Wash U Acceptance numbers

vbball90
Sat, 02 May 2009 15:13:52 +0000

Reasonable guesses:

1, 2) They say that anywhere between 20% and 1/3 of each freshman class is from ED. They got 23,000 apps this year, and the yield for ED is 100% (it’s binding, you have to come if accepted). Since each freshman class is about 1,500 people… assuming that 25% of the class is coming from ED this year (easily could be more or less, but let’s say 25% to be reasonable), then 375 people were accepted Early Decision. We don’t know how much higher/lower the ED acceptance rate is from Regular Decision, but I doubt it’s significantly lower or higher than RD. If you assume that it’s 20% acceptance rate consistent with RD, then you had about 1,900 apply Early Decision. Of course, some people are Deferred from Early Decision and then later accepted, but those would be regular decision people at that point.

3 - 5) If 1,900 people applied Early based on my previous reasoning, then 21,100 applied Regular Decision. We don’t know what their acceptance rate is for this year (May 1 just happened and they just started to use the wait list, so they’re not even done yet), but their average acceptance rates are between 17 - 20% from previous years. Given the economy this year, they’re probably accepting more people, because it’s harder to predict who will ultimately accept admission… so I think it’ll be closer to a 20% acceptance rate. But, who knows… the year isn’t even done yet. Wash U historically has about a 34% yield… so 34% of the people who were accepted will enroll.

6 - 8) Good luck finding these numbers! I don’t even think you can make an educated guess with Wash U and the wait list, in terms of how big it is. Wash U doesn’t place you on the wait list… you can choose to accept their wait list spot or not. Some people will accept the wait list spot, and some people won’t want to be on the wait list. I assume that if you don’t accept your wait list spot, then you’re just rejected in their eyes? It’s impossible to know how big it is, because it’s variable how many people will say yes or no to remain on wash u’s wait list. A couple weeks back on CC, someone made a comment on a WL thread that 100 were accepted from the wait list last year and the previous year, and some years they didn’t accept anyone from the wait list. This year, they’re using the Wait List before May 1. It’s anyone’s guess what that actually means, and there’s a few other schools who are using the wait list before May 1. They might be accepting more, or they might be accepting even less.

Here’s why I think Wash U might accept less this year from the wait list:
They started using it before May 1. Typically colleges won’t use the Wait List until after May 1, to get the precise enrollment they need for each freshman class. They don’t want to over-enroll or under-enroll, which is why you have a wait list anyway. Since Wash U and a few other schools are using it before May 1, they need to be pretty confident that they are hitting their enrollment right on the mark… and they probably only need a couple more people to hit it right on the nose. I mean, you wouldn’t start using it before May 1 if you needed a hell of a lot more people, right? That would mean that you might dangerously over-enroll. So, they must be doing pretty well with the Regular Decision people accepting admission, and they only need a little extra to get to the 1,500 freshman.

I dunno, that’s just my reasoning. I could be way off, especially for the Wait List analysis, but it’s probably reasonable, I think?