WashU seems to have very nice admissions staff and admissions officers. I would guess that as soon as they can tell us something they will (hopefully by the end of May). I really don’t know why some schools have been very public if they are full while others are total crickets. But for whatever reason I feel like WashU will not drag this out all summer. Having super kind admissions staff must come from the top & I think there must be something preventing them from communicating with us right now. If you haven’t called admissions at WashU you should try it - seriously the nicest group of people I’ve come across in this college admissions process.
1 Like
FYI, it’s been crickets from Vanderbilt as well.
1 Like
WashU admissions staff have been pleasant and as forthcoming as possible for as long as I can remember (25+ years). I just think they very likely don’t know what to make of things right now.
I’ve mentioned previously that they have taken steps to enhance yield and IMO (no inside baseball here) are not likely not dip too far into the WL. They also aren’t guaranteeing housing for incoming Soph transfers, which is a something tell regarding their expectations of freshman class size and Covid restrictions on housing capacity.
Schools like Vandy and WashU are probably in the roughest part of the admissions pecking order though. They’re strong enough that they are admitting high quality applicants who are applying to many, many excellent schools. But there are a number of schools that win cross admit battles with them. They’re more vulnerable to a domino effect…if there is one. Selective state schools, elite LACs and “top 10s” probably have an easier time with predicting class size. FWIW, I went and took a look at admitsee for everyone waiting. WashU had 336 self disclosed applicants over the last few years with a 62% acceptance. So WashU was a good target for the self disclosed pool of applicants. Most rejections from other schools from the WashU applicant pool:
Stanford (128), Yale (111), Harvard (110), Penn (90), Princeton (89), Columbia (78), Brown (77), Northwestern (75), Duke (58), UChicago (49), Dartmouth (45), Cornell (41), MIT (34).
Nobody should find this list surprising, but if you’re trying to get a sense for WashU timing this list is a good way of prioritizing your attention. One third of all other school rejections from among 60 or so schools listed where WashU applicants also applied came from the first 4 schools. 75% came from all 13 above. If we could look only at rejections elsewhere among WashU admits, those percentages would be higher. And those are the people who may leave if a spot opened elsewhere.
Pay attention to those school’s waitlists in the order presented above. What happens at miscellaneous B1G school or at a LAC like a Williams doesn’t have any real bearing on the WashU waitlist. And in the mean time, try to fall in love with your current school.
1 Like
That is very true, it is just frustrating.
Thanks for the insight.
I don’t know how much I really provided, but I feel for the Class of 2025. This is not an easy situation for you guys and the admissions offices are having a hard time estimating needs with everything in flux. Harvard and Yale are full, so reading the tea leaves, the best indicators of spots opening up would be substantial waitlist movement at Princeton, Columbia, Penn and/or Stanford. Princeton seems to have underenrolled a bit. I know that WashU is also requiring all of its students to be vaccinated for Fall 2021, so it’s possible a few spaces open up due to students/families being opposed to that. What if internationals can’t show up due to lack of vax availability in their home countries or due to travel restrictions? What if new guidance over the summer indicates schools can add a few more beds to their dorms? There’s a lot of open questions, any of which could open doors for some students. Or not.
Admissions is likely hesitant to release students from the list because they realize this could drag well into summer. If they knew they wouldn’t need to go to the list, I’m sure they would have done so by now. A WL spot means they’d be happy to have you if space allowed and you were the type of candidate they felt was missing from the class. At some point, differences in applicants who fill a particular need is hairsplitting. From their perspective, the most important thing is that if/when admissions makes the offer, the student is likely to quickly accept. If they need to pull in an engineer also interested in entrepreneurship at Olin in July 15, they don’t want to cut 2/3 of the WL field today. They inadvertently may end up cutting the candidates who will continue to have that interest when the need arises. Then the need goes unfilled.
It doesn’t seem particularly fair right now, but for those who will continue to have interest into late summer, it’s actually better for fellow waitlisters to cut themselves. They’ll fall in love with their current school, find roommates, not continue to show interest, not submit another LOCI if that request is made, etc. The school is left with the highest interest applicants so they can quickly fill any gaps in their matriculating class.
5 Likes
Received email waitlist is closed all 2025 spots are filled.
So no admits from the waitlist? I disagree that schools like WashU or Vandy are in the roughest part of the pecking order. When do T20 schools have an issue filling their class? Sure, if someone gets admitted to a T10 or top 5 LAC they will likely pick that college but WashU or Vandy could fill their incoming classes several times over with qualified students.
Did anyone get in?
Two possibilities here:
1-WL is completely closed
2-WL email stating it is closed went out to the vast majority of WLers. They still may be holding on to the possibility of a few admits for those who did not get the email. Just in case anyone on here didn’t get the email.
Either way, I’d check email and inquire if you did not receive the email.
WRT “pecking order”. WashU has no problems filling classes. That’s not what I was referring to originally. WashU’s problem is that they may have greater yield volatility than 8-12 schools ranked ahead of them by various groups. Last year, their yield was about 42.5%. This year, to get to a class of 1800 their target yield was 41.1%. If HYPSM + 4 other Ivies + Duke are under enrolled, then they’re likely pulling people from lists who have put deposits down at places like WashU, NU, Vanderbilt, Hopkins, Cornell, Rice, Georgetown, Tufts, etc. WashU’s actual yield depends upon the ten or so other schools getting their initial enrollment estimates correct.
In this case it appears that those other schools “got it right”. Not much waitlist movement there. Which means the next group down had a chance to “get it right” too. Not much waitlist movement there either. And it would at least appear that if anything WashU was more conservative than most of their peers. Their estimates were based upon greater yield reductions despite gaining additional traction with another year of ED2 + zero cost for regional under 75k families + incremental improvements to families wrt net price.
I’m sorry to everyone waiting for these decisions. I don’t think any school wants it to be this way, but unfortunately coming off a global pandemic in a test optional environment with minimal opportunity for schools visits is an extraordinary set of factors none of the admissions insiders have any experience in forecasting. The best model in the world is garbage if the assumptions feeding it are garbage. Unfortunately, schools had no way of knowing of their assumptions were garbage. Turns out they did a much better job managing numbers in ED and RD than even they expected.
I know that there were at least 2 versions of the email. My son got the one that said in essence, “sorry, we are full and we can’t offer you admission.” I saw the text of a different one on A2C—it was along the lines of “sorry, we are full and can’t offer you a spot at this time. But because you have expressed interest, if you’d like to stay on our waitlist and see if spots open up this summer, that’s cool.” So some kids get to hang around longer, presumably to be offered spots if WashU has excessive summer melt. But I’m not sure what the criteria was in selecting those kids, and I don’t know how many they are. Nor do I know what they mean by “expressed interest.” Can’t only be that since my son did send an LOCI. He’s fine and fully moved on to be excited about UCLA. The prolonged agony regarding waitlist decisions has just made a hard year harder for so many of you, and I’m really sorry. You guys had such a rough go of it, Class of 2021, but you are all brilliant and will go on to thrive. I’m sure of it!
1 Like
That makes sense. I imagine that WashU got an initial batch of final transcripts from high schools that last week of May from guidance counselors eager to jump start their summer, crunched some numbers vs prior years and realized that double deposits aren’t likely to be an issue.
With that question answered, they were able to release a lot of applicants from the WL. Excess summer melt via visa/vax issues are the likely unknowns requiring retention of a smaller WL.
I’m sorry to all of the WLers who were removed. You can do great things regardless of where you attend school. This is not the answer many want to hear, but at least it provides some clarity headed into summer break.
1 Like
For any of the remaining waitlisters lingering out there, a quick update from a few weeks ago re: summer melt. Apparently WashU is relocating 150 sophomores to the north residential campus because of an “unusually large” incoming class. Typically, they target an incoming class of 1800 and don’t recall them doing this when they’ve hit 1850 or so students in the past. This incoming class is over 1900. Maybe even pushing 2000.
That’s not to say a spot or two may not open, but they appear to have a sufficiently large class even if the internationals have difficulty getting into the country.