LOL on the managers vs. employees! Maybe they hate their manager! 
I live near Atlanta right now, and I’ve seen this behavior from service employees regularly, although, like I said, individuals are more important than general patterns.
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We visited Vanderbilt a couple of years ago and never got that vibe but it could be different depending on who was working that particular day, just as people often formulate their college visit opinion based on the student tour guide.
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I have always had this concern with every college tour. You can have a “perfect storm” of good or bad experiences that gives you an incorrect view of a school.
Three hours on campus is just three hours on campus. You don’t leave an insider. You must supplement with other research and draw conclusions on the preponderance of evidence.
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Yeah, I am a parent of an S24/first year at WashU, and we have had a very different experience with the students there over now many visits than the one you reported.
But . . . I have zero problem with a kid who has a terrible visit crossing WashU off their list. There are plenty of other colleges, and if at all possible, kids should be excited about where they are going. So if a bad visit has killed the excitement, then that to me is reason enough to look elsewhere.
And then maybe some other kid will love their visit (my S24 did, twice), and be very excited (my S24 was). But not every kid has to like all the same colleges, indeed much better if they do not.
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The only “unimpressive” thing I found about WUSTL was the over the top, beyond any other school sales pitch for ED - over and over and over again during the admissions session and then in 1:1 follow up after.
And that they send my daughter a free app, late in the game, unrequested - we never visited.
A bit desperate for a top shelf school. Chicago also did the app thing.
But the campus was beautiful and the path to the residential side was kind of Disney-ish.
My daughter is only a junior. She has gotten a couple of “free application” codes from elite schools that we have shown no interest in. Feels the same way.
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Where was ours!?!
I actually do think WashU is an institution with a lot of ambition to sort of move up in public perception, and it carries over into all sorts of marketing, admissions and aid policies, and so on.
That can definitely read as unseemly to some, and indeed it is sort of just an historical fact that WashU is “new money”–they were a good but basically local college up to the 1960s, and then through a series of massive fundraising campaigns (really continuing through today) they have entered the ranks of the most highly resourced institutions in the US. And they have used those resources to put together a fantastic campus (again still constantly improving), top shelf student experience, excellent faculty and facilities across a lot of different schools and departments, and so on.
But things move slowly in public perception, and of course St Louis is not exactly the first city lots of national or international students think to consider, so a lot of people remain not all that aware of WashU, or these various ways it has been spending its money.
Personally, we were happy S24 liked all that a lot, and then was able to get admitted RD (he almost ED2ed, but decided to hold out for the REA school that deferred him, unsuccessfully as it turns out). To me there is nothing wrong with him benefiting from all those resources, newer or not.
But again that doesn’t mean I think everyone has to feel the same way. And if he had actually not liked the school when we visited, it would have been off the list without another thought.
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Also, WashU did not pitch ED hard in its info session. So that may be an improvement. They just explained what ED was and left it at that.
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Yeah - Chicago and WUSTL sent - apply for free - and a code or whatever it was. They were obviously, late, looking for more people to reject.
Many schools do that. But you wouldn’t think the elite.
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That’s good - they were all over it. 2019
WUSTL was the school the adopted my daughter. Sent her mail every day (and I mean that; sometimes we’d receive 5-7 letters/postcards a week). Wanted her to go to some program for rising seniors. Kept talking about med opportunities.
My daughter didn’t even know where the school was, had never expressed interest, had no interested in medicine or a medical career.
And then they dropped her and we got nothing. No more mail, no Christmas cards, no little gifts. Sad.
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Curious what you mean when you say they “dropped her?” Did they just suddenly stop sending things or did she unsubscribe? Any idea why they changed their view of her?
Mail was probably intended for @tsbna44 until they realized he didnt like a high pressured sales pitch… and then it stopped.
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I don’t recall them doing much to push ED to my S24 either, although honestly it is possible I would not remember if they did.
WashU hasn’t had very detailed admissions press releases lately (as far as I recall), but in their 2023-24 CDS they reported 1158 ED admits, 3855 total admits, 1828 enrolled. So they are one of many similar colleges where they still admitted more people RD, but over half their enrolled class came from ED admits thanks to much higher ED yields (presumably–technically they did not report ED yield but in reported cases I have seen it is in the high 90s, as one would expect).
So I can certainly understand why these colleges would want more of the applicants they end up liking to apply ED. But again exactly how they are pitching it these days, I basically don’t remember.
She was still a senior but I’m sure they assumed she wasn’t interested as she didn’t apply, but I just remember it as being very sudden, like she was getting several contacts a week and then nothing.
We had a few schools like that (I had two VERY different students applying at the same time). Sweet Briar, Oglethorpe, Converse, other smaller schools in NC, SC, PA. My science daughter was also an athlete and we got a lot of calls from schools in OH, KY, TN, many she’d never heard of and she really had no interest in LACs.
I just remember the marketing push of WUSTL standing out, and the tons of expensive, glossy mail items she receive.
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These schools hire firms to handle all the communication - these firms are making the money and it seems like the schools need to audit the work, as the non targeted mailings don’t land well with families. I would guess the schools would be shocked if a parent actually showed them the excess mailings/waste.
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I’ve done some low-level quantitative systematic analysis of college junk mail. The obviousness in some cases that several very different colleges are using the exact same firms with the exact same templates at the same time was kind of stunning.
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No doubt the firm had given each college some blurb about how it would tailor its offering to meet their specific needs…
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Trine College is hitting the mailbox hard here…even today…and our son committed to another school in Dec.
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Like athletic commitments, it’s never over. Committed kids leave for a bigger bribe after committing daily.
Can he tackle ? 
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