, chemistry, and neuroscience are strikingly similar level in terms of the level of instruction (the major difference is that you may be more likely to have the option of an easy instructor at Emory because it likes to keep much smaller section sizes in STEM so has multiple sections for many intro and intermediate courses. Where WUSTL will have 1-3 sections of 200-250, Emory may have 5-7 with perhaps 5 different instructor choices at 100 or less…so I guess that would make WUSTL harder if you do get an unusually challenging instructor, but again, from what I see for many key, say, pre-med choice or required courses, I could usually find an instructor who can match the most rigorous counterpart at WUSTL) and intellectual rigor of courses. They both impress in many places in my opinion. The reason the two may be more rigorous in the comparable areas than some other schools in their bracket may flat out be because they both lack division 1 sports so the instructors may feel more comfortable pushing students harder (a serious D-1 fervor has been shown to affect the behavior and expectations of students and faculty. Such studies have been done at Duke for example). Regardless, I am amazed of the impressions of HS seniors (including my own when I was one).
Often they are flat out false or totally impossible to prove. Just because students at some schools tend to constantly emphasize that academics are hard, does not mean they are definitely harder than at a comparable undergraduate program. I find that students usually making these claims or that have these perceptions usually have nothing to go off of other than them feeling like they are being challenged (there is also this nasty assumption that because Emory has lower SATs, the instructors must be easier…realistically, I have never seen instructors adjust their level of teaching for the incoming stats of the student body, not even at places that now have super high scores like WUSTL. Teachers will do what they have always done in most cases. What matters is that students at all these places are academically elite. The instructors will pitch their courses based on the amount of time they have and the culture of the school, meaning courses could end up easier than expected at some schools that are very selective due to reasons having nothing to do with ability level). They are just talking and it clearly spreads like wildfire to even prospective students. Both schools should be viewed as “work harder, play hard” schools. They have an unusual chunk of instructors that assume that students can find and will make time to reach much higher than normal levels of understanding of material for an undergraduate. They certainly aren’t UChicagos, but are better off in a sense (in terms of academic culture/attitude) than some other comparably ranked places.
@hardworking99 For all intensive purposes, these two, between 15 and 20 strike me as the most similar undergraduate programs with WUSTL being much further along in terms of graduate and professional education (so it will reflect in world rankings) which makes sense because it became a Research 1 university first. Emory until 1990s was a pre-dominantly undergraduate/teaching type of institution with a healthcare system. WUSTL’s success is much older than people think and Emory’s is quite a bit newer…which is obviously why people think what they think.
Either way, I think students should be aware or think critically about these things before jumping to such conclusions
@prezbucky : If only I saw this earlier…non-sense.
Wait, which part is nonsense?
@hardworking99 WashU did drop, but if you look at the 4 colleges tied for 15 (including rice and cornell), they are 1 point apart from WashU in the ranking, while Emory is a few points lower than WashU. So, WashU definitely could’ve been ranked 15 or higher this year if they just got that 1 point haha. It will probably move up again next year what with all the new engineering buildings and stuff being built and new programs.
Edit: just realized this is an old thread oops