It sounds like they are basically saying that unless someone else withdraws (presumably if they get in on another waitlist), they aren’t going to admit anyone else. It’s always tough to hear, but better to know sooner than later.
My AO also said:
“If space does open up we will fill open seats from students who have accepted their spot on our watlist”
They probably wouldn’t even replace a loss 1 to 1. Not unless that person filled a very specific/unusual role. They’re not going to replace 5 kids with 5 WL kids. The enrollment targets aren’t that firm.
More than likely they need to experience appreciable losses due to surprise WL movement at “upstream” schools. If a couple hundred spots opened up at a group of 15 or so universities + 10 LACs and WashU lost 15 matriculants in that mess? Maybe.
If they anticipate that they will lose some matriculants from upstream schools on 6/15, then why does the email say that they will give us all a final decision by 6/15? Why won’t they wait after 6/15 while the upstream schools settle down on their enrollment and then return to the waitlist? I am just curious, the email was kind of certain on 6/15… I remember they sent out rejections much later than 6/15 last year, a year in which no one got off the waitlist
My AO said that there wasn’t a precise date.
Well, my AO never reply since I asked about the waitlist status 10 days ago…I think my email went straight to his trash folder
I don’t know if you heard 6/15 from the school or you were referring to something I said 3 weeks ago. A lot has happened since then. Many schools like Brown have closed their lists.
They may be keeping the door open a little longer this year because the app pool was a little different with demonstrated interest being eliminated and need blind being introduced. Maybe those who accepted are on average slightly softer commits than prior classes?
Most schools are through commencement and they’ve dug back in to this stuff. If something has yet to drop from a school that could pull current matriculants, it should happen fairly soon.
Thank you for your responses, they are very helpful! It seems like washu are being extra careful with this prolonged waiting… Kind of have to get ready to finally receive a rejection lol
Correct, but with so few they can determine exactly what they want. If they want to hit a certain enrollment or revenue target, they can choose to admit replacements. There is nothing unexpected left. Either way, getting admitted off the waitlist is an unlikely outcome for most going forward
Yeah. In some ways closure is easier. Looking at some of the schools that could pull students:
Rice, Brown, and Duke appear to be closed. Dartmouth is full. So they’ll only go to their WL if others poach their enrollees via WL. Columbia has released most of their WL student. They have a smaller group they’ll keep around just in case.
There has been a bit of movement at the following schools in the last 2-10 days: JHU, Penn, Northwestern and Cornell. It didn’t seem like a ton of invites, but hard to tell. No idea how many they invited and if or how many were WashU deposits. But the sliver of good news is that all 4 are big cross admits with WashU.
From the perspective of someone trying to get off the WashU WL, those are 4 of the 6 that are most likely to pull and woo a WashU commit. The other two being done (Brown and a Duke).
This is why the hold to 6/15 makes sense. Some of those kids accepting offers at those 4 schools will be notifying their current schools through next week.
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Correct. I don’t think they are too firm with enrollment targets though. At least they haven’t been in prior years. They’ve stated targets of 1800 in other years and they’ve wound up with 1750 or so after going to the WL and have been perfectly content. I think maybe a bigger consideration for them is housing. If they have the housing that opens up, the may pull in additional first years or transfers. There does seem to be higher than normal outbound transfer movement this year.
Some of that could be last years cycle being competitive. Kids also not finding their way due to Covid cutting into the social scene the last two years. There are some macro things that I think we’re facing as a society that lead some kids to feel like they were oversold on. I’ve heard kids grumbling about things like library hours being reduced (labor shortage) and food not being as good (supply chain/shortages), lack of mental health support (national shortage of therapists). Again, not necessarily WashU’s fault. They’re likely to see the same shortcomings elsewhere, but it hits different when you are seeing it up close at your school.
“It is unlikely that we will be admitting more students off the wait list this cycle. We will communicate to all students on our wait list once we formally release it. We appreciate your patience and your interest in WashU, and wish you the best as you conclude your senior year and begin the next chapter of your education.” This is from my AO, I assume they are going to close the waitlist soon…
My daughter received her official rejection from Wash U today. Best of luck to all.
Same here, D got the official rejection. Good luck everyone!
Official 2026 profile shows 3,764 admitted and April 14 article said 3,598 admitted by that date, so took 166 from wait list assuming the difference. Profile also shows Enrolled = 1858 which is a yield of 49.4%. (Last year was around 45.5%). This would show acceptance rate of 11.3% overall.
Profile also shows ED Acceptance rate = 27% and RD of 8%. But I have not found detailed breakout data on that.
I could tell they were being a lot more cautious about how many they accepted in ED1/ED2/RD versus last year’s numbers and knew they’d be carefully picking WL candidates which from this string looked finished around May 9th.
2026 Profile
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