I don’t mean anything negative to the school by this post (I’ll actually be attending next fall), I’m just legitimately curious. According to USNews, I saw that WashU had stabilized around #11 in the mid-2000’s, peaking at #9 in 2003, before dropping to the #18 spot of today, which it hasn’t been since 1994. Just throwing something out there, I know Mark S. Wrighton has been chancellor since 1995, but I’m sure this isn’t the reason.
I also saw that its acceptance rate had actually increased from 15% to its now 16-17%, which I know isn’t a huge difference, but it’s strange considering the normal trend of top colleges acceptance rates being driven into the ground.
I think name recognition is a big thing, which may serve a much more important place that it used to be. I guess WashU does not benefit from the age of internet like other top-tier universities do because the “name” is not hyped up. As a result, fewer applicants make WashU’s admission rate go up, which in turn could affect WashU’s ranking. The students enrolled each year are roughly the same.
WashU has increased the number of applicants each year so I wouldn’t say that they are getting fewer applicants. I have a feeling that they will get a record number of applicants for this year’s high school class.
I wouldn’t put much credence in rankings based on subjective variables. Forbes ranks WashU signifanctly lower than US News and World Reports. Other peer schools to WahU suffer from the same thing from Forbes as well.
As long as people don’t say ‘Seattle is nice’ when I tell them where my son goes to school is fine with me.
I think name recognition is a big thing, which may serve a much more important place that it used to be. I guess WashU does not benefit from the age of internet like other top-tier universities do because the “name” is not hyped up. As a result, fewer applicants make WashU’s admission rate go up, which in turn could affect WashU’s ranking. The students enrolled each year are roughly the same.
I think name recognition is a big thing, which may serve a much more important place that it used to be. I guess WashU does not benefit from the age of internet like other top-tier universities do because the “name” is not hyped up. As a result, fewer applicants make WashU’s admission rate go up, which in turn could affect WashU’s ranking. The students enrolled each year are roughly the same.
For what it’s’ worth, rank 18 and 14 is separated by a mere ONE point (don’t remember the exact points, but it’s like 84 vs 85). So, the difference in the ranking is REALLY small, so consider them equal.