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Lol at the new WakeWill campaign

Wake used to be need blind for admissions. No longer. Kids whose parents can pay full fare have a much better chance of getting in. That has to impact academic standards and admissions qualifications.

Meh. Not necessarily. I agree that this is a problem, but everybody keeps saying this without offering any data to justify the claim.
 
Yeah I spent two terms on the board of visitors (which is no big deal, but does require a decent financial commitment), partly because my older son was at Wake for part of that time so it gave me an excuse to visit and partly because I had fond memories of attending from 78 until 82. Suffice it to say that the more you know about the current WFU (wildly bloated administration, student kangaroo courts, leftist intolerant humanities faculty, aggressively hostile attitude toward fraternities, you name it--the same thing that is going on at Duke, Amherst and the like), the less you like it. I quit in disgust and won't be making any further contributions. I'm sorry for what I did contribute, frankly.

Lol
 
Honestly not trying to rub anyone the wrong way. Ask any high counselor where the top kids in high school are going. It's UNC. Wake knew they were going to be drawing every year from a smaller richer pool. That is why they dropped the SAT requirement. They knew with a smaller pool of richer kids, the SAT's would fall and they didn't want to report it. It's more important to be willing and able to pay 65k per year now to attend Wake than it is to be super smart. It is a far different place now than 30 years ago.
 
Where the top students from NC are going is not an indication of Wake Forest's academic standards. And the answer to that question would pretty much always have been UNC anyway.
 
My experience has been quite different from many (all?) of those on this thread, so I decided to look into the numbers a bit, particularly the claim that admissions standards have decreased and students from North Carolina are not applying to Wake. I compared 2015 to 2005, to provide a 10 year comparison.

In 2005, there were 7,494 applications (a record number at that time) and 38% were accepted.
In 2015 there were 13,282 applications and 29% were accepted.

The number of applicants from North Carolina has increased 52%, per the site below discussing admissions policies.

Here are the sites from which I obtained data:
http://archive.magazine.wfu.edu/archive/wfm.2005.09.pdf
http://admissions.wfu.edu/facts/
http://rethinkingadmissions.wfu.edu/q_and_a.php

Rafi... how about a comparison to this of 1997 http://archive.magazine.wfu.edu/archive/wfm.1997.12.pdf
u The University received a
record 6,841 applications
for this fall’s first-year
class. Some 2,848 applicants
were offered admission
and 975 enrolled.
The class is evenly divided
according to gender—490
women and 485 men—
and includes fifty-five
valedictorians, seventy
student government or
class presidents, and 254
captains of athletic teams.
Almost 50 percent of the
class members were
ranked in the top 5 percent
of their high school classes
 
Rafi... how about a comparison to this of 1997 http://archive.magazine.wfu.edu/archive/wfm.1997.12.pdf
u The University received a
record 6,841 applications
for this fall’s first-year
class. Some 2,848 applicants
were offered admission
and 975 enrolled.
The class is evenly divided
according to gender—490
women and 485 men—
and includes fifty-five
valedictorians, seventy
student government or
class presidents, and 254
captains of athletic teams.
Almost 50 percent of the
class members were
ranked in the top 5 percent
of their high school classes

Sure, here's the comparison:

1997: 6,841 applicants, 42% accepted
2015: 13,282 applicants, 28% accepted
 
Sure, here's the comparison:

1997: 6,841 applicants, 42% accepted
2015: 13,282 applicants, 28% accepted

You're going to have to shill better than that. % accepted tells you nothing about the quality of the student that is accepted and even less about the quality that enrolls.
 
Sure, here's the comparison:

1997: 6,841 applicants, 42% accepted
2015: 13,282 applicants, 28% accepted

Perhaps you did not notice the bolded?? or chose to ignore it? And by the way, the number of those accepted is pretty well fixed, not so the applicant number. Thus percentages mean little
 
Where the top students from NC are going is not an indication of Wake Forest's academic standards. And the answer to that question would pretty much always have been UNC anyway.

I'm having a hard time reconciling wake holding itself out as an elite academic institution and not getting their fair share of the top kids in North Carolina. Maybe I'm looking at this wrong. But what I see is a pool of applicants with the main common denominator being that they must be loaded to attend. I hate it I don't think it was this way in the 80's
 
You're going to have to shill better than that. % accepted tells you nothing about the quality of the student that is accepted and even less about the quality that enrolls.

Number of applicants doesn't even tell you that much without a comparison to peer institutions. It's much easier to apply now than in the 90s.
 
You're going to have to shill better than that. % accepted tells you nothing about the quality of the student that is accepted and even less about the quality that enrolls.

I'm not trying to shill. I'm simply trying to provide some actual numbers to frame the discussion.
 
Rafi, you're a shill. Accept it.
 
I'm having a hard time reconciling wake holding itself out as an elite academic institution and not getting their fair share of the top kids in North Carolina. Maybe I'm looking at this wrong. But what I see is a pool of applicants with the main common denominator being that they must be loaded to attend. I hate it I don't think it was this way in the 80's

I put this in a previous post, but the number of applicants from North Carolina has increased 52%. I'm not sure the exact time frame for that, but I provided the link in the previous post.

This link http://admissions.wfu.edu/campus-life/diversity/ suggests that economic diversity has increased 143% from 2007 to 2012, and this is the second largest increase amongst all national universities during this time period. I'm not certain how this is calculated, but I think it might be based on the number of Pell grants.
 
not a shill, but found this by searching the word "valedictorian" on wfu.edu:
http://news.wfu.edu/2014/08/13/media-advisory-wake-forest-prepares-to-welcome-class-of-2018/

Fun facts about #WFU18 include:

First-year students hail from 43 states and 28 countries
75 percent of incoming first-year students were in the top 10 percent of their high school classes
46 were high school valedictorians
40 percent of them applied early decision
10 percent of the incoming class are international students

Hard to do a 1:1 comparison with 1997, but hard to make an argument that academic qualifications have radically declined just based on this vs. what newberndeac posted.
 
Perhaps you did not notice the bolded?? or chose to ignore it? And by the way, the number of those accepted is pretty well fixed, not so the applicant number. Thus percentages mean little

Sorry NewBern, I didn't realize you bolded that section and were trying to emphasize that part. I did a little searching to try to provide comparison numbers, but Wake doesn't always report them the same from year to year. Here are the most up to date figures I can find for comparison:

Valedictorians - 46 in class of 2018
Top 10% of class (this is how it has been reported for several years) - 77% in class of 2019
Student body presidents - 63 class presidents in class of 2016
Sports captains - 335 in class of 2016
 
Here's another one. http://www.wfu.edu/news/release/2009.08.19.m.php

FRESHMAN FACTS —

Forty-four states and 19 foreign countries are represented
Twenty-five percent are from North Carolina
Thirty-eight percent graduated within the top 5 percent of their high school classes and 75 percent graduated within the top 10 percent of their classes
Ten percent are first-generation college students
Number of Valedictorians: 38
Number of Senior Class/Student Government Presidents: 57

this one shows a more sizable drop in valedictorians, top 5%, and class presidents vs. 1999 (ETA: this was the freshman class of 2009 (i.e. graduating class of 2013) so it's pretty old and I think pre-#NOSAT)
 
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Here's another one. http://www.wfu.edu/news/release/2009.08.19.m.php



this one shows a more sizable drop in valedictorians, top 5%, and class presidents vs. 1999 (ETA: this was the freshman class of 2009 (i.e. graduating class of 2013) so it's pretty old and I think pre-#NOSAT)

Looks like you have been doing the same searches as I. The data are reported differently each year - I made a post trying to compile the most recent numbers I could find for each statistic.
 
Yeah, I just got curious and started searching. I have no dog in this fight personally. I've got 8 years until my first kid goes to college. things may change a lot in that time. If I had a kid making a decision today, I would not encourage them to go to Wake as I just don't think the premium is worth it over a high quality state school. However, if my kid did not get into a high quality state school (i.e. UNC in my case) I would want them to go to Wake as opposed to a lot of other expensive privates. You pay a buttload for all these private schools, might as well go to the most highly ranked one you can get into. to put it another way, if the choice is Wake vs. UNC, go to UNC, if the choice is Wake vs. Elon or Davidson or William & Mary, go to Wake, if it's Wake vs. Duke, go to... OK I can't take it that far. :noidea: no ideology to it, has nothing to do with Wellman or Hatch really, just try to make the best choice for your kid's future.
 
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