<p>slipper1234,
Your seeming inability to give any credit to another school is just, well, … disappointing. Normally, you seem so level-headed. I just don’t see how you can give so little respect to a terrific school like Wash U. Other than a preference among Wall Street recruiters due to Dartmouth’s long history with the Street and therefore large, in-firm recruiting contacts and assistants, it seems hard to see where there is a major distinction between these two fine colleges. And even more so for a student who has declared an interest in pre-med/bio. Do you think maybe you’re being a little too insistent on this comparison?</p>
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<p>ttp the WSJ feeder rankings is flawed there is a disproportionate number of evaluator schools based in the NE.</p>
<p>A more accurate feeder ranking would take the top 3 law, med and b-schools in the NE, Mid-west, West-coast and South as the evaluator schools.</p>
<p>Jazzymom while I understand your contention that WUSTL is not that different from Dartmouth based on the various metrics (in reality, neither of those schools, nor the top 6-15 or so are that different from each other), you, however, shouldnt use WUSTLs SAT scores or admit rates as a means to justify your argument w/o looking at these factors in the proper context.</p>
<p>WUSTL has the high SAT scores, in part, due to the copious amount of merit aid it offers, and has a (relatively) low admit rate b/c it rejects a disproportionate amount of applicants with “low interest”, among other things.</p>
<p>WSJ? oh yeah, the one that used facebook for some of its data…</p>
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<p>could you elaborate on this gomestar, i’ve seen two different people post this so far</p>
<p>this is from a while back, but try to dig up the article if you can. For what I believe (i could be wrong), they just used facebook to fill in information they couldn’t find elsewhere - so if somebody said they went to Chicago undergrad '07 and their profile now says Columbia law '10, they’d use the profile change as a source of information on placement.</p>
<p>good lord (10 chars)</p>
<p>^I think thats just a joke? WSJ talked with the admissions people from each school.</p>
<p>k and s, </p>
<p>“top 3 law, med and b-schools in the NE, Mid-west, West-coast and South as the “evaluator” schools.”</p>
<p>Thats a terrible Idea. That assumes there are as many elite colleges in the MidWest and South as the Northeast. The best would be to use 10 instead of 5 schools. Since they didn’t do that, 5 of the top 10 is pretty good, though NU, Stanford, and Penn all have legit reason to complain.</p>
<p>Btw, I don’t think the bias is that bad. Stanford, Duke, and Northwestern all do well despite the NE bias, and I think arguably they are the three strongest schools not in the NE (aside from Chicago, which has 2 of its own schools in the feeder selection).</p>
<p>WSJ still the best of its kind.</p>
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<p>The only region that doesn’t have the strength of professional schools is possibly the South (maybe 2 schools from the South is enough). </p>
<p>I also wouldn’t even have a problem if they included 4 professional schools from the NE as opposed to 3 from the other regions.</p>
<p>B-school</p>
<p>East – Harvard, Penn, Columbia (or MIT)</p>
<p>Midwest – Northwestern, Chicago, Michigan</p>
<p>West – Stanford, Cal, UCLA</p>
<p>South – Duke, UVA, Texas (or UNC)</p>
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<p>Law school</p>
<p>East – Yale, Harvard, NYU (or Columbia)</p>
<p>Midwest – Chicago, Michigan, Northwestern</p>
<p>West – Stanford, Cal, UCLA</p>
<p>South – UVA, Duke, Georgetown</p>
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<p>Med school</p>
<p>East – Harvard, JHU, Penn</p>
<p>Midwest – WUSTL, Mich, Chicago</p>
<p>West – UCSF, Washington, Stanford</p>
<p>South – Duke, Baylor, Vandy</p>
<p>Ah, well that doesn’t look so bad actually.</p>
<p>Keep in mind WSJ loves Ivies though lol</p>
<p>Hence, the flaw in the methodology.</p>
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<pre><code>Got any figures to back up “copious?” How much in dollars?
But let’s not look at merit aid as the only enticement offered to top students, okay? The Ivies and others say they don’t offer “merit aid” but there are big scholarships and tuition discounts offered to attractive candidates to woo them. Some Ivies are paying “need-based” aid to people making upwards of $160,000. But that’s not merit aid by definition. Got it. Has the same effect though. Do you think they are offering need-based aid to high-income families to woo an applicant with mediocre SATs? Please. And BTW, Duke and Chicago and other top schools also pay merit aid so let’s examine those figures too.
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<p>How about taking the rose-colored glasses off and looking at the way other colleges use FA packages, tuition discounts, special fellowships and internships and other enhancements to win over high-scoring candidates? Then maybe you have a point. </p>
<p>Rejects a disproportionate amount of applicants with “low interest.” Say what?</p>
<p>Do you know how many applicants WU rejects, or waitlists, for low interest? Do you know how many are rejected or WL at Penn or NW or Columbia for low interest? How do you know what’s disproportionate? </p>
<pre><code>I think what you’re getting at is that WU rejects or WLs some very highly qualified candidates it expects will choose to matriculate elsewhere. Sure it does. So do a lot of colleges, even those in the Ivy League will reject or defer some, knowing that they most likely will go to one of their rivals. This is not a practice unique to WU so it’s unfair to imply that it’s something that affects WU and only WU irt the rankings.
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<p>You must be aware that “yield” is no longer a factor computed in the rankings methodology, so I guess you’re assuming that making a determination in the admissions process to choose students must likely to attend is something that affects the admission rate and the selectivity rank. Admission rate is only worth 1.5 percent of the overall ranking, that is, 10 percent of the 15 percent student selectivity metric. </p>
<pre><code>Take a look at all the other ranking metrics and how WU stacks up. The impact of 1.5 percent is negligible. WashU could not score as high as it does overall without being excellent in all the other categories.
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<p>copious enough to give them the worst financial aid in the top 15.</p>
<p>WashU:
Full-time freshman enrollment: 1,461
Number who applied for need-based aid: 994
Number who were judged to have need: 592
Number who were offered aid: 581
Number who had full need met: 581
Average percent of need met: 100%
Average financial aid package: $27,621
Average need-based scholarship or grant award: $23,691</p>
<p>39% of the class receiving avg. of $23,691 with a 58% acceptance rate</p>
<p>Dartmouth:
Full-time freshman enrollment: 1,075
Number who applied for need-based aid: 650
Number who were judged to have need: 522
Number who were offered aid: 522
Number who had full need met: Not reported
Average percent of need met: 100%
Average financial aid package: $30,712
Average need-based scholarship or grant award: $27,089</p>
<p>49% of the class receiving avg. of $27089 with an 80% acceptance rate</p>
<p>just for extra context,</p>
<p>UChicago
Full-time freshman enrollment: 1,262
Number who applied for need-based aid: 854
Number who were judged to have need: 609
Number who were offered aid: 609
Number who had full need met: 609
Average percent of need met: 100%
Average financial aid package: $31,141
Average need-based scholarship or grant award: $26,356</p>
<p>48% of the class receiving avg. of $26,356 with a 71% acceptance rate</p>
<p>WashU is giving out so much merit aid trying to keep up with a pack of schools that are so clearly out of its league that it’s hurting the ability of low-income students to attend the school.</p>
<p>now tell me, jazzymom, is it ok to withhold dollars from poor students simply to boost your ranking because of a desperate desire to be compared to schools like dartmouth by people on boards like this?</p>
<p>reminds me of a poor actor who moves to LA and wants to fit in with the celebrity crowd so he spends himself bankrupt with money he really doesn’t have available trying to be seen at all the cool places.</p>
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<p>no because it is the only school in the top tier that refuses to release its waitlist figures! i wonder what they have to hide…</p>
<p>I’ll just never get the logic behind the anti-merit aid thinking. Wash U has CHANGED THE GAME. If you are a top student and a strong school like Wash U wants to give you a ton of dough to attend their school, that is a GOOD thing. Furthermore, it is good for the college if you attend because having a strong student body is the goal of every elite college and taking the best students away from your competitors is an admissions counselor’s idea of fun. 
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<p>If Wash U and others are successful enough in attracting students away from other top schools, you can bet that the Ivies will respond as several of them have more cash than they know what to do with. But with there being so many good applicants now, they have not felt the need to respond and everybody is ending up with great students-Wash U, other schools using merit aid, and the Ivies. And the biggest winner of all is the top student who is the target of all this nice attention and potentially large sums of money. Merit aid is a GOOD thing for students. Why is anyone here defending a viewpoint at odds with the best interests of the students???</p>
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<p>Ha. Ha. Whatever helps you sleep at night. I will say it’s nice to not see WashU students on here defending their school’s right to be “elite.” Perhaps they’re busy being happy. Whatever data you would like to bring up stating Northwestern’s clear superiority to WashU is appreciated.</p>
<p>helps me sleep at night? i’m not the one going to wesleyan</p>
<p>no hard feelings though, when you graduate, send me a PM on here, i’ll hook you up with a banking job, i know interviews in middletown are hard to come by. make sure to dress appropriately though, you won’t be at wesleyan anymore.</p>
<p>E:</p>
<pre><code>You gave FA figures. I thought the “copious” applied to merit aid. Facts? Figures? Something more precise than “so much?”
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<p>And dispense with the soapbox. How do you know the students receiving merit aid don’t have need too? Do they have to be low-income or can they just be middle income and unable to attend WashU (or any private college) without merit aid? It’s a matter of degree, yes, but a need is being met. </p>
<pre><code> The Ivies could be helping even more low-income students if they didn’t give any need-based aid to families making over $150,000, couldn’t they?
A private college has to make these decisions based on what’s best for the institution itself, taking into consideration all the other challenges and financial pressures it has to meet to survive in a highly competitive world. What is right and possible for one college may not work for another, depending on its institutional needs, something I don’t have the information or expertise to comment on. But has it ever occurred to you that if Dartmouth didn’t have that Ivy League laurel on its brow — had never had it over the past 200 years — and was simply an excellent college in N.H., do you think administrators might be required to come up with some enticements to bring top students to Hanover? I do.
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<p>“Trying to keep up with a pack of schools clearly out of its league.” Simply not true according to objective facts so it’s just your opinion again. Yawn. yawn.</p>
<p>no thanks E. I’m not sure where you or slipper got the idea that everyone wants to go into banking. was there a memo? some of us chose our college based on fit, regardless of prestige or placement. however, I can assure you that Wesleyan is lacking in neither area.</p>
<p>FWIW, Wes places one spot above Northwestern in those RP rankings that you cited. It also places a considerably higher percentage of students into Harvard and Yale Law, along with the other T14 schools as a whole, than NU. Since that is my desired path, that matters quite a bit more than banking prospects. But back to the topic at hand. No need for you to change the subject to my school just because you’re running out of ideas.</p>