<p>^I was trying to elucidate why some people dislike Wash U. My post states what many people believe - that Wash U waitlists the best applicants because they’re afraid that the best applicants will choose an Ivy over Wash U. It wasn’t necessarily my personal opinion.</p>
<p>And your point was - to repeat rumors and unsubstantiated date? Not sure what this accomplishes or how it helps to raise the level of the forum.</p>
<p>The OP was wondering why WUSTL gets a bad rap. I was explaining why some people dislike WUSTL. WHETHER OR NOT SUCH RUMORS ARE TRUE IS UNKNOWN TO ME.</p>
<p>You guys are being too hard on Drought. I can see that some of his posts were not 100% clear, but I think it is pretty easy to figure out that he is actually just trying to offer an answer to the question that generated this thread. </p>
<p>There are a lot of good theories on this post. I think the theory that smart kids, assuming they would get in to WashU, get insulted when they are waitlisted. That one is funny and seems likely.</p>
<p>The practice of wait listing (or maybe even rejecting) applicants that schools don’t think will accept is vvvvvvvvvvvvvvveeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeerrrrrrrrrrryyyyyy common. Not just in UG admissions, also in graduate schools. </p>
<p>Before I came to school for econ, I applied to law school. Case Western did something I thought was clever. I was overqualified for that school. After I sent in my application, they sent me back a letter saying that Case Western was interested in me, could I give some short answers to a couple of questions? If I didn’t write back, they would assume I was no longer interested in the school, and would consider my application withdrawn. I let them withdraw my application, didn’t go to the school, but didn’t decrease their yield. </p>
<p>I don’t see what the problem is with policies that attempt to increase schools’ yields. Maybe because I’m in econ, but I don’t think there is anything “immoral” about trying to game metrics. The fact that this occurs indicates that yield is an imprecise measure of a school’s quality, but didn’t we know that anyway?</p>