<p>Name recognition wise, telling people I attend WashU will either draw a blank stare or a congratulations of some sort. So it is is not the WashU has a poor reputation, rather it is simply not well known. I have yet to meet a person who gave me a look of disdain when I answered their question – although such a being may exist.</p>
<p>They waitlist a bunch of people. They aren’t need blind and they don’t meet 100% of financial need, but it’s still a really good school. I’d say it’s about equal to NU or the lower ivies.</p>
<p>It’s problem is location like several good schools in the MW. No sex appeal.</p>
<p>Clearly Kyo*** doesn’t know much about WashU. </p>
<p>WashU is located in a very wealthy safe suburb of St. Louis. Whoever says WashU is in “the middle of St. Louis” clearly doesn’t know anything about the university, haha!</p>
<p>WashU is soooo overrated. Even by my Missouri friend. He says WashU students are arrogant and are obsessed with the USNews rankings. WashU sends tons of merit aid in order to build an Ivy league caliber student body. I really see nothing stellar outside premed, biology, social workers program, and the med school.</p>
<p>I agree, at least WashU is in one of the major cities in the midwest. But if you moved U Chicago or Northwestern or WashU to the west coast (no ivy competition, lol) it would probably turn into the next Berkeley/LA/Stanford/UW name-wise. At my school WashU is looked upon as it should be. A little easier to get into than the ivies but still no easy task. Its premed program is certainly well known here as well. </p>
<p>Another problem is that WashU doesn’t have any really famous alumni. The university and its graduate schools prepare many graduates for the real world but not many go onto found companies like Google which gives their alma mater a major reputation boost. The school is also relatively small (only about 1400 per class, undergrad).</p>
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<p>riiiiight… and this doesn’t apply to Harvard, Stanford, Princeton, MIT or any other top school, of course. Only WUStL.</p>
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<p>Your assumption that Berkeley, UCLA, Stanford > U Chicago, NU, WUSTL is in of and itself a very regional assumption. </p>
<p>To the poster who complains that they have an Ivy League student caliber body – well, yeah, that’s the whole point. I find it odd when people bash WUSTL for doing things to increase the caliber of its student body. Isn’t that … desirable?</p>
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<p>sorry, i sneezed. what did you say?</p>
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<p>Well, without US News, WUSTL would be about as quarter as famous as it is now. The other top schools… not so much. </p>
<p>My perception of WashU? Well, anytime somebody asks what programs WashU is known for I draw a blank. Good merit aid though.</p>
<p>Wash U has a strong undergraduate student body and has great success in placing students into the top companies and graduate schools. It’s probably a borderline top 10 school in that regard.</p>
<p>I personally don’t care for “faculty strength” or “program recognition” anyway. </p>
<p>These are the three statistics that matter and Wash U excels at all of them:
- law school acceptance percentage
- med school acceptance percentage
- relationship with the top financial, engineering and healthcare firms</p>
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<p>Oh, right, you definitely won’t find any arrogant students at Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, or any other top 15 school. Even though they have over 1200 students in each class, those schools only accept angels who would never dare brag about the name of their future alma mater.</p>
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<p>well, i guess that’s why WashU appeals to so many aspiring doctors, researchers, and scientists in general. Obviously if you fall under one of those categories, WashU will seem almost as good as the best of the ivy league. Then again, when searching for a university purely on academics, wouldn’t one only need an institution that excelled in the fields one wishes to study?</p>
<p>Both personally and from the experience of close friends, the general stereotype of WashU students is that they are the nicest of college students. Relaxed students who love academics. I have never heard any stereotypes of arrogance coming from WashU, and I certainly never expect to not hear one. Every school has its ******bags and jerks. What determines what one thinks of a school’s student body’s kindness is just how fast word spreads.</p>
<p>Regarding my regional assumption, yes, it was. If you think about it, being on the west coast, or any coast for that matter, has major advantages. more trade occurs on the coasts which leads to higher populated cities and towns. With larger states and more trading, that means those states have larger budgets to spend on their state universities. It’s just my opinion that the location of a school is a major factor in determining how famous it is (through history).</p>
<p>oh, and just re-reading through these posts, I realized there is soooooo much prejudice and bias apparent just in these posts alone, so continuing this thread is completely pointless. Good night all.</p>
<p>Wash U is a very good school, IMO probably the 6th-best research university in the Midwest after Chicago, Michigan, Northwestern, Wisconsin, and UIUC in that order. For purely undergrad education, Notre Dame, Carleton, Grinnell, Macalester, and Oberlin would give it a run for its money. It’s a “hot” school right now because it’s played the US News rankings brilliantly, giving it a certain amount of sizzle and elevating its selectivity stats. But basically it’s playing in the after-market for Ivy League wannabes, a place where the institution’s fortunes can fall as dramatically as they’ve risen.
I think these things are ephemeral. I’d predict that Wash U will shortly settle into its rightful place, around # 6 in the Midwest among research universities. Not bad. Not great.</p>
<p>The HYPS kids I know(and I know a a lot) can’t be called arrogant, because they back up their word with success. They’re confident. The WashU kids I know are arrogant. HYPS-level confidence while getting 2050 on the SAT and B’s in the hard classes.</p>
<p>Success does not justify arrogance.</p>
<p>Admittedly, I haven’t visited Washington University, but I have been considering it for quite a while now. The fact that it had a strong academic reputation, as well as a superb premed/med school reputation, is what interested me; I didn’t find out about its rank in the U.S. News Report until much, much later.</p>
<p>I just wouldn’t want to live in St. Louis. It’s frequently voted as one of the most dangerous cities in the U.S.</p>
<p>Lots of folks posting who have never even visited Wash U. If they had, they’d know that it’s actually in a pretty nice part of St. Louis and that the campus is very pretty.</p>
<p>As for its rep, I love the discussion because it so clearly reveals how Wash U has upset the status quo of higher education. For many decades, the historical powers had this game pretty much to themselves. Then a school like Wash U (which has been a darn good school for a long time, but has only more recently become part of the national picture) starts working its way up the rankings by boosting its selectivity, increasing its financial resources and dedicating more to faculty resources. The net effect is a sizable jump in rankings to where, much to the chagrin of the historical academic elites, Wash U is now a fixture in the USWNR Top 15. </p>
<p>As for its reputation among those in academia, don’t hold your breadth looking for that incestuous group to accept Wash U. In 1987, Wash U was ranked # 23 in by those in academia. In 2009, more than 20 years later and with a much larger national profile, Wash U was ranked # 20 (in a tie with 3 other colleges). Why? William Danforth (brother to former conservative Senator John Danforth who is also a religious leader and Episcopal priest) is the Chairman Emeritus of the school and was a prominent leader of the school for several decades until the mid-90s. As a semi-conservative and trust fund baby (from Ralston Purina), he’s a non-starter among the liberal cognescenti of the academic world. Mark Wrighton is the Chancellor and Edward Macias is the Provost. Both have been at the school for a long time and the academic elites don’t like their efforts to improve Wash U’s rankings and are loathe to reward the school with a higher standing in the academic world. However, it should be pointed out that Wash U was ranked in 1995 as one of the top schools for undergraduate teaching (which several of the historical powers did not achieve). </p>
<p>The fact is that Wash U is one of the premier colleges in the US and, for undergraduate students, one of the top four universities in the Midwest (along with U Chicago, Northwestern and Notre Dame). Its student body is among the best in the USA and certainly on par with any school not named HYPSM. If as part of your college experience you want a strong peer group in small classes at an institution that has deep pockets and will spend to support undergraduates, then Wash U is a terrific choice. </p>
<p>And if you have good stats, you’re probably in the running for some of their generous merit aid.</p>
<p>1) law school acceptance percentage
2) med school acceptance percentage
3) relationship with the top financial, engineering and healthcare firms </p>
<p>the only things that matter, ring of fire?</p>
<p>yeah, **** everything else, all that matters is entering one of these jobs because they make a lot of money. who gives a **** about what you really want to do, and if you aren’t in one of these fields, you aren’t worth ****.</p>
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Come on now, are you arguing with me just for the sake of arguing? Most students at prestigious schools who wish to be lawyers, doctors, engineers, investment bankers or management consultants. There are also quite a few who wish to go into public service or teaching, but that is still probably less than a quarter of the students.</p>
<p>So, if these few career paths are what graduates of top 20 schools aim to do, it makes sense to evaluate these institutions based on their success with helping students pursue these opportunities.</p>
<p>If you know a sizable amount of people who went to a top school that want to be bank tellers, custodians, retail employees, etc., please let me know.</p>
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Uh, not really. Wash U admits frequently turn down schools like Cornell, Brown, Penn, Duke, etc. to attend. It is no one’s safety school because it cares about demonstrated interest a lot. It is on par with every Ivy not named HYPSM and Northwestern, Chicago and Notre Dame for undergraduate education. Your alma mater would perhaps crack the top 5 for top Midwest schools.</p>
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What are you talking about? The stats for enrolled students at Wash U is stronger than most Ivies besides Dartmouth and perhaps Columbia. Don’t be jealous that Wash U students are getting a terrific eduction while enjoying their college experience. There’s nothing wrong with being proud of one’s alma mater.</p>