Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:A friend of my son's was deferred. 4.0 UW but a terrible test taker, so did not submit scores. From what I hear, the essays were just so-so (my son read one.) Extracurrics were average for UMC white male.
They do not care about tests. They were one of the first schools to understand that the SAT/ACT are not fair.
Yeah. No. I was actually a student at Wake Forest way back when they went TO. At the time, they had recently separated from the Baptist Convention and moved from the Regional to the National category in USNWR rankings and we’re not that far out from all students being required to attend chapel. It was a novelty to get press (and it did, since they (I think) the first top 50 to go there) and designed to attract students outside of NC; to try to get URMs (the campus was so, so white). And, they were absolutely gaming the USNWR rankings an an attempt to exclude scores from URMs and athletes and (at first) some regionally diverse students). Realize Wake only had 3500 undergrads at the time.
It worked. The school became nationally known (Tim Duncan’s basketball run, early years as a pro and his decision to play 4 years and graduate also didn’t hurt). The student body grew. They raised their tuition considerably. But make no mistake, there wasn’t the appreciation for how tightly test scores being tied to SES in the 90s, and many kids took the SAT cold, once. 50% of the decision was Wake being one of the first schools to make an aggressive move to manipulate USNWR and 50% was a recognition that without URMs, athletes and other hooked kids (even if their academics weren’t up to par) Wake wouldn’t be able to establish itself as a national university. As for the TO kids? That’s why Wake had a Communications degree.