Wustl vs Northwestern

<p>Which one is tougher to get in?</p>

<p>i assume ur just too lazy or don't know where to find these numbers. off the top of my head,
WashU acceptance rate is 21% and Northwestern is 30%.</p>

<p>That data is old. I know for a fact that NU accepted 25 percent of its applicants this year. Not sure about washU though.... Oh, and jjjjjj89, all this information is available on a BAJILLION sites. Please search collegeboard.com or theu.com or something before you post here.</p>

<p>WashU is much much easier ED.
WashU RD is a joke. They waitlist every qualified student who they don't think will attend, so it's impossible to predict.</p>

<p>^^haha .. no wonder USNews ranked them so high, they play the system :P</p>

<p>WashU took around 18% this year. I'd guess that once one adjusts for manipulation, they are about even in terms of difficulty.</p>

<p>i think it's really wrong what WashU does in yield protection to its RD students.</p>

<p>Rest assured that other schools do it as well. Until WashU has a yield comparable to its peers (on USNews) and has a higher preference among the applicant pool in general, I don't expect their practice to end.</p>

<p>They are comparable... it really depends on your major/school and stats.</p>

<p>WUSTL (10 char)</p>

<p>WUSTL is Tougher</p>

<p>Wash U seems tougher to get into because a lot of well/over qualified students get waitlisted, but Northwestern is a much better school in my opinion</p>

<p>Well, both NU and Wustl are using waitlist this year. NU counts all the ones off the waitlist as "accepted", just like anyone would expect. WashU? I was told by couple people who got the phone call but declined the offers that their status stayed "waitlisted". So it seems to me that among those waitlists who got the acceptace calls, only those who accepted the offers were officially counted as "accepted" (100% yield). Will that change the admit rate much? It depends on how many waitlists they call? A Chicago Sun Times article said NU estimated 400 people would get off the waitlist. Based on what I saw on CC, it seems like WashU is calling even more people than that. You can do the math between the difference of 100% yield and something like 10% yield. Regardless, to me, this practice, if it's true for all others (right now I have had 2 people confirming this cos I didn't really ask more), is disgusting!</p>

<p>Below is a copy of what one of them wrote in his/her PM to me:</p>

<p>
[quote]

Re: Wash U waitlist </p>

<p>Sam:</p>

<p>The status on their web site says this:
"Our records indicate that as of 05/29/2007:
We have not received notification from you about remaining on the wait list."</p>

<p>Which is kinda odd, since we've already talked to them and told them that we're declining their offer of admission (from the waitlist).

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Nice generalization again Sam Lee. "Based on what I saw on CC, it seems like WashU is calling even more people than that." I am sure that CC gives you a good idea as to how many people WashU plans to admit off their WL. Why not talk to admissions and get an actual idea as to what you are talking about as opposed to once again making statements based on absolutely no information or facts. The number they are looking off WL is way way below the number you are quoting. But then again why use facts when it is a lot easier to post anything you want - true or not.</p>

<p>From people I know...TONS get off the WashU waitlist. From my school hardly anyone ever gets off waitlists at elite schools...like maybe 1 per year. So far this year, 5 or 6 kids have gotten off the WashU waitlist.</p>

<p>Overall competitiveness is similar but the specifics for you may be very different.</p>

<p>Northwestern has long had one of the most transparent admissions processes in the country. They make public detailed data on accepted and attending students, even within specific divisions of the university. Their ED process is admit/reject with no wait list. In high school counseling offices across the country, one can look down the list of applicants year to year and see fairly reliable cut-offs re: GPA and SATs with the exception of kids with special talents/recruited athletes/ED legacies.</p>

<p>WashU’s process remains one of the most opaque. They remain one of the few schools that still will not make info available via the Common Data Set. Despite their contention that 93% of freshman rank in top tenth of HS grad class, experience at our competitive local school (doesn’t make public student rankings and therefore not available to US News) shows that virtually no one heading off to WashU ranks that highly year after year after year. SAT scores, obviously released to US News, are consistently high and in the range of published medians.</p>

<p>NU and WashU are both great schools but play by very different rules when it comes to admitting students. Rule of thumb – trust the track record of your own HS to tell you what your odds will be at NU. Trust the numbers WashU wants to promote for US News purposes (SATs and rankings if your school ranks) to tell you what your odds are there. Locally, higher achievers have ended up at NU than WashU but there is a lot of overlap. Generally, presume that high grades and SATs are requisite at NU. If your school does not release rankings, only high SATs are a clear requisite at WashU. </p>

<p>Last word – NU is using its waitlist fairly heavily this year after finally going to the Common App and seeing an almost 20% increase in applicants. That is on top of a 13% increase last year. With the uncertainly of where numbers would fall out, they opted to keep acceptances low and not risk going over-census for the freshman class. This year’s class will be even more selective with accepted students median SATs this year up at 1462.</p>

<p>What would you say is the general "cut-off" score for NU for the SAT? I know it varies from school to school, but can you possibly provide a range? Thanks.</p>

<p>You should check out the averages on CollegeBoard.com... Anything below the bottom 25 percent are reserved for athletes, URMs, and legacies. It's rare a 'normal' student gets in with those scores without bringing something less.</p>

<p>CR: 650-740
M: 670-760</p>

<p>I think their cut-off is probably higher. This seems a little low?</p>