<p>Okay, I've been sitting on these feelings long enough, and now I'm going to let loose! Pardon the length of this rant, but it represents long pent up thoughts.</p>
<p>I am the parent of a WUSTL student who has immediate family ties to Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Penn, Brown, and Duke (add MIT, Berkeley, Johns Hopkins, etc. if we look at extended family; my husband's family is pretty extraordinary with regard to their academic accomplishments!). Thus, I think I can safely say I'm on pretty solid footing in being able to speak about WUSTL with regard to issues of prestige and quality without any sour grapes. </p>
<p>I read these posts bashing WUSTL (including those that insist they're not bashing WUSTL) with a mixture of bemusement and irritation. First, the rankings to which they refer are themselves so ridiculously flawed as to be of questionable validity. My naive dream is that someday US News et al. will provide the descriptive data they accumulate (information which I think is useful, although only to a limited degree) unaccompanied by numerical "rankings" (conclusions which are not terribly meaningful except for their marketing implications). I know how unlikely it is that I will ever see my desire fulfilled, but a girl can dream...</p>
<p>Second, as has been stated many times on these boards, ranking schools for their overall quality, however that is defined, glosses over the tremendous differences between the factors pertinent to undergraduate education and those relevant to graduate/professional education. While my undergraduate education and subsequent employment have involved some of the above-named institutions, my Ph.D. was from a program ranked at the top of my field but in a university (not one of the above) whose overall reputation was MUCH lower. Intellectual snobs within my field ooh and aah about the school I attended; those without such specialized knowledge generally attempt (not-too-successfully) to hide their sneers.</p>
<p>Third, the criteria for determining the relative quality of particular schools vary tremendously depending on the lens through which one is looking. My daughter chose WUSTL as her first choice school - with our enthusiastic support - because of a unique combination of factors. It was the best school by far in accommodating her specific combination of academic interests, some of which could not have been addressed even poorly at those schools CCers more typically love to love. While individual departments may not be ranked #1, the aggregate quality was/is of much greater interest to us. We care very much that our daughter receives instruction from people who are active and well-regarded in their fields and thus are able to provide accurate, up-to-date information and to apply well-informed judgment in their selection of topics and determination of emphases in their courses; for undergraduate purposes, however, we care very little (if at all) if her professors are likely candidates for the Nobel Prize. We care that she be surrounded by professors who enjoy teaching and interacting with their students inside and outside the classroom, and by peers who enjoy learning in the classroom and from one another. We care that the overall environment be characterized by adjectives like "warm", "friendly", "unpretentious", "supportive", "flexible", etc., and that the norm is to be encouraging of intellectual exploration rather than to be locked in to a narrow course of study or to be shaped prematurely by careerist values. These criteria are fulfilled in spades by her experience at WashU. If others used the same criteria that we've applied in considering schools for our daughter, WUSTL would be ranked at the very top.</p>
<p>Unlike so many students (and some other parents) on this board, my husband and I believe the purpose of an undergraduate education is to learn as much as possible about as much as possible; the undergraduate years, in many instances, are only minimally germane to vocational preparation. As long as one's education has depth as well as breadth, the necessary ingredients for succeeding in all practical ways can be built upon in one's graduate/professional education and early on-the-job training. The WUSTL students we know and know of have had no greater difficulties finding jobs and getting into graduate/professional programs than students at most other schools (that is to say, easy for some and relatively difficult for others, depending on their individual qualifications and fields of interest). </p>
<p>I am astounded sometimes by the seeming arrogance and sense of entitlement exhibited by students whose perception that WUSTL's ranking indicates the school has somehow grown too big for its britches and needs to be knocked down a few spots to be put back in its place is predicated on the idea that some of those who are waitlisted or rejected are "overqualified". For the majority of students of CC caliber, there is no such thing at WUSTL or elsewhere as either "under-" or "over-" qualified; there is only the matter of making the case for the right match. Pronouncements about whether WUSTL is ranked too high, too low, or just right depend on the exact subset of information upon which these conclusions are based, and will, of necessity, vary from person to person. Threads like this one are so pointless, I can't help but engage in a bit more wishful thinking by hoping that they might disappear from CC altogether. Like I said above, a girl can dream...</p>