<p>Recently Parchment.com changed its students' preference to Wash U DRASTICALLY.</p>
<p>According to the site, Wash U's cross-admits over top schools are as follows; 48% over H, 52% over Y, P and Penn, 58% over S, 56% over MIT, 69% over Columbia, 51% over Duke, 50% over U Chicago, Johns Hopkins, UC Berkeley and Amherst, 53% over Brown, 67% over Dartmouth, 61% over Cornell, 57% over Rice and Williams, 63% over Vanderbilt, and 66% over Northwestern.</p>
<p>That’s actually quite impressive. A possible explanation could be the right people were on the website at the right time. What I mean by this is that students who were accepted to WashU who frequented the website actually accepted WashU’s offer over a peer (for instance Duke). Also lets say three people were on the website and had the option between Dartmouth and WashU and two picked WashU and one picked Dartmouth, the percentage would be =66% to WashU and =33% to Dartmouth. Another explanation is that WashU is an up and coming star who was late to the game and is now gaining the recognition and respect it deserves. According to the USNWR 2014, WashU was rated 9 in terms of selectivity (usually it is rated 6-7 in terms of student selectivity). To put this into perspective, Duke has a student selectivity of 12, Brown at 12, Northwestern at 15, JHU at 21, Dartmouth at 12, and UPENN at 9. Student selectivity is essentially indicative of how strong the incoming student body is in terms of academics (i.e. test scores, GPA, class rank). Also WashU is very generous with their offer of financial aid/merit scholarships so it is known for attracting many valedictorians hence their average incoming freshman having 96% in the top 10 percent of their class.</p>
<p>Yes, those acceptance rates are not correct. Those acceptance rates are based on people who have gotten into WashU and have posted their stats on the parchment website. The reason why it is so high for all the schools is due to the fact that those who are rejected are less likely to post their stats, thus inflating the acceptance rates to all three schools. (Referring to dadfor2014’s post).
Washington University in St. Louis’s acceptance rate is 15%.
Duke University’s acceptance rate is 12%.
Harvard University’s acceptance rate is 6%.</p>
<p>“Student selectivity is essentially indicative of how strong the incoming student body is in terms of academics (i.e. test scores, GPA, class rank)”</p>
<p>This is true. However, selectivity is not a perfect measure of the strength of the student body. Since selectivity depends on (1) socio-economic factors (such as parent’s income and education level) and (2) studying time to get those scores (in spite of low potential or insufficient innate talent). Moreover, other factors (maturity, values, motivation, communication skills based on cultural diversity, and critical-thinking skills) are crucial for realizing academic and life success at college as well as at his or her life after UG. </p>
<p>Because of this, most top schools prefer to select the well-rounded talents rather than students showing excellent GPA and SAT scores with relatively not-so-impressive others. </p>
<p>I was thinking the percentages are close to correct, e.g WUSTL 15% acceptance rate is overall, their must be few students who will have higher then 15% and few who will have lower then 15%, Site looks at all the students who put their stats of acceptance, applying and even rejected on the site web page</p>