<p>Just curious to hear responses and/or rebuttals from the WUSTL people to the assertion made by many people on these boards that WUSTL is an overrated school that shamelessly promotes itself by using many shady practices (waitlisting tactics, marketing strategies, catering to US News). I would like to know as a recently accepted candidate whether or not these assertions contain a grain of truth, and if not, why.</p>
<p>The waitlisting impact on the acceptance rate (and in return, on the percentage of the overall US News rank) is minimal. They do seem to waitlist a lot, however. Who really cares about the US News ranking when there are a ton of other rankings that constantly rank Wash U and its schools in the top ranks (see <a href="http://news-info.wustl.edu/rankings/?state=page&mode=normal&obj=5623%5B/url%5D">http://news-info.wustl.edu/rankings/?state=page&mode=normal&obj=5623</a> ). Frankly, you have to look beyond rankings - What do they really mean in the long run? Carnegie Mellon was ranked as "Hottest school for getting a job" by Kaplan, yet it ranks in the 20s in US News. The promotion really isn't that bad, as I received way more mail from other institutions than I did from Wash U (seriously). Your choice should be based on where you're most comfortable, and where you think you'll end up getting the best education as well as best quality of life. Princeton Review ranked Wash U as having one of the highest qualities of life in the nation for colleges - I don't disagree.</p>
<p>I agree with OnCampus. The WUSTL trashing is nothing other than sour grapes.</p>
<p>All the leading undergraduate rankings--US News, Princeton Review, Fisk--clearly place WashU in the top 10-15 US undergraduate programs. Its graduate schools have been ranked among the elite 15-20 US schools by the London Times, Shanghai University, and US News. Only 11 US schools have a "top twenty" rank for both medical school and law school, and one of them is WashU. US News rates its graduate engineering program as higher than Yale, Dartmouth, vanderbilt, and Virginia and on par with Rice, Duke and Penn, with some specialized fields in the top ten.</p>
<p>On the rankings issue, WashU holds its own head on with the Ivies, Duke and Stanford. It's no longer Newsweek's "hidden gem". The word is out.
Don't make a decision based on rankings or worse yet, wha a bunch of high-strung high school kids post on this blog. What do they know? Make your own evaluation of what the school can do for your future.</p>