<p>invasion,
I did not attack UChicago marketing practice. It’s their money and they have a deep pocket; they can use it anyway they want. I was trying to come up with possible reasons why some other schools haven’t copied them given what UChicago has achieved. The end result is obvious, why there haven’t been more copy cats that match their level of effort? What’s holding them back?</p>
<p>You said some schools have already did the whole [marketing] thing. Maybe some schools out there did but that’s not NU. It never had a huge admission department; the FA has never been among the most generous; it doesn’t give merit-based scholarships… NU’s increase has been pretty gradual; remember NU has six schools with wide array of disciplines. It doesn’t need a lot of marketing to get applicants and frankly, 32,000 applications is nothing special these days and it’s only twice their numbers in 1995. A 100% increase over almost 20 years is really not all that exciting. Many schools have more and have seen bigger jump.</p>
<p>Cue,
Maybe those other schools marketed heavily in the mid-90s but not NU, at least not done by the admission office. I am looking at the historic data and the only sigificant jump happened when NU won the Big Ten and went to the Rose Bowl. Within college football, NU was the media darling in the fall of 1995 and 1996. But that’s not marketing from the admission office; it was just a feel-good Cinderella story in college football.</p>
<p>One more thing: when I said “some people may question the practice”, I meant to say they question from the perspective of evaluating competing priorities, especially when considering how closely different programs/campaign tie to the central mission of their universities. I didn’t mean they think it’s “shady”.</p>
<p>Thanks for clarifying, Sam Lee. I didn’t really get that you were intimating something negative (which invasion and others may have).</p>
<p>In terms of those potentially copying UChicago’s approach, I think such copying would be really difficult to do. Again, UChicago has a great, pretty singular product, and a lot of events have transpired that has raised its status and stature. Other schools simply can’t copy that. In thinking through the matter more, I think it’s about more than just heavily funding the admissions office. The structure of the college (e.g. how many moving parts and different schools? how harmonized are the schools?) and the cohesiveness of the admissions office matters a lot to make this all pan out. UChicago may have one of the more sophisticated shops out there for this, and that’s not easy to replicate. </p>
<p>Oh, a relatively recent interview with Morton Schapiro indicates that he may move the school in the direction of more marketing, btw:</p>
<p>“I think we’ve been a little more aggressive moving past the modesty of Midwestern values to market ourselves,” he said.</p>
<p>Also, I may be mistaken, but at the start of Henry Bienen’s time as NU President, I thought he focused more on marketing and admissions, at least vis a vis peer schools at the time.</p>
<p>I don’t think so. If that were his focus, he did a rather lousy job for most of his tenure. The number of undergrad applicants dropped after 1996 and became pretty stagnant; it took almost ten years to get back to the 95/96’s level. </p>
<p>When I think of Henry Bienen’s achievements, I think of all those academic and research buildings and facilities that were built under his watch; in the process, NU hired many high-caliber researchers. The endowment tripled during his leadership. As far as undergrads go, the notable achievement was the success in external fellowships since 2000.</p>
<p>The fundamental problem for me is that many lower and middle income families are skittish of ED precisely because it binds you not only to the school academically, but financially. NU was my first choice and I wanted to apply ED, but I wasn’t sure if I could afford it (I still don’t…), so I had to wait until RD. Thankfully, I got in, but if ED is bumped even higher I fear that this will squeeze out students like me, in addition to the type of highly qualified applicant that NU, along with other top schools, are trying to attract. As much as I like president Shapiro’s commitment to school spirit, I don’t know if it is worth the potential cost.</p>
<p>That’s true, but how many families possibly without means know that? Further, ED creates issues because it asks students to make binding decisions early on in the process. What about students who can’t afford to visit, or can’t waste resources until they actually know where they’ve been accepted? It’s hard to make such a decision when access to information is skewed. </p>
<p>Generally, ED policies have been known to advantage certain groups (generally, the affluent). Increased use of ED is great for a particular school, but probably isn’t good for potential applicants. I’m not in favor of early policies generally, but ED in particular is overly restrictive.</p>
<p>It has now become a vicious circle, and more and more colleges are joining the ED bandwagon. Harvard and Princeton tried to set a new direction only to revert back.</p>
<p>Except SCEA is not really the same as ED, at all. You can still shop around in the regular cycle for better financial aid packages.</p>
<p>In my opinion, the worst offenders are the ED Ivies. If you back out of one of them for financial reasons, they actually notify any other Ivy League you applied to and get them to automatically deny your application, which I find ridiculous and quite spiteful.</p>
<p>Now, NU’s ED is not as bad as that, but it still doesn’t give you the option of comparing financial aid with NU. Because, let’s say NU’s aid ends up about 5 - 10k per year outside of your budget. That’s a lot, but it’s not unmanageable; if they had EA or SCEA you could apply to other places for RD, and if you find that your other aid packages are comparable, you can always go back to NU. But no, you have to decline your spot first before even getting the option to compare. That’s the reason I find ED evil and cannot possibly fathom why schools as reputable as NU, Duke, Penn, Columbia, etc. would use it. But anyway, we’re getting off topic here.</p>
<p>All colleges market. Few are as shamelessly cynical about it as Chicago is. Chicago touts itself as a haven for quirky intellectuals. But its marketing campaign is about as quirky as a Toyota commercial. To its credit, Northwestern has not crassly cheapened the college application process to the extent Chicago has.</p>
<p>When we started this college app process last year, I was furious about ED. I’m still not crazy about it, but I sort of understand it now. </p>
<p>A lot of it seems to me to be about colleges really hating to accept kids who don’t actually want to go there. They have to read the app several times, figure out the money, how the kid would fit into the class, etc. But the app is only in their pile as a last resort. It’s a weird business, unlike other kinds of markets with which I’m familiar.</p>
<p>So, e.g. certain schools (like American Univ.) have bi-modal rejection areas. They reject kids who are below, say, 2.8, let in kids from about 2.8 to about 3.5, and then waitlist everybody above 3.5 who hasn’t indicated that they really want to go there. This might seem cruel to the top applicants, but all those I’ve seen talk about it don’t mind because they “didn’t really want to go there.” And that’s just what the college believed about them. So, it’s a badge of honor in a way.</p>
<p>ED is an attempt by the schools to try to suss out who really wants to go there. It’s hard on 17-year olds and their families just entering this market, but, to be fair, it’s not without risk to the schools either, because any benefit to their yields may be offset by reductions in either their overall selectivity or their average grades/scores. </p>
<p>It’s just a weird world. You need to be Kenneth Arrow or some other game theory expert to figure it all out.</p>
<p>I don’t totally disagree with you about ED. But to be fair to NU, they said they looked at the data and found that there’s no significant difference in terms of socioeconomic distribution between their ED and RD pools. So they did at least look into the issue (as opposed to totally ignoring it) but concluded it was okay to continue.</p>
<p>I actually find loads of marketing less restricting/frustrating than a heavily used ED policy. If you don’t like the mail, throw it out.</p>
<p>Also, UChicago does not market itself as a “haven for quirky intellectuals” any more. The school has gradually but fundamentally changed its mission for its college - its new mission is to impart critical, scholarly thinking to its students so that they can apply these skills for success in any endeavor. This is a big difference from its past goal (which, essentially, was to be a training ground for PhDs). </p>
<p>Finally, as I stated above, as opposed to just marketing and creating a false buzz, UChicago has a phenomenal product, and it’s doing its best to get the word out there. If the product was poor, especially after three years of sustained marketing, the market would respond. The school would be faltering. Instead, the exact opposite is happening.</p>
<p>I applied ED, after my dad being unemployed for 4 years, just now getting a slightly over median income job (60K or so) with my mom on social security disability. It’s a stretch, but I knew I wanted to go there, and I know the money would be close enough to pull off. I think the only reason ED could hurt people financially is if they don’t have an honest discussion about what they can afford, what they will get, and what the child is willing to do.</p>
<p>I suspect that NU would get some of the reurns from the marketing done by the southside neighbor. Once you come all the way to chi town, you’d be nuts to not ck out NU, too, once you got southside PR info/bait. then it is a tale of the tape , lining them up , assessing fit, etc. NU will will definitely win some here</p>