"The University of Chicago will no longer require ACT or SAT scores from U.S. students, sending a jolt through elite institutions of higher education as it becomes the first top-10 research university to join the test-optional movement.
Numerous schools, including well-known liberal arts colleges, have dropped or pared back testing mandates in recent years to bolster recruiting in a crowded market. But the announcement Thursday by the university was a watershed, cracking what had been a solid and enduring wall of support for the primary admission tests among the two dozen most prestigious research universities." …
UChicago’s new test optional rule is somewhat watered-down by statements declaring that submitting test scores is encouraged, the test scores if submitted will be considered and can be an important part of one’s application, and then mentioning that every applicant should be aware that most applicants will likely submit test scores, including because many applicants will also be applying to other top colleges that require test scores. But it is stil a major change for a top ten college.
What is also quite interesting is the list of new financial aid rules. First-generation-in-family to attend college will get a $20,000 per year scholarship regardless of income level. Students with family income of $60,000 or less will pay no tuition, room and board, or fees. Students with family income of $125,000 or less will pay no tuition. It will also meet 100% of demonstrated financial need via grants and not loans, and because of that, a factor to be considered in admitting international students, but not domestic,will be the need for financial aid. Net effect for many applicants is that UChicago will actually end up being less expensive than going to their state university.
The more people apply to your school, the lower your acceptance percentage goes. UC is famous for huge bulk mass mailings, often to kids who have no chance of getting in, just to drive up the number of applications received.
They made other changes too. They will let kids self-report grades and they dropped the required in-person interviews.
So the only test scores they get will be the kids with very good test scores, which means that their reported test score average will go up.
All of this feels like it’s calculated to drive them up the USN&WR rankings.
In person interviews were optional. How much higher do you think they need to go in the rankings? #3(tie) is probably as high as USNWR will let them go before they change the algorithm to protect Princeton/Harvard/Yale which is what they calibrate against.
Maybe, they really want to open it up to underserved populations, especially as they coupled the changes with the free tuition from students from families who earn less than $125k/year.
I agree with @ninakatarina . This is a way to boost applications, and it will probably work. UC was by far the worst offender for unsolicited mailings with my D, and now with my S. My S literally has zero chance, or interest, in UChicago. Sure, test scores will be “optional”, but not for the vast majority of applicants.
We can expect to see a lot of exam-dropping in the next few years as colleges and universities seek to increase applicant interest while numbers of traditional-age students continue to decline.
For the past decade+, Chicago Admissions Dean Jim Nondorf has been sort of the bad-boy rock star of elite college admissions. With relatively minor changes in the underlying educational proposition Chicago offers students -- top intellectual reputation, rigorous liberal-arts core curriculum, strong social sciences, math, and humanities, culture of respectful debate with an emphasis on quantitative reasoning and hard work -- Nondorf has taken it from attracting tween-level application numbers and accepting about a quarter of them to getting 30,000 or more applications and accepting many fewer students, with better credentials, to fill a larger class. Every few years, he pulls off something dramatic to expand Chicago's appeal so it pulls in more applications, and generally it works as expected. This is a big one.
Actually, as the article points out, this is at least a double whammy (and as I will explain, probably more like a triple or quadruple whammy) to increase applications. Not only are they going test-optional, but they are also expanding financial aid significantly to a level competitive with anyone. In addition to that, they are splitting off a new "business economics" major from Chicago's famed economics major. (About 25% of the student body has economics as a first or second major.) A significant portion of the new major's courses will be offered by Chicago's Booth School of Business, putting Chicago into direct competition with Wharton. On top of all that, in the previous two years Chicago started to offer Early Decision 1 and 2 application options, and initiated a sort-of engineering major for the first time. All of those moves are major base-broadeners, although the direct consequence is that a Regular Decision application to Chicago has about the same chance of success as one to Harvard or Stanford, which is to say hardly any. (And that was last year. If these changes have the expected effect on applications, Chicago will get even more selective, on average.)
Lots of people are going to scream that this is nothing but a cynical move to increase applications. I don't think it's so cynical. I think Chicago -- like other elite colleges -- really wants to seine a broader, more diverse population of applicants to find unique talents who might not have thought to apply in the past. At the same time, I strongly doubt that this will make a huge difference in whom the university accepts. It is a place where students without strong writing skills will be in deep trouble, and it is one of the most pervasively mathy liberal arts colleges out there. If anything, to date that has led them to accept classes with extremely high SATs/ACTs. They have plenty of ways on applications besides standardized tests to tell which students have the writing, reasoning, and math skills to thrive there, and I suspect when the dust clears they will still have accepted classes with high test scores. (Especially since they will no longer need to factor in the lower test scores of the few students who qualify for admission without submitting their low test scores.)
@happymomof1 this is not simply to increase applications–it is to enable admissions with GREATER subjectivity. A 4.0 is not a 4.0 is not a 4.0. This is the just another tipping point for watered down education standards–and politically motivated admissions. (to increase minority admission rates) or for kids who “don’t do well on tests” from crappy schools. They dont want more jewish, chinese or white kids do they?. None of these top schools need to increase applications–they have plenty every year–and they essentially have the same amount of spots. How schools, that are especially strong in math and sciences will justify relying on grades is an insane thought. Is chicago NOT going to differentiate between schools–i.e grades? Test scores validate the rigor of the school where the grades have been earned.
@MaterS Next up is Harvard… they have been making it easier to apply by dropping the app essay requirements and SAT essay in an effort to catch up to Stanford’s admission rate. Stanford still requires both.
let’s see if Stanford follows. I don’t think they will. They don’t even publish EA stats anymore unlike the rest of the selective unis