<p>714 - From what I saw when I was there, I am inclined to say that WASHU has a policy to reject assertive and independent students. Of course, it is a good move on their part, otherwise, transfer out of their school would skyrocked.</p>
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You’re kidding, right?</p>
<p>Some of those rankings use factors like ratemyprofessors.com, for crying out loud. At least USNWR uses hard data (except PA) and doesn’t put South Carolina State above Yale.</p>
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Dear goodness. Just when I thought posts couldn’t get more absurd.</p>
<p>More absurd then “WASHU has a policy to reject its less humble applicants?”</p>
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<p>One ranking uses this factor. So ignore whichever ones you wish. But you cannot seriously suggest that all of these other rankings as a whole are less reputable than the US News ranking alone.</p>
<p>The key thing to note is that the US News ranking is the one that is being actively gamed, not the others.</p>
<p>Isn’t it coincidental that the one (US News) ranking that WUSTL can and does game is the only one in which it is over-ranked?</p>
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<p>According to WashU logic: less humble = more qualified!</p>
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By that reasoning, Dartmouth and Brown must be equally adept at “gaming” the rankings. After all, they fare quite poorly in several of those rankings.</p>
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On the contrary, I can and do. While USNWR has its blips (Berkeley and other top publics ranked too low, USC and other schools ranked slightly too high), generally it’s the best one-size-fits-all ranking out there.</p>
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<p>What are you talking about? Brown is more prestigious and selective than WUSTL, but the former places below the latter in the US News rankings. Also, Brown dominates WUSTL in cross-admit battles, considering it loses decisively only to HYPSMC.</p>
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<p>Whatever you say, Mr. Zuckerman.</p>
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Don’t worry. I’ll put things in simple terms for you.</p>
<p>Let’s look at how Dartmouth fares in some of your “reputable” rankings.</p>
<h1>21 THES</h1>
<h1>35 Washington Monthly</h1>
<h1>59-77 AWRU (Shanghai Jiao Tong)</h1>
<h1>127 Forbes</h1>
<h1>11 USNWR</h1>
<p>Which ranking do you think is the most accurate? Unless, of course, you wish to claim that Dartmouth is “gaming” USNWR and should really be ranked #127.</p>
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<p>LAC-ish schools such as Dartmouth and Brown do not fare well in these types of rankings. But there is nothing LAC-ish about WUSTL. Not only does it have med, law and biz schools, but also dental, engineering and architecture schools. So there’s no excuse why WUSTL doesn’t do better in these other rankings, except for the fact that it is not nearly as good as US News would suggest.</p>
<p>Interestingly, WUSTL jumped (in one year) from #161 to #60 in the most recent THES-QS rankings. Maybe it’s expanding its gaming horizons?</p>
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<p>I didn’t know what you were trying to say until you edited your post after the fact. Sorry I cannot read minds.</p>
<p>This is a stupid thread…it’s just one big argument about nothing.</p>
<p>eucalyptus, thank you for proving my point. My argument about WashU rejecting arrogant applicants was no less ridiculous than the assertion that they reject overqualified applicants to game rankings. So both arguments should be dismissed. </p>
<p>interestingguy, I am, in fact, interested. What is your personal experience with WashU?Why the vendetta? </p>
<p>I’m sure WashU’s top 25 business and law schools are really bringing it down in the other rankings, as well as their #3 med school and top 10 architecture school. The engineering school is undergoing a total revamping right now, so it will be interesting to see how it does in the future. You did forget about the social work school though. A lowly number 1 in the country. But we all know social work is for people with no ambition. </p>
<p>further, WashU no longer has a dental school. It has been closed for 20 years. Please get your facts straight before you decide to degrade an institution.</p>
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<p>My point is that global surveys rank WashU lowly despite its extensive professional schools, the lack of which hurts schools such as Brown and Dartmouth. The only (gamed) ranking which rates Washu highly is US News. No other reputable US-based ranking (e.g. Revealed Preferences, WSJ Feeder, Newsweek, etc.) puts WashU anywhere near the top 15.</p>
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<p>I think one of the reasons is that they want to preserve their merit-scholarships. A need-blind policy and merit-scholarships at the same time would put too much pressure and they are not sure they can actually substain that. That’s what I don’t like about merit-scholarship at top schools. Everyone at WashU is gonna be top student anyway and it’s silly to differentiate; it’s unjustified when it stops the school from committing to need-blind admission. The problem is these merit-scholarships were set up way back when WashU was considered a backup school; once they are here, it’d be weird and probably difficult (since donors may specify the money to certain scholarships; the same donors could have given their money to need-blind scholarship; so that’s where the competition exists) to eliminate. This is just my speculation. </p>
<p>Northwestern test-ran a merit-scholarship program 2 years ago because they saw that they were losing more and more cross-admits to the ones that gave merit-based scholarships. Some people on CC received the offers without submitting any separate application. This past cycle, nobody on CC said he/she got it. So apparently, NU probably didn’t give any this year. The fact that NU never commit to a specific number of merit-scholarship and a specific amount for each of them gave them an exit strategy; they can just drop it and concentrate on just the need-based ones when the economy gets tough. This shows you how expensive need-blind admission is for even a school as well-endowed as NU; imagine what happens when schools do both at the same time.</p>