Losing Respect for Wash U. Admissions - the waitlist game

Colleges & Universities Washington University in St. Louis
41

<p>@ ST2, I still don’t think you’re grasping the single, fundamental concept that all of us waitlistees have realized: No other top 20 (or even top 50) school plays the admissions game as cheaply as WashU!!! It is the only school with a decent amount of prestige that literally waitlists > 75% of its applicant pool.</p>

<p>I don’t understand why you use statements like “well, they can’t accept all the qualified candidates,” which would certainly apply to HYPS, when addressing a school that is completely unique it is psycho admissions process. It cannot be compared to other elite institutions because it doesn’t use the same strategy as other elite institutions. </p>

<p>End of story.</p>

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<p>False.</p>

<p>Wustl does not waitlist 75% of the applicant pool. You just see the crazies here on cc, not the real world (and I admit, I am a bit of a crazy myself).
Stop making up random figures if you can’t back it up with proof. I have plenty of friends who work in admissions (as letter stuffers, in particular). There are indeed quite a bit of rejects.</p>

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<p>^ You’re wrong. It’s common knowledge that WashU waitlists that many people. I’m not making it up. My GC warned me with that exact, nationwide statistic before I even applied, and she knows what she’s talking about. She’s been a GC for over 15 years and has sent numerous people to HYPS.</p>

<p>…and even if that number was off (let’s say it was 50% instead of 75%), which it’s not, my point would still stand. WashU is the ONLY TOP 20 SCHOOL THAT WAITLISTS TO THIS DEGREE. That is not debatable.</p>

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<p>^I’d like to see the proof.
Since I’m certainly going to believe the students working in admissions over your gc any day.</p>

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<p>And, as someone mentioned on another thread, Harvard took 200 off its waitlist last year!!! Anyone whining over there? WUSTL is not the only one using the waitlist!</p>

<p>Students accepted off the waitlist in 2008:</p>

<p>Stanford 0
Princeton 90
Harvard 200
Yale 46
University of Pennsylvania 90
Amherst 25
MIT 35
University of Chicago 10-15
Georgetown 80
Johns Hopkins 30
Swarthmore College 22
Pomona College 16
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill 300
University of Wisconsin- Madison 800
Boston College 250
University of Virginia 0</p>

46

<p>Ok, first of all, UNC and UW are public schools. Totally different system.</p>

<p>Second of all, I can personally guarantee you that Harvard offered admission to almost exactly 200 kids on that WL, and all 200 were absolutely thrilled and enrolled. I can also guarantee that WashU Waitlists far more than ANY of those schools, offered spots to WAY more than 200 kids, and probably got turned down by most of them. That’s the difference.</p>

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<p>palmalk is correct. harvard did indeed take 200 off the waitlist. anyone can look that up with a simple google search. You find find similar data on some other schools (i think Yale reported it as well but I forgot how many). </p>

<p>EVERY school has a wait list. I mean EVERY SCHOOL. it just matters how actively they use it and accept people from off the wait list. And until one of these WUSTL bashers is willing to go through a minimum effort and call the darn school and ask “how many did you take last year” — the bashers are simply spewing garbage, hearsay, and ill-reasoned arguments.</p>

<p>@Hookem – you cannot GUARANTEE that WUSTL offered acceptance to more than 200 kids from the WL last year. please provide proof. the burden is on the accuser to clearly document this data, because CLEARLY it is not readily available ANYWHERE. unless you specifically say that you called WUSTL Admissions and they said “more than 200 last year”, then no one is going to believe you.</p>

<p>Again - while it’s definitely frustrating that WUSTL seems to place a lot of students on a massive WL, that has NO bearing to “admissions gaming.” It will only be “yield fudging” and “admissions gaming” if they ACCEPT a large amount of people from the Wait List. And NO ONE has yet to show how many they accept from the wait list.</p>

<p>You can look at last year’s CollegeConfidential boards as a starting point and see what other people wrote about being accepted from the wait list. there were only a handful of people to post and say they were accepted from it.</p>

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<p>I spoke with a senior college officer whom I know well who was somewhat offended by the WashU waitlist strategy relative to what other schools do because it was a) designed to maximimize yield; at the expense of b) the students who are given a short-term window to decide (if I remember correctly). I don’t think he would have said the same about the other schools. </p>

<p>My recollection is that last year was a year of great uncertainty for schools because of Harvard and Princeton’s decisions not to do ED or EA and this boosted the numbers they and other schools put on the waiting lists (and in Harvard’s case, anyway, acceptances from the waiting list). This year will likely see the same thing because of the unpredictable effects of the economy and stock market tanking.</p>

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<ol>
<li>I would have chosen WashU over Yale (an AO at Yale encouraged me to apply and said I was a great, all-around candidate. That is certainly NOT to say I would have been admitted, but just to show that I had a fair chance and still would have chosen WashU.)</li>
<li>WashU is no one’s safety.</li>
<li>No proof to hookem’s overconfident statement.
a. The number of students a GC has sent to HYPSM has no correlation to how much he/she knows about WashU. that is utterly ridiculous.</li>
<li>Of course it looks like virtually no one is rejected. If I were, there is a small chance I would post it, but mostly likely not. They leave the WashU forum and go to that of the next university to which they are hoping to receive admission.</li>
<li>All top schools play the “game”</li>
<li>Maybe WashU doesn’t want a class full of Valedictorians some (NOT even most by any means, but some) of whom only care about grades and do not contribute much to the overall social experience of the university. I know I’ve seen in the packets of some Ivies a line where they pride themselves on what percent of their freshman classes are valedictorians and what percent salutatorians. Maybe WashU wants people who are top 5 or 10 percent at highly competitive schools but are social achievers as well. Maybe WashU cares a little more about the personality that shows through the essays and recs. You are not an AO, and since you aren’t, you don’t know. All I’m saying is 4.0 and 2400 only makes you a top candidate if you don’t have a robot’s personality. Im sorry that lots of Ivy League schools love to throw the “we have 2400’s, 4.0’s, and valedictorians stat at people”</li>
</ol>

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<p>^ Shawbridge is absolutely correct about Harvard’s strategy changing due to its lack of EA for the first time. WashU has been doing this for years.</p>

<p>and @keepitcoolidge, do you not find it the slightest bit fishy that Harvard made its waitlist stats SO “readily available on Google” and yet WashU keeps theirs a secret?</p>

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<p>There does seem to be confusion around the importance of how many are waitlisted vs. how many are taken from the waitlist. </p>

<p>What does it really matter how many people are waitlisted? Is a rejection preferable? If so, Hookem you and others waitlisted certainly have the option of being taken off the waitlist. As suggested by another poster, just treat your waitlisting as what it most likely is, a rejection. </p>

<p>But if WashU is taking the majority of its admits from the wait list, that’s a different issue. In that case they are, in my view, making a mistake, because they are insulting and inconveniencing people that will eventually matriculate, leaving a negative first impression on eventual students. IMO that’s too high a price to pay to increase reported yield. </p>

<p>But does anyone have more than anecdotal evidence that WashU actually uses its waitlist more than most top schools?</p>

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<p>Again, I think the fact that these stats do not exist for public purposes is evidence enough.</p>

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<p>@hookem — again, the burden of proof is on the accuser. why don’t you just call WUSTL Admissions, say you are a kid on the wait list, and ask them.</p>

<p>Actually, why doesn’t everyone just do it? Everyone call WUSTL admissions and see what they say when you ask “how many were accepted from the WL last year.” </p>

<p>Then the argument will be settled! … if they tell you, that is :-/</p>

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<p>First - it is always interesting when people claim “knowledge” of numbers with no backup. The term “common knowledge” seems to be the definition of an unsubstantiated statement, that when repeated often enough takes on a life of its own. Obviously people have the right to believe whatever they want, but that does not make it a fact.</p>

<p>Possibly you can explain what the benfit would be to applicants if they were rejected as opposed to being put on a WL. If a candidate feels that the WL is such a negative then the best action is to not accept the WL, consider it as a rejection and move on. This way the next step is left to the decision of the candidtae.</p>

<p>In regard to a previous post - WashU does accept all the candidates who they feel are the best fit. The WL is used for people who have the potential to fit into the desired class profile. It is not only about numbers (SAT, ACT, GPA, rank etc.) at the top schools. It is about the best fit for the campus and student body. Each school has their own criteria. Just because a candidate may not be the best fit at WashU does not mean that they will not be a great fit at another school. I am sure that there are/were WashU admits that may not have been the best fit at another school. </p>

<p>I can understand venting and I think people should be tolerant of it. It just is a bit annoying when unsubstantiated numbers are thrown around as facts. In the end the entire process seems to work out with the best results for most people. Good luck to everyone regardless if they accept the WL or not.</p>

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<p>First - WashU takes a small percentage of the freshman class from the WL. Three years ago no people were taken off the WL. That class had a much higher than expected conversion and as a result the freshman class was considerably larger than expected or desired. As a result a decision was made to attempt to keep the fresman class as close as possible to 1,400 sudents. The best way to do that was to use past numbers and attempt to project the number of initial offers to be made in order to achieve the 1,400. Since these projections are not easy or as accurate as desired, the WL is used to round out the final number as close to the desired 1,400 as possible. That is the WL in a nutshell. Due to the economy, look for more schools to use their WL and at a much earlier date than in past years. Don’t be surprised if you begin to see WL activity as early as the end of April</p>

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<p>The waitlist numbers for most schools are public, for the previous year. Google a school’s “common data set” and find section C2. WashU seems to be one of the few private schools that doesn’t publish it. :(</p>

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<p>I am only personally familiar wit the how many students got of the WL in 2006, the year my son applied. That year not one student got in off of the waitlist.</p>

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<p>2006 is the year they actually ended up with too many freshman (see ST2’s post #55 above) causing housing crises, etc.</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.studlife.com/for_the_class_of_2012%252C_wu_worth_waiting_for[/url]”>http://www.studlife.com/for_the_class_of_2012%252C_wu_worth_waiting_for&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>I fail to see the nefarious plot.</p>

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<p>Yalerose’s val/sal anecdote is creepily similar to mine. Two years ago, a girl at my school who now attends Harvard was waitlisted at WashU with her 2370 SAT, 4.0, bazillion 5s on APs, virtuoso-level violin skills, Siemens Regional Finalist status, Intel ISEF awards, and a host of other things. </p>

<p>While I think WUSTL has some unique strategies (like flooding your mailbox with brochures), and have questioned some of WUSTL’s waitlist choices in the past at my school, it’s hard to call. After all, they had only 1400 spots for 23,000 applicants. The school has generated a lot of interest in recent years, and the cyclical nature of its ranking boost -> boosting apps -> boosting rank -> and so on actually seems pretty smart to me if that’s the university’s goal. </p>

<p>WashU is a GREAT school. When I visited back in October, I loved the friendly/ unpretentious atmosphere and well-maintained facilities. I wavered about whether or not the academic setting was right for me (tons of premeds!) and had a conundrum about Olin vs. Econ in the College. Only thing I totally hated was THE BUNNY! Donnie Darko, anyone? I spent two hours in the hall talking to current students and the reactions were varied. One guy was obviously still torn up over his Cornell rejection, a math major I met was from New Trier HS in Illinois (?) and talked about how all his friends went to HYPSM. He basically said, “Don’t come here, there are lots of people wallowing in their inability to get into the ‘holy trinity.’” On the other hand, I met a girl who was accepted to Harvard but chose WashU to be close to family, and another kid who chose WashU over Yale for financial reasons. So while WashU doesn’t win overall in a matchup with those schools, it’s not like only the mentally deranged choose WashU.</p>

<p>I’ve also thought about how WashU is need-aware. I’m assuming this also means they can see your other schools through the FAFSA. This list could give WashU some clues.</p>

<p>WashU wasn’t my safety but it wasn’t a high reach either. Last night, I was talking to my friend (who had been waitlisted) and she was seething over the fact that while she had a 34 ACT, a 2320 SAT, and tons of above-above average credentials, her classmate was accepted with a 29 ACT and a 3.6. I had no clue decisions were out, and checked - I was waitlisted too! My dad was more upset than I was, to be frank.</p>

<p>So I won’t get to roam the South 40 next year, or go on midnight runs to the Bear’s Den, or see my hosts again. Instead, I’ll be at Yale (assuming I matriculate). Honestly, I would have been very happy at WashU. But like someone else said, it wasn’t my first choice and I wasn’t WashU’s first choice either. </p>

<p>The WashU boards are really interesting right now. There’s some animosity, but both sides have excellent points and information. One guy’s post was especially amusing to me: “It [WashU] was my 6th choice and I’m still mad!”</p>

<p>Congrats to those admitted to the Class of 2013!</p>

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<p>mistofthekane- Good luck wherever you end up! Lmao- I can’t believe you hate the bunny

That’s a really interesting anecdote- I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone say that they were upset about not getting into hyp etc if they applied and were rejected. Well, to be honest I have one friend who was, but they completely love wustl now and told me they’re glad things worked out the way they did. Lucky me I guess! (I’ve clearly avoided a lot of bitter people on campus I was unaware of).</p>

<p>Here’s another random fact for those who are claiming they were waitlisted because they were “overqualified.” According to the BME chair, Frank Yin, 95% of the 2012 BME class (the original 120 or so who took BME 140), were top 10% of their high school class. If anyone can, please tell me how you’d be overqualified for that.</p>