I would also love to know about the accepted student group chat, if there is one. Please PM me too!
Also, is anyone planning on attending WashU’s Celebration Days? My first impression is that it’s a WashU sponsored overnight trip to the campus… but I’m still shaky on the details. Sounds like a great experience. If anyone knows more about it, or knows somebody that participated in previous years… I’d love to hear more.
Very excited to get in! Upward trend student with a bad performance at the start of high school and I was told I had no shot at t20s.
Is the facebook group for attendees or people who got accepted? Would also like to be part of any accepted group chat!
admitted - 3.81 uw, 35, no demonstrated interest/interview
CS major/Engineering School
Very good ECs (not a gymnast or youtuber though)
My recs could be either meh or good I have no idea
Common App - very good, Supp - Mediocre
APs were mostly 4’s & Math II - 780
Does anyone know about the admitted students group?
@homerdog I will add my disagreement. If the system worked such that all the kids who are accepted matriculated, schools would be accepting 1/4 the kids. The system allows families to apply to schools they are interested in and to refine their decision once they know what their options (including financial aid) are.
I think your comments come from the right place - wanting everyone to have a spot - not really admonishing kids who can’t/choose not to accept a particular school. They all have to pick only one in the end. The reality is the strongest kids in the pool will get a higher acceptance rate on the apps they submit vs the rest of the pool of students.
Part of the challenge is schools have to pick their class from a pool of similarly successful candidates - even really really good students have no guarantees at a particular school so they apply to increasingly large numbers of them. My child applied to 4 schools and soooo many people frowned about it - “are you sure that’s enough?? what if he doesn’t get into any of them??”. In the end, we will be rejecting schools that when we applied he would have been very happy to attend if that were the only acceptance. His first choice school has yet to notify so no way could we withdraw apps before we knew the whole picture.
@homerdog Easy to be frustrated when super qualified kids you know don’t get the result, but Wash U, more than a lot of other schools is an ED centric school. Two rounds of ED, more than half the class filled that way, a true admissions boost, kids that are really interested in Wash U are often advised by counselors and consultants to go ED. The numbers there in RD are daunting. Not a match for anybody in that round. As for kids getting in and not going, that’s the reality for most schools and lots of kids are going to have offers they are declining for a myriad of reasons. Not to throw shade your way, because you are a constructive poster, but I have seen you say that your S has crossed a few RD schools off the list because he has some acceptances he prefers. Unless he has withdrawn those apps, you really can’t criticize others for getting in and declining. If someone has already deposited then they have no business staying in the RD round, but that doesn’t appear to be the case here.
when people get in and decline, eventually spots open up for people on the waitlist.
Waitlisted
sat 1570
Gpa 4.0 uw
Sat subject 800 in all 3 sciences and one math 2
Each school my son applied to said we should run their Net Price Calculator and that the EFC shown was what their final number would look like (give or take maybe 1K). We went into the process eyes wide open. So far, it’s been true. Also, at the Wash U info. session they said that if parents wanted to speak with an FA counselor to ask questions or get a clearer picture of how things might transpire that we were free to do so. My son was accepted, and the FA package was exactly what I expected it to be. No surprises which was great!
@gherbss that’s not how the waiting list works necessarily. The school has already planned for the majority of students to decline their spots so more often than not very few kids come off the list. It’s only if the school ends up with less students than expected that they go to the waiting list.
I want to respond to @wisteria because I want to make sure I’m not being misunderstood. (1) yes, Wash U takes a lot of kids ED but historically at our school they’ve taken around eight kids RD and the kids I know have scores/rigor/ECs that match the kids who have been admitted RD in the past so they didn’t go ED. 2) my main point is around financial aid. If our son applied for a full scholarship and didn’t get it and then we knew we couldn’t afford the school then, yes, we would have taken his app out of the pile. Also, we wouldn’t have applied to a school after running a NPC that didn’t work for us. Those kids were never going to be able to matriculate from the get go. I don’t know if any of the kids who said they won’t go are in that boat. (3) our son has two RD schools that I have said we have mentally checked off our list. Is that 100 percent true? No. One could come in with a very big merit award and that could change things IF he has a bad RD round. The other could come into play IF he doesn’t get into a very similar school where we have high hopes he will get in.
So, I do get it. I understand the system and why kids apply to a lot of schools. I understand they can only go to one. I’m just unhappy when I see kids who know 100 percent that they won’t go (and they know that because of the money not because they’ve decided they don’t want to go there for other reasons) and they don’t withdraw apps. I hope that’s more clear.
Congrats to all who got in. Of course, it’s a very exciting time and, like I said earlier, I never questioned anyone’s app or if they were worthy of the acceptance.
And if it’s not clear I’m also just upset with Wash U. Taking kids from our school ED because they are committing versus waiting for the more accomplished RD kids bums me out. I’ve known most of these kids for 12 years and Wash U has made the wrong move. This started happening with Northwestern a couple of years ago with ED the only way to go and the school misses out on great kids because not everyone wants to do ED. Schools can build classes how they want but I don’t have to like it! I really hate when schools use ED in such a big way. Huge disadvantage to students.
Have accepted students received any information from Wash U regarding admit days?
@homerdog As others have repeatedly said, people keeping their applications in the system does NOT steal an offer of admission to anyone else. Schools have this down to a science. They study the yield rates and they make the offers based upon those rates.
If people would do exactly what you are suggesting (withdrawing their applications), guess what, the yield rates would go up, and the number of offers would go down. You have over 4,000 posts and have been on CC for close to 3 years. You know this is how it works.
I understand that you are invested in the lives of these kids and are hurt that they don’t have this opportunity, but that doesn’t change the fact that people keeping their applications in for processing did not steal a spot from anyone else. My daughter was waitlisted. Am I disappointed, yes, but nobody stole her spot.
The criticism about schools disproportionately relying on ED is spot on. The people that this really hurts are the kids that do need financial aid, and thus are more likely to go the RD route so that they can wait and see what kind of financial aid that they will be offered before committing to a particular school.
Bear Days: April 5th, 15th, or 22nd
Spring Welcome on every Sunday from March 23rd to April 27th
My son was admitted off the waitlist on May 2nd last year so you never know what will happen. Good luck to your kids!
And @homerdog, if those kids were denied than they weren’t going to make it to the admit pile anyway. WL is a different story.
The thing about Naviance, is that while it is a useful tool, you do have to take some of it with a grain of salt. Like they say about mutual funds, past performance is not a prediction of future results. The stats from a high school that have never gotten denied before at a particular college are only that way until the year they do get denied.
And Naviance only tracks stats. So at a college awash in apps with 1500++, A students, the recs and school specific essays can make a big difference. Naviance doesn’t capture that.
And most importantly, you need to look at the scattergrams with some guidance. Of the 25 dots that got in, take out the legacies, siblings, urm’s, athletes, nephews of trustees, goddaughters of a donor with a building named after him, cousin of the college president’s assistant, kid with the really prestigious national award. Then look at the dots remaining. Those are relevant stats to look at for the unhooked kid.
Hi My son was accepted into the Sam Fox School! 32 ACT, 4.0, great recs, portfolio and essays. Anyone else here accepted into Sam Fox?
Congrats ruby
@ruby2sday Congrats. My D was also accepted into Sam Fox. But without any financial aid, we are not sure if she want go. She does not want us to spend all our savings for her education. Her sister is in 10th grade. This system is stupid. It only benefit the rich and poor. All the middle class families were ripped off.
Apologies if this was pointed out earlier in this very long thread, but WUSTL ends up enrolling an unusually large number of students from the waitlist.
Fall 2017: 128
Fall 2016: 53
Fall 2015: 129
At most “top” schools the number from the waitlist that actually enrolls is well under 20 and often single digits, so it looks to me like this is yield management strategy.
My daughter was also waitlisted with stats that I would judge exceed many of the admitted students’ numbers. She is going to decline the spot as she has some other options already and is expecting more in the coming weeks. Had WUSTL come through with the merit and need aid we need, it would have been high on her list. She did apply to a lot of schools.
Honestly, the process of writing all those essays was invaluable in helping her really figure out what she wanted and how to show universities what she can offer. I wish it were less expensive and stressful, but we all have to play the game.
@crazynervousmom “My son was admitted off the waitlist on May 2nd last year so you never know what will happen. Good luck to your kids!”
Did your son also receive a financial aid package that was close to NPC estimate when he got admitted off the waitlist?