@JustVisiting76 How do you know WashU doesn’t give a huge bump for legacy?
WashU sent a fee waiver email today. Check your emails if you are interested.
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We got a very high EFC from using the WashU Net Price Calculator. More than CMU, much more than Michigan (OOS), Cornell,etc…
I have family that were faculty there. They liked it very much.
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Thank you! (sorry late reply)
I got into WashU!
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The city itself is quite blue. I believe Cori Bush is their congresswoman. The mayor, Tishaura Jones, recently visited and spoke to the Campus Democrats. During parents’ weekend the university sponsored multiple walking and bus tours, including one focusing on Black history in St Louis that was led by an alum and was well-attended. The city of St Louis has a face mask mandate.
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The student body overall is liberal (especially in the College of Arts and Sciences) though there is a mix. It isn’t Berkeley. There is a large LGBTQ community and a lot of students are vocal about opposing fraternities (probably the most contentious issue on campus). There are a lot of opportunities for community service via the Gephardt Center. For Students | Gephardt Institute for Civic and Community Engagement | Washington University in St. Louis
Overall I’ve been impressed with how well-run a place WashU seems to be; the administrators seem very competent and good at their jobs. The first-year student center has been very good about alerting parents to issues and taking a “whole student” approach. That extends to financial aid - they do meet need and anticipate other needs such as the cost of a job interview outfit. They also have an active program to support first-gen and low-income students. If they decide that you qualify for financial aid they seem more generous and aware of other needs, compared with other institutions.
OVERALL the student population is pretty affluent BUT I think that will change now that they are going need blind. I think that aspect of the school is similar to other prestigious colleges.
Also see my response to relaxmon below.
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I go to a fairly affluent, upper-middle class suburban high school in SoCal. A ton of people apply to WUSTL (and a fair number get in), but they usually commit elsewhere. I think it has to do with location - Saint Louis isn’t the safest city (similar to NYC or Chicago), but it also doesn’t have that “cool” factor that other NYC/Chicago do.
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With a 13% acceptance rate that is amazing that a fair number from your SoCal high school get in. From our local high schools (upper middle class suburban NorCal) only 1 - 3 get in each year. Agree, St Louis does not have the “cool” reputation that some of the other cities do. Don’t know anything about the safety but I am sure they have lots of campus security.
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I haven’t read through the whole thread, but I think WashU is less of a household name because of the combination of not having D1 sports and its location in the middle of the country.
People don’t get the same vague familiarity that comes with seeing a school’s teams on TV or seeing the name in national news articles produced by East-Coast-based news organizations that frequently use more local sources.
I agree. In terms of sports, they’re a D3 school. Their teams do very well within the division but WashU is not at the level where it gets television exposure; the average person isn’t going to be aware of WashU because of a big bowl game or spot in an NCAA basketball bracket. More the scholar-athlete than the athlete-scholar model. Going to the football game isn’t a big thing for many if not most students on a Saturday.
I think St. Louis is an underrated city. It’s got a world class art museum, great theater and a highly respected symphony. There are a lot of interesting neighborhoods and the lower cost of rent means that there are independent merchants and interesting thrift stores, book shops, coffee shops and cat cafes, as well as some excellent restaurants and a new food hall featuring diverse cuisines. The campus itself is gorgeous as is the surrounding neighborhood. The neighborhoods around WashU, and Forest Park, feel relatively safe. I have been there a few times now (and explored some of the city’s neighborhoods) and felt safer there than in Providence, New Haven, or the area around Columbia U. As with ALL American cities, there are areas of poverty with gun violence. Historically, racial injustice and “urban renewal” projects devastated many St. Louis neighborhoods, similar to the history of MANY US cities. The city’s neighborhoods have a rich history if one takes the time to look.
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We also got a very high number from the NPC - MUCH higher than other schools (15-20k higher). It surprises me to see how many others are raving about the excellent FA; is it possible the NPC is incorrect? Or perhaps they weight home equity and savings more heavily than other schools.
my school has insane grade inflation + lots of AP’s lol. probably helps
Your comment about WashU’s endowment is incorrect. The only endowment it doubles is that of Brown. And its endowment is $500 million less than that of Duke.
Here are the rankings, according to Newsweek (The 30 Universities With the Largest Endowments):
- Duke - $8,626,248,037
- WashU - $8,130,483,000
- Cornell - $6,974,636,536
- Vanderbilt - $6,270,876,534
- Dartmouth - $5,731,322,087
- Brown - $3,976,694,000
Browns endowment is $6.9 billion.
“Brown closed its fiscal year on June 30, 2021, with an endowment market value of $6.9 billion.”
Wash U also had great returns…
Apologies but your endowment data is dated.
Also comparing Brown to Wash U by endowment size has to be contextualized to understand it.
Brown has a total of 9,948 students of which 68% (6,792) are undergraduates. It is an academic institution focused on undergraduate education that has some exceptional but small graduate programs.
U Wash has a total of 17,047 students (1.73 times greater then Brown) of which only 47% (8,058) are undergraduates. Graduate schools generate significantly greater revenue and offer less financial aid. This dynamic and disparity of focus on undergraduate vs graduate programs is largely accountable for the disparity in endowments.
With that said both schools are more then adequately able to support their students and I suspect no student at any of these schools or their peers would feel deprived of resources.
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I took small classes from Willian Gass, Stanley Elkin, Gerald Early. and Douglass North when attending WashU undergraduate. The intellectual foundations of WashU are spectacular.
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Had to throw in a response here even though the thread is old - I do think WashU is a secret to some, and I’m a case in point that has now come full circle!
I grew up in NC and went (in the 90s) to Princeton. Accepted Early Action - also received a Morehead Scholarship to University of North Carolina (which I declined). Only other schools I applied to were Duke and Dartmouth which I withdrew after the above decision. I did a whole east coast tour and never heard of WashU from a single resource in North Carolina back then. (To the original poster, maybe it’s a Southern/East Coast thing?)
Flash forward, my Princeton grad husband went to Stanford GSB, I went to Hopkins for a masters in history. Still never heard of WashU!
We moved to Maryland and had a daughter applying (in 2019) to college for Fall 2020 which is the FIRST time I ever heard of WashU. Some of the private schools here had some students there - was a dream school of a friend of hers that did not get in. (My oldest went to Davidson in NC. Also a “secret,” but that’s another post!)
A year and a half later, I visited with my younger daughter (peak Covid so no tour but we visited a classmate of my 2020 daughter) and we were BLOWN away. Had read that it was highly regarded and in top 10 of Universities but had NO idea that it was so beautiful (I’m biased but architectural similarities to Princeton make my heart happy), had so much to offer academically, the uniqueness of the South 40 and Villages living situation, the different schools, the cool vibe of The Loop. No idea!
So, as I said in opening, we’ve gone from no idea to completely impressed. My youngest is now attending WashU in Class of 2026.
(My completely personal $0.02 - I kind of think some of it is that WashU just set about building it’s own stellar university out in St. Louis and doesn’t care what the “old folks” (Ivies) or other top schools are doing. My DD loved how early WashU admitted women as compared to some of those on similar lists. Daughter is a Comp Sci/STEM student and in that regard, WashU just built and opened one of the only dedicated, new Comp Sci buildings we saw at many of these schools in the McKelvey Engineering area. It’s incredible. (Starbucks named “Bytes” in the lobby and on the meal plan!) She wants to double major with Chemistry which is in Arts & Sciences, which she can do - and there are several other dual comp sci programs incl with math and business. Beyond the Arts & Sciences and McKelvey School of Engineering, it has the Olin Business School or the Sam Fox School of Art & Architecture. Reminds me a little of Vanderbilt in its different school structures. Anyway, the uniqueness of the living community with the South 40, the number of food options was fairly unparalleled with the other east coast schools she considered. It had stayed on the list since we saw it - so I guess I’d encourage anyone with a curious student to consider it!)
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Congrats on your youngest kid’s admission and I hope the school treats your family well. I enjoyed my time there and by random life events, have found myself back in STL with my family. My wife and I aren’t from here and yet here we are living a couple miles from campus. Go figure. If you have any questions related to things to do, places to eat, etc, feel free to PM.
When I attended in the 90s, my general impression was that it was known by the sort of people/families who would apply to Northwestern/UChicago type schools from the Midwest. It was also well known among similar families from NY/NJ/Eastern PA/MD/DC. Outside of those regions, it was well known in upper middle class Jewish circles. I’d estimate that 80% of the people in my class who came from GA, TX, FL and the West Coast were Jewish. There was probably still a hangover effect from some of the quota systems those kids’ grandparents and the older parents faced at other institutions in prior generations. My class was roughly 40% Jewish. But elsewhere in the country in other circles, it wasn’t particularly known.
The investments they have made in the school over the last 25 years have been incredible and the nuts and bolts and financial standing have definitely improved. This next point is applicable more to highly selective colleges generally and is in no way specific to WashU: I do think it has lost a bit of its soul due to the emergence of the ultra competitive admissions landscape and “stress culture”. Kids today are not as happy on average and there’s less “learning for the sake of learning” or “doing because it’s fun/interesting” and more “results oriented” learning/doing. But again, that’s not indicative of everyone and that’s not limited to WashU, but it’s something I’ve definitely noticed.
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I love this story, thanks for sharing and I’m so excited for your daughter!! I was WashU '14 and loved my experience there, made wonderful friends and connections that have always boosted me in my career.
One special thing I want to call out about WashU grads is that many of us chose this school because it had a reputation for being inter-disciplinary and collaborative and having a service-oriented mindset. Unsurprisingly, students who self-selected for those values also tend to be guided by them as they launch a career. Sure, there are definitely some really smart and ambitious students there who climb the corporate ladders (and serve on nonprofit boards), but at least among my circles, WashU students tended to think really critically about how they wanted to use their skill set and passions to serve others and address critical problems – whether through STEM, business, arts, medicine, law, etc.
I think it’s just invaluable to spend four years in a place that actively encourages you to develop your own vision for what you want to do with your career – before you enter a corporatized world eager to gobble up agile young minds and turn them into profit machines. Several of my friends have left high-earning jobs to take on work they felt was more meaningful – from Big Law to federal government, corporate marketing to a climate tech start-up, blending engineering with public health, picking OBGYN or pediatrics instead of orthopedics, etc. I hope all colleges have that sort of culture, but from my experience, I can tell you that WashU definitely does.
As for WashU being a ‘secret,’ your story is very similar to mine – it’s not a secret among high school admissions counselors or hiring managers in basically any field anywhere in the US, but because the school’s star only really started to shine nationally in the last 20ish years, it’s unfamiliar to a generation of parents not from the Midwest (including mine).
When my guidance counselor recommended I apply to WashU senior year, I looked it up in my big Fisk book and thought “This sounds like just what I want, why haven’t I heard of it until now?!” Well, it’s because I was the oldest child growing up in CA in the 2000’s with parents who didn’t talk to other parents about colleges (and also because I read the book in alphabetical order and hadn’t quite hit the W’s yet 
). But that didn’t matter, because my college counselor was well-informed and pointed me in the right direction!
When I got to WashU I met tons of kids from CA, NYC, Chicago, DC, Boston, Texas, Miami, and tons of mid-size cities (and rural areas too), so I’m pretty sure the guidance counselors there know about it too, and then those alums go spread the word everywhere when they get accepted to great grad schools or hired at top companies. The secret is out!!
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We are in California. I’ve never heard of any kids who have attended let alone applied. Saint Louis isn’t a big draw, at least not here.
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I agree- location is the reason, also the name is a little generic. I do think among people who pay attention to colleges it would be considered more prestigious than USC. At least in the private school circles my kids and I grew up in. I would consider it a similar school to Rice, Johns Hopkins- a top tier university on par with the ivies. One of my kids has a friend there who likes it.
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