<p>I've heard from some people that they inflated their ranking or something like that? How?</p>
<p>Check out this if you want to see WUSTL’s rise over the years. ;-)</p>
<p>[U.S</a>. News Rankings Through the Years](<a href=“http://web.archive.org/web/20070908142457/http://chronicle.com/stats/usnews/]U.S”>U.S. News Rankings Through the Years)</p>
<p>The trend doesnt seem that much different than UPenns or Northwesterns?</p>
<p>I thought that too, but I read somewhere on here that they improved things strictly for the rankings? I don’t know how to describe it, ugh</p>
<p>USC, too, but I think they have spent a lot recruiting better students with good merit money.</p>
<p>Use the CC search function to find threads and posts about WUSTL’s alleged manipulation of their US News ranking. It’s hard for me to judge whether these allegations have a good basis or not. </p>
<p>One concern seem to focus on WUSTL’s unusually heavy marketing efforts. I suppose the implication is that they are targeting high school students, many of whom have no realistic chance at admission, merely to boost the number of applicants (selectivity being one rating factor). Apparently the perceived “right” way to boost these numbers is to have enough substantive quality to attract students without heavy advertising.</p>
<p>Another concern focuses on WUSTL’s strategic use of the wait list. Allegedly, they wait list many highly qualified applicants, knowing that if admitted outright, many of them will choose to attend other (even more prestigious) schools. So this would be a strategy to boost admissions “yield”.</p>
<p>Again, I don’t know if these claims are accurate or have much bearing on the real (vs. perceived) quality of the school. Use your search function to explore these sometimes very heated posts.</p>
<p>No doubt WUSTL practices serious enrollment management. </p>
<p>From Naviance, 75% of the applicant’s from D’s New England public school were waitlisted! That’s an astounding percentage. No other school even comes close.
The best students do not get in; it’s primarily A- students. None of the waitlisted students accepted a spot on the wait list. </p>
<p>It’s almost as if, aside from ED, they just waitlist any numerically qualified applicant and then see who “really” applies by accepting a spot on the wait list. This way they can boost their yield by really only offering admission to those who accept a spot on the waitlist, but counting the others as rejections when calculating admissions rate.</p>
<p>^ O.K., here we have an observation, placed into context, with a number attached, all backing up a specific complaint.</p>
<p>If what ClassicRockerDad observes does reflect WUSTL’s general practice, then “enrollment management” is a euphemism. Redlining specific schools is a rather sleazy practice. So is profiling top students for rejection.</p>
<p>It would be one thing to weigh an individual applicant’s enthusiasm into the admission decision (choosing a good, enthusiastic candidate over an excellent, lukewarm candidate) based on information exposed in the individual application process. It’s another thing to practice applicant profiling based on statistics about previous applicant pools, rejecting well-qualified candidates only to jigger the rankings. A better approach would be to visit high volume, low-yield high schools, present a stronger case for making WUSTL a first choice destination, and encourage applications from students more likely to attend.</p>
<p>Recruiting top students with merit money is different. There are reasonable arguments for and against it. Anyway, it is widely practiced among schools more or less in WUSTL’s peer group (Hopkins, Duke, Chicago, Vanderbilt, Emory).</p>
<p>Just to clarify, top students get waitlisted not rejected. The only actual rejections are those with poor stats. I have no evidence because our Naviance plots don’t distinguish, but I suspect the acceptances are EDs because it jibes with the number enrolled, except for 1 admittee who didn’t enroll. That could still be an ED who backed out because of finances. </p>
<p>It is theoretically possible however, that these weren’t all EDs and they did an great job in figuring out who would actually attend and admitted only those (except for one).</p>
<p>*USC, too, but I think they have spent a lot recruiting better students with good merit money. *</p>
<p>My brothers and I recently discussed USC’s rise in rankings. My brothers went to USC for grad school - so they’re big USC fans (and I am, too.) Both felt that USC used some of the money that it received - either directly or indirectly - from its football domination to help fund merit scholarships and improve its faculty. Having a top football team brings in an immense amount of money to a school thru TV contracts, licensing fees, and thru alumni support. </p>
<p>They believe that there is a strong correlation between USC’s football dominance in recent decades, and its rise in rankings. I have to somewhat agree with that. Thoughts?</p>
<p>the marketing claim is ridiculous. We received so many more mailings from other schools than WUSTL! The mailings from WUSTL to our family started after we sent in a reply form requesting more information. We were bombarded by schools to which we never expressed any interest, and from the schools we were interested in, WUSTL’s mailings were not as frequent as some, and the ones they did send were all worthwhile and informative – unlike some other schools whose mailings were just silly reminders to keep their name in front of you. </p>
<p>In terms of acceptances, what’s wrong with admitting those students the school thinks are more likely to attend??</p>
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<p>Nothing is wrong in principle with admitting those students the school thinks are more likely to attend. However, waitlisting people at these percentages is IMHO a sham. </p>
<p>It is disingenuous to convince all of these people to spend time to apply RD when you have no intention of making a decision until they accept a position on the waitlist. </p>
<p>Can you imagine what would happen if every school practiced what WUSTL does? The whole process would not end until the end of the summer. Also, if every school did this, enrollment management wouldn’t work so well at WUSTL. In a sense, they are selfishly letting their peer schools bear all of the risk in forecasting yield.</p>
<p>"No doubt WUSTL practices serious enrollment management.</p>
<p>From Naviance, 75% of the applicant’s from D’s New England public school were waitlisted! That’s an astounding percentage. No other school even comes close."</p>
<p>Yeah, 4 people applied from ur D’s school and 3 ppl got waitlisted. WOW, THAT’S SO OUTRAGEOUS!</p>
<p>ditto on what classicrocker dad said; everyone waitlisted here; 1 admitted; </p>
<p>one more thing that was not mentioned but may account for astronomical admissions stats:</p>
<p>Wash U has a part 1 and part 2 application… part 1 is just basic info (like registering for a mailing list) yet counts as part of the application process…</p>
<p>the question is: does Wash U count in their applicant #'s the kids who send in part 1 but never finish the app? don’t send in transcripts/scores/recs?</p>
<p>SDon, our experience with WUSTL’s mail marketing is the opposite of yours. WU was the first to send unsolicited material to my 11th grader, and we received three mailings from them before getting anything from another school. To date WU has probably sent as much unsolicited material as all other schools combined even though she has never communicated with them in any way.</p>
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<p>More like ~40 people applied, ~30 got waitlisted, 5 got in, 5 got rejected, 4 enrolled.</p>
<p>According to WUSTL’s 2009-2009 CDS, 1720 applicants were offered a place on the WL. 822 accepted a place on it; 27 were admitted off it. That’s out of 20,224 applicants. So, 8.5% of applicants were WL’ed.</p>
<p>Compared to peer institutions, is this a high WL rate? Consider Vanderbilt. According to their 2008-2009 CDS, 16,944 students applied, 3109 were wait listed. That’s a WL rate of approximately 18%, or more than double WUSTL’s rate.</p>
<p>Chicago does not publish a CDS; apparently, Duke does not either. Maybe someone could check Emory, Northwestern, etc.</p>
<p>But as far as I know, there is no consistent way to expose the qualifications of wait listed vs. accepted applicants for an entire class. We depend on anecdotal reports. School by school Naviance data may be as good as it gets. Does anyone else see a pattern of higher stats among wait listed than among accepted students?</p>
<p>ClassicRockerDad, you’re saying that the stats of the 30 WL’ed were consistently higher than the stats of the 5 who got in?</p>
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<p>That’s very interesting. They must use which school you come from to assess a probability of a kid accepting the offer. It’s interesting to me that none of the kids in our school who were offered a place on the WL accepted one (or reported that they accepted one). I wonder if it’s a regional bias.</p>
<p>From previous CC post</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parent-cafe/245650-naviance-2.html?highlight=naviance[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parent-cafe/245650-naviance-2.html?highlight=naviance</a></p>
<p>I looked up Hopkinton, MA: 17 apps, 5 admits, 1 deny, 11 waitlist, 1 enroll. SAT > 1500 got in. </p>
<p>Hunterdon Central in NJ
<a href=“http://tcci.naviance.com/fc/signin.php?hsid=hcrhs[/url]”>http://tcci.naviance.com/fc/signin.php?hsid=hcrhs</a> no password required
20 applications, 3 accepted 2 denied 15 waitlisted (75%). 5 people accepted a position on the waitlist, 1 got in, 4 were denied, one with a 1600/1600 SAT and a 4.3 Weighted GPA.</p>
<p>I thought WashU was one of the few schools never released their Common Data Set (CDS)…</p>