<p>sorry you missed my point. the sports correlation was made to show what affects popularity and perception of a school. its obvious that duke only became uber "well-known" because of basketball. 30 years ago no one knew what duke was. When people think "duke" they think its a hard school to get into, which it is, but the vast majority of the public also just thinks of duke as a basketball powerhouse. </p>
<p>Now washu, which is academically comparable to duke, doesn't have that name-brand recognition that duke has - mainly because they don't have a nationally recognized sports team. so people don't think its "as good" simply because it isn't well-known. I think people are saying washu is overrated/ranked too high because they didn't get in/got waitlisted at a "no name" school.</p>
<p>smart kids don't apply to schools because they got a postcard with the picture of the school on it. Did you apply to every school you got postcards from? please.</p>
<p>2nd off, people who apply to schools like northwestern or chicago KNOW what washu is. They arn't just befuddled when they see "hmm washu i wonder what that school is." They're getting the same type of applicants. Mass marketing would just seem to increase the amount of bad applicants. But Washu manages to, as what everyone here says "wait list or reject the best applicants and take the middle of the pack who are guarrenteed to go." HOW is it that washu's middle of the pack is just as good as all these other "better schools" best applicants.</p>
<p>if chewbacca lives on endor, you must acquit. i rest my case.</p>
<p>Ah, I see your point. Duke has been popular longer than WUStL, I think. It's hard to predict where it will go in the future. From 1991 (I don't have access to rankings before that) to the present, Duke has never been out of the top 10 and has ranged from 3 to 7. WUStL, on the other hand, has single-handedly increased its rank from 24 to 11 in the same lapse of time! :eek: </p>
<p>I swear, sometimes I wish we sucked at sports like the Ivies. Our academics are just as good, but most people think sports and academics are incompatible (including many ignorant high schoolers on CC). :mad: Oh, well. Their loss- who wants prestige whores, anyway? :p</p>
<p>I'd never seen other schools count subfields as "programs" when they list the number of ranked programs they have. But WashU is unique in this. The school of medicine alone has 12 subfields in top-10 and counting the overall ranking, that's 13! Most other schools, if not all, use only the overall ranking for the medical school and count that as 1 program. "political methodology" is a subarea of poli sci and "creative writing" is a subarea of English. So here, WashU calls it 2 programs in top-10 whereas other schools don't count anything.</p>
<p>yes, they gave out "about 200" scholarships last year. .25x 1400 (approx size of freshman class) is 350. So say the best 200 students are on scholarship. So take the 200 away. You have 850 students who scored 1360 and or better on their sats and 150 with 1520 or better who arn't on scholarship. you guys are ridiculous.</p>
<p>there are good schools out there that arn't the traditional "ivy leage and ivy equivalent." you guys have really no basis for saying that wustl is overrated besides your opinion and your belief that they make up admission and faculty numbers.</p>
<p>I'd never seen other schools count subfields as "programs" when they list the number of ranked programs they have. But WashU is unique in this. The school of medicine alone has 12 subfields in top-10 and counting the overall ranking, that's 13! Most other schools, if not all, use only the overall ranking for the medical school and count that as 1 program. "political methodology" is a subarea of poli sci and "creative writing" is a subarea of English. So here, WashU calls it 2 programs in top-10 whereas other schools don't count anything."</p>
<p>-------Sam Lee brings up another good point. I didn't even know WUSTL did that! That is quite the find....</p>
<p>Many top 20 schools (other then Wustl) give merit scholarships.</p>
<p>UChicago (10% of the class gets 10K plus 20-25 full-tuition ones).
JHU (20-25 scholarships)
Duke -30-40 full-tuition scholarships.
Emory - 25 full ride, 50 full tuitions, 100 - 2/3 tuitions.
Vanderbilt - 30 full tuition, about 100 half and 75% tuitions.
CMU - don't remember but several dozens for sure.
UMichigan and UNC give a lot of merit aid as well (of course not that much compared to size).</p>
<p>WashU's 15 full-tuition ones and 40-50 or so half tuitions are not out of line. Other ones that they give are more community-service and diversity-driven, so they don't necessarily bring higher scorers.</p>
<p>There are also many other top schools (including CalTech) that give merit scholarships. Are you saying CalTech is also (as WashU) buying high scorers.</p>
<p>This is ridiculous? WashU buying smart kids with merit scholarships. For one, It seems to me that merit money is supposed to award students who do well in certain areas and entice them to a school. To characterize this as a crime is wrong on so many levels. I guess Harvard is buying poor smart people with their new under 60,000 a year rule</p>
<p>Also, how is chosing to admit the students they think will go a contradiction...umm most schools do this. This isn't something that is unique to WashU. The ivies reject students who they don't think will enjoy the school and so does pretty much every other school. This in no way contradicts the point that WashU plays a game where they waitlist qualified applicants and admits subpar applicants.</p>
<p>I guess we're gonna say washu is overrated now because not only do they send a lot of mail, but they use the common app to make it easier for even more students to apply and increase their numbers. Shame on WashU, and lets just ignore every other school that sends mail and uses the common app as well. Come on, lets be sensible, anyone who simply wastes $55 on an app fee to apply to a school, without researching it, just because they sent then a piece of mail doesn't deserve to go to college anyway.</p>
<p>AcceptedAlready, i appreciate your input, however, it seems to me that you are assuming that every action WashU takes is with the motive to increase its USNews rankings. You cite things that WashU does to this, but they are pretty much the same exact things other schools do, but u assume that WashU is doing it to rise in rankings. I don't think that is an acceptable assumption my friend.</p>
<p>I don't know if it's overrated or not, but it's not very well known. It was the only top 25 usnews school I had never heard of before my college search.</p>
<p>"
AcceptedAlready, i appreciate your input, however, it seems to me that you are assuming that every action WashU takes is with the motive to increase its USNews rankings. You cite things that WashU does to this, but they are pretty much the same exact things other schools do, but u assume that WashU is doing it to rise in rankings. I don't think that is an acceptable assumption my friend."</p>
<p>I appreciate yours too and its nice to have an intelligent conversation over the internet without resulting to flames. </p>
<p>Yes it is VERY true that all schools (even Harvard) cares about yield but we have all heard of "Tufts Syndrome" and shady things like not releasing waitlist data or become need-blind as well as using huge marketing ploys (and not releasing marketing budgets) has many people asking questions.</p>
<p>Other schools take actions that are much smaller in scale or even on a different basis than WUSTL. For example, other schools release waitlist data and are need-blind even if their endowment is comparatively poor compared to WUSTL. </p>
<p>Check the other boards and you can see that for a variety of schools you can predict using GPA/SAT and interests whether or not a student will get in. For UVA for example (my state flagship) the list of accepted students go in order from 4.0 to 3.6 GPA's for accepted students. You won't see a random 4.0 student getting rejected at all (The sample size was only around 200 kids combined for 3 years but not a single high GPA/SAT kid got rejected; obviously if you have other bad traits like being expelled you may be in trouble).</p>
<p>The same goes for Georgetown (we had a lot of Northern VA kids apply there) and you won't see a single qualified high GPA/SAT kid get rejected). Now, our school didn't apply much to WUSTL but I currently go to college with quite a few kids who went to Stuyvesomething in NY. It is a top school and I was shown Stuy's online data for 2005.</p>
<p>I bet you can still find Stuy's accepted/rejected/waitlisted list and the same kids with the SAT/GPA who were accepted to Ivies were often NOT accepted to WUSTL even when they were accepted to schools like Rice, CMU, UChicago, Northwestern, etc. </p>
<p>Obviously something is going on as many kids agree (even the ones who are arguing in this thread FOR WUSTL, aka jags) who said ""they choose to admit the candidates whom they feel are most likely to attend. ""</p>
<p>This thread has become too serious. :rolleyes:</p>
<ul>
<li>Washington University in Saint Louis has joined #ivyleague
<penn> omg ur kidding
<cornell> haha yeah rite
<yale> nice try
<penn> loll!!!!11!!!!
<cornell> u suck dont come back
<columbia> ur name is like 1000000 chars
<dartmouth> u have been flamed n00b. gg.</dartmouth></columbia></cornell></penn></yale></cornell></penn></li>
<li>Washington University in Saint Louis was kicked by harvard (dude, like, ***?)</li>
</ul>
<p>wash u is a good school but not exceptional. I have two friends who got scholarships to wash u but they still went to penn. What really annoys everyone, however is how they dare waitlist the best students in their applicant pool; they're playing games that no other elite college would play. In this manner, they're just playing games to boost their rankings on usnews.</p>