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Hi. Just a broad question, but why does Wake Forest always seem to be ignored on this website...It seems that no one finds interest in it. Can somone explain why a Top-30 school with such respected academics wouldn't recieve this respect? LOL I'm not mad or anything I'm just curious...

By Aspirer42 (Aspirer42) on Thursday, July 08, 2004 - 05:07 pm: Edit

The majority of posters on College Confidential seem to hail from the Northeast and West Coast, so most of your Southern top-quality schools (with the exceptions of possibly Duke, Emory, and Rice) tend to get the shaft. No complaints; that's just how I've seen it.

On top of that, religious schools also often have problems gaining widespread respect, and Wake's been moving away from its deeply Baptist roots only in the last couple of decades. I guess they've just got hit with the double whammy in those regards. They're really quite worthy of their ranking, though. Great college, great campus, great academics, and, of course, you can't go wrong with their athletic program

By Mysticwistful (Mysticwistful) on Friday, July 09, 2004 - 12:17 am: Edit

Duke would be a fine school if it was in the Northeast or California. But since it is in the south, it gets the shaft too.

By Aspirer42 (Aspirer42) on Friday, July 09, 2004 - 12:21 am: Edit

I do hope you meant to say 'Duke would be *considered* a fine school'...

By Sokkermom (Sokkermom) on Friday, July 09, 2004 - 08:31 am: Edit

I don't think Duke "gets the shaft" from anyone. And we hail from the Northeast! From everything we have seen and heard it is indeed considered to be a fine institution. The cc board is the only place we have witnessed this unexplainable "Duke bashing".

(PS. Biased Mom note)

Son also applied to Wake Forest and thought it was a great school. It was the first college he visited and it stayed on his final list.

By Hubbellgardner (Hubbellgardner) on Friday, July 09, 2004 - 08:42 am: Edit

If you could magically transport the Davidson campus from N.C to a Massachusetts town, it would be the #1 LAC in a very short period of time(instantly more applicants, lower acceptance rate etc...); same thing if Wake Forest was relocated; there is a bit of anti-southern bias to higher education that we have to accept.

By Admissionsrep (Admissionsrep) on Saturday, July 17, 2004 - 01:27 am: Edit

I do believe that there is a strong east coast bias. If you talk to admissions counselors at various southern, midwest or western colleges, they hate working the Northeast region because of the bias toward New England, and to a lesser degree, Mid Atlantic schools.

I agree that Davidson would probably crack the Amherst, Williams, Swarthmore tier if it weren't in North Carolina.

The other reason why Wake gets neglected is because it is no where near as selective as the schools that are most frequently discussed as being hyperselective. You can tell by their middle 50% SAT tier that they are not at the level of several dozen other schools. Also, while they do read each app like the LAC schools, I have found that if you are in the top 10% of your class, in the high 1300's and have good references, you can feel quite confident that youu will get the thick packet.

Wake is a very conservative school and not everyone wants a school as conservative as Wake, Washington & Lee, Furman, Davidson, or Vanderbilt.