For the class of 2025, Wash U received 33, 634 applications. That’s one poorly kept secret.
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It was ranked #1 on the NYT list of “richest students,” (most kids from the 1%), which is a turn-off to some, and it’s also ranked in the top ten for crime rate among schools its size on some list or other. That said it Is very popular with NYC students.
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Would be interesting to know the acceptance rate & yield & number of ED applications for the most recent classes.
Not sure, but my impression is that WashUStL is viewed as a back-up school rather than a first choice school for many applicants.
Overlap schools: Chicago, Vanderbilt, Northwestern, Rice, Cornell, Duke, Stanford, & Yale.
(Only Northwestern & Vanderbilt list WashUStL as an overlap school.)
Somewhat surprised that WashUStL did not list Michigan as an overlap school. (Michigan does not list WashUStL as an overlap FWIW even though both are located in the Midwest & offer business & engineering among their majors.)
This year was unusual because of TO. Many top schools received twice as many.
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Regardless of the reason, any college that receives almost 34K applications hardly qualifies as a “secret”.
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I believe Colgate received twice as many applications this year, which primarily relates to reasons other than going test optional. While most “top schools” did receive a large increase in applications related to test optional, none besides Colgate received anything near twice as many. Some specific numbers for WUSTL are below
Class of 2024 – 27,949 applied, 4,475 admitted (16%), 1899 enrolled (42%)
Class of 2025 – 33,634 applied (20% increase over prev year), 4,374 admitted (13%)
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According to College Tuition Compare, the Wash U average acceptance and yield rates for 2011-20 are 16% and 36% respectively. For 2019, they were 14% and 49% respectively. For 2020, 16% admit, 42% yield.This year it was a 13% admit rate. Yield rates are too recent for me to find, but Ivy Coach says that 60% of their seats were filled with 2 rounds of early decision and and with QuestBridge acceptances. So, I’m guessing that their yield rate will again be at least in the 40s.
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Wash U sits on the border of Illinois and Missouri. About 20% of their domestic students are from those 2 states, 13% are from California, and 10% are from New York. No other single state has more than 5%. 22% of the total student are international students.
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Crime stats are a bit squirrely, bc the city itself is small geographically and in terms of population, many parts of the metro area are actually in the county, so don’t add population to the denominator for crime counts. The university itself sits just by the western edge of the city and the different “city” of Clayton – the experience of campus life is not “edgy” urban but rather hip, plus bucolic bc campus is close to Forest Park and the zoo.
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I don’t have the impression at all that WashU is viewed as a back up school. I would not call any T20 a back up school. Maybe to HYPS but not to the 99.9% of other colleges and universities out there. Very popular destination for kids from California. A friend’s daughter just graduated and said she always felt safe in the campus area. Granted St Louis is not as exciting of a city as LA or NYC but certainly appeals to those who want to be near a city rather than a rural campus.
In my Fiske Guide 2021 Michigan is listed as an overlap along with Northwestern, Duke, Vanderbilt, Rice, Brown, UChicago and UPenn.
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I used the 2020 edition for overlaps.
Chicago, Northwestern, Duke, Rice, & Vanderbilt were listed as overlaps for the two most recent years.
Cornell, Stanford, & Yale were replaced by Brown, Penn, & Michigan.
I’m not really sure what this means….
I understand that crime stats per capita in St Louis look high, as compared to other cities, bc much of what we think of as the “city” of St. Louis is actually in the county of St. Louis, not the city of St. Louis. So, per capita, crime rates look higher bc the population count appears smaller for St Louis than the experience of actually living in the metro area would suggest. I’ve heard it explained that, when folding in the population from areas that are functionally part of the city, but are not counted as such for crime statistics, crime is actually more “normal” We know several undergrads and grad students at Wash U and all described that they felt pretty safe in the areas that a student would go. As with any city, one should be aware of their surroundings and not go into dark, unfamiliar areas alone, at night etc.
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Assuming a near 100% yield on ED admits, the yield for 2020 yield for RD applicants was ~26%. 74% of kids who were accepted RD chose to attend elsewhere. 1840/27949 = .6.6% of applicants chose to apply ED (either ED 1 or ED 2) instead of RD . Both calculations suggest a lower first choice percentage than typical Ivy+ type colleges.
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These are crimes on campus.
Both calculations suggest a lower first choice percentage than typical Ivy+ type colleges.
Yes, but not a back up to 99.9% of the colleges out there!
I am not arguing that students will select higher ranked schools over WashU. I am just saying I don’t consider any T20 a back up.
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Although this information from U.S. News appears to be in need of more thorough research, it’s nonetheless interesting to see the zone in which WashU places: https://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/slideshows/colleges-with-the-highest-sat-scores?slide=28.
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WashU doesn’t list UMich as an overlap school on the NCES peer surveys because one is public and the other is private. The self selected peer groupings have more to do with institutional finances, research focus, and grad/undergrad mix than they do undergrad selectivity. WashU’s peers (and mutual peers) are private AAU member institutions, and there is nearly a perfect overlap between Northwestern’s mutual peers and WashU’s mutual peers.
In terms of recent classes:
2021: 33,634 applicants, 13% acc, 41.1% target yield
2020: 27,949 app, 16% acc, 40.3% yield
2019: 25,426, 13.9% acc, 49.2% yield
2018: 31,320 app, 15.0% acc, 38.2% yield
2017: 30,463 app, 16.0% acc, 36.6% yield
2016: 29,259 app, 16.7% acc, 35.3% yield
2019 sticks out. Fewer apps, lower admits and higher yield. My guess here is that this was the new chancellor’s first year and they tried out a more targeted admissions strategy. If true, then they presumably they abandoned it because they didn’t care for the resulting class composition and they had to dig into the waitlist more than they would have preferred. The “metrics” look better, which goes to show you how much schools can play with the strategy/yield/acceptance year to year by changing the marketing touchpoints.
Re: school affinity. A2C did an interesting survey of a few thousand selective enrollment applicants/matriculants asking the question, "Was your school of attendance (disclosed elsewhere in the survey) your first choice. This may or may not be representative of the overall applicant pool. Percent saying yes by groups:
90% MIT, 85% Harvard, 75% Stanford
70% (+/- 3 pts): Columbia, Brown , UChicago, Brown, and Princeton
60% (+/-3pts): Duke and Penn
50% (+/-3pts): Dartmouth, NU, JHU, Georgetown and ND
40%: UMich, UCBerkeley, WashU, USC, Rice, Vandy, Emory, CMU and Cornell
The school that always gets the “not my initial choice” moniker is Tufts. They came in at 29%.
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The original comment quoted above said “back-up school rather than a first choice school.” – first choice school is elsewhere, making WUSTL a back-up to that first choice. Considering the low rate of kids who applied ED compared to peer colleges and high rate of RD admits choosing to attend elsewhere compared to peer colleges, I think this is a fair assessment.
Of course this does not mean that WUSTL is a backup = safety. WUSTL is extremely selective, with a low admit rate. It would obviously be a poor choice for nearly anyone’s safety. Being more selective than the vast majority of colleges, it would likely get the majority of cross admits for the vast majority of colleges. However, for assessing whether a college is a backup for students who apply, you need to consider the other colleges that the student who applies to WUSTL also tends to apply to and/or tends to be interested in, not just a random list of all colleges in the United States.
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I’ve seen what you’re referring to with respect to on campus crime. Just looking at three years where the data is available (2015-17), there were 120 crimes reported. 96 of those (80%) were sex related: rape, fondling, domestic abuse, dating violence and stalking. 70-75% of undergrads live on campus. A lot of graduate students also live in campus owned buildings not on the Hilltop/Danforth, which are also included. I’m going to guess that there’s 4,000 women/year living in campus properties. Which basically means in in 125 women are alleged victims of these reported crimes every year.
I don’t care what coed campus it is, the reality is far more than 8 in 1000 women endure these incidents every year. If (1) WashU’s campus crime rate is extremely high and (2) 80% of it is of the variety described above, you aren’t seeing a high crime campus. I think what you’re seeing is a campus that takes sexual assault reporting and support very seriously. At least compared to the vast majority of schools. Typically, there are a few robberies a year. A couple car thefts. The vast majority are larcenies (cutting bike lock).
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