Washington U in STL Hard Sell
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Anonymous
First, I haven't read all of the comments yet. If your DC earned those grades at a tough school and your DC would be majoring in art, the social sciences or the humanities, maybe your DC has a shot. My impression, from looking at the Niche.com admissions scattergram filtered by major, is that humanities majors and social sciences majors can get in with much weaker stats than business, engineering, biology or chemistry majors. Second, I went there and enjoyed it. It's a great school. But I stopped participating in alumni events, because, at one event, someone from the admissions office came and said the school was intentionally trying to increase the number of applicants, so it could decrease the percentage of accepted applicants. Wash. U. was doing that to try to move up in the university rankings, and to survive in a cruel, competitive world. But I think that intentionally attracting applicants so that you can reject them is terrible. Wash. U. and other schools should be working together to change any ranking programs that use the acceptance rate as a quality metric, not wasting high school seniors' time to please the managers of those ranking programs. |
Anonymous
| My friend's daughter received a -very- generous aid package (she needed it). |
Anonymous
But UChicago waives the application fee if a student applies for financial aid, so their marketing may not necessarily be a money grab. Yield rates is more likely the reason. |
Anonymous
Good lord. I just remembered the WUSTL Hustle from my days applying to college. If memory serves me right, WUSTL used to have a fairly high admit rate, around 70% into the early 90s, then started an extremely aggressive marketing campaign that was practically spamming to get as many students to apply, which helped drive down the admit rates. Schools were all about admit rates for the USNews rankings and it was controversial enough in the day. Chicago tried to avoid the game but eventually succumbed. The year I applied to college, Chicago had an admit rate of 60% or thereabouts. |
Anonymous
| They know your son goes to an elite/expensive HS and SAT score. They probably want you for a full-pay slot. |
Anonymous
Yes, it is. You are right but public school Parents just don’t get it or aren’t willing to admit it as that makes them have to confront the fact that top privates are more rigorous and competitive than most Publics. |
Anonymous
| I can't tell you if he should apply or not, but it's a great school, I had a great time there 20 years ago, LOL! |
Anonymous
No kidding! Top privates are more rigorous and competitive than most privates as well. So what’s your point? |
Anonymous
Public school parent here. I will readily admit that private schools are more rigorous. And I do have concerns about my DC's preparedness for college (though DC has high stats so that is of some limited comfort)...but mostly, I take comfort in the fact that DC is grounded, not entitled, and I haven't had to deal with the pretentiousness and snobbery of the "top" private school parents like the ones on here... |
Anonymous
NP. I agree with you and I've seen the naviance for the last three years at kid's school (Sidwell). But, we'll never convince people on here of this reality. I've been reading this forum long enough to know that > 90% of posters think a 3.6 UW from Sidwell is _just_ like a 3.6 UW from Yorktown or BCC or Langley. |
Anonymous
| If I had $160,000 could my 4.4 FCPS GPA, 1520 SAT, 1490/223 PSAT son be invited to play with the "Big 3"? |
Anonymous
That's just a weird reply. As a parent of a former Big 3er now at a similar school on the other side of the country, one does get thrown in the beginning of the college search when you are hearing about 4.5 GPAs and your DC has a 3.6. Over time, you better understand what it means. Yes, there's a lot of rigor at these schools, but no one should sleep on the publics. These kids have worked very hard in larger classes, etc with some amazing teachers, etc. The grading system may be different at some of the publics, but that doesn't mean there's not excellence. |
Anonymous
This is ridiculous. You have no idea what level of courses PP's kid is taking. A 3.6 can be a great UW gpa if the kid is enrolled in all advanced courses at a private or rigorous public h.s. These highly selective private schools are not strictly admission by the numbers. They look at the entire kid. Yes, there's likely a cutoff for gpa and scores, but it's not like the big state U's where the cutoffs are rigid because they have such an enormous number of applicants. |
Anonymous
My kids went to both public and "top" private. I can tell you absolutely that the private school education was far superior to our "blue ribbon" highly ranked, desirable public high school. By a mile! The private schools do not have to teach to the test, so ours didn't offer AP classes, rightly so because AP classes are rote learning and a way for the College Board to make more $$. Yet my kids who went to private did very well on AP tests without the stupid AP classes. The parents at our private school were entitled and rich, which my kids (not rich) hated, but the education is top notch. My kids also went to public h.s. which they hated, except for a few classes, but socially it was much better for them. More down to earth, few social climbers, they made nice friends there. |
Anonymous
Hahaha excellent 
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