<p>With the departure of Michael Behnke and now Ted O'Neill Chicago may be in for some major changes in its Admissions Department. I knew it had to happen someday, but I am deeply saddened by Ted's departure. He is a man of firm beliefs and a real understanding of The University and its place in the world. He will be missed.</p>
<p>O?Neill</a> to leave admissions office inJune - The Chicago Maroon</p>
<p>I feel a bit sad too. He brought a number of unprecedented qualities to the admissions environment. I hope his successor is just as bold as he is.</p>
<p>Wow crazy, I have heard so many great things about Ted O'Neill. I wonder how admissions will change in the next years.</p>
<p>This is huge. Ted was one of the most important admissions deans in the country. I feel like a very important chapter in the history of the College is coming to an end and I'm a bit apprehensive about what comes next. </p>
<p>Thanks for all your amazing work, Ted, and best wishes on your new teaching career!</p>
<p>Here is a convocation speech I saved, for those who haven't heard one, or won't have the opportunity:
[quote]
Welcome Class of 2009
Ted O’Neil
Dean of Admissions
The University of Chicago</p>
<p>Welcome, Class of 2009, and transfers – Classes of 2008 and 2007, - finally, welcome - and welcome to your parents, and other supporters and to all of you.</p>
<p>Where have you been? It’s already September 17th your friends have been at school for a month. We hear that you were home staying out late, sleeping into the afternoon, and being ornery around the house pretending to study for the calculus placement exam, hanging around your old high schools, checking out the new threads in the mirror, waiting until the last minute to pack, not reading The Iliad as you promised yourself you would before you got to the Athens of Illinois. We hear that people back home wonder why, if you were so smart, you didn’t go to college. Bad enough that they thought you were going to a city college (at least the Chicagoans could get away with letting people think they were going to UIC.)</p>
<p>Well, you are here now, that’s the important thing – the leaves are turning, the divisional playoffs are about to start, with or without the White Sox (but with or without, thank heaven it’s without, the Cubs), the Bears have already lost their first game, the kids are deciding who they will be for Halloween, the mayor has mountains of salt ready to de-ice the streets, and now you finally come to college.</p>
<p>We hope, just because you imagined that when you arrived you would catch a whiff of the corpse of fun, that you didn’t delay your departure. Maybe you thought you got the wrong letter! Or, that we changed our decision – we found out that you didn’t study for your calculus placement exam, or read The Iliad, or memorize French idioms, or, that we really paid attention to your spring semester C- in AP Chemistry – that instead you went to the beach, de-tassled corn, or drank a root beer – things no University of Chicago student is supposed to do. But – we don’t make mistakes, and, stare decisus –the decision stands (for the next day or so, the Latin phase newscasters will take the most pleasure in saying), stare decisus, unless you really think those old judges didn’t know what they were doing – stare decisus – “you’re stuck” is the English translation.</p>
<p>We know you – we didn’t ask you about big jars of mustard for nothing, we know you belong in this slightly odd, at least by the standards of these odd times, community of people who actually cannot wait to get to learning; who cannot wait another minute to meet new friends who can’t wait to learn and change the world; who laugh at the notion that fun dies if you think too hard, or that one single integrated person couldn’t be happy and serious at the same time; who can both believe that truth is worth seeking and see through the baloney that so many people, including, or especially, powerful people, take to be true; who can discriminate and make beautiful things while recognizing an ugly painting or building or policy or war when they see one – we have been eagerly awaiting your arrival, just as you, if you are a true Chicago class, have been waiting impatiently for school to begin.</p>
<p>Every year I tell the entering class that they are the best ever – why not? Who knows? – and, if it is a case of “who knows?”, why not claim that each new class is the best? It could be true your grades were better than ever, your scores were better than ever, you did a lot for your communities, you knew what to do with giant jars of mustard or what to do if stranded on Mars with a Teleclone machine – you resisted the nearly overwhelming push to be ruled by the ratings, to do the popular thing, to seek “fun” (and you should have no trouble imagining the smirking little sarcastic quotation marks around that “fun”) to avoid that “dangerous” neighborhood of real, vital, diverse urban life, politics and art, and you came here, albeit, late, and we love you for it, and promise to do whatever we can to help you make lives rich, thoughtful and satisfying.</p>
<p>Soon you may see the just-released movie Proof, based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning play written by recent College alum David Auburn. In it you will see this very chapel, and scenes of this campus and neighborhood, and neurotic students and mad professors, all things with which you will come to be familiar. And Jake Gyllenhaal as a math professor who plays in a rock band, and Gwyneth Paltrow as a mathematician as brilliant as Matt Damon – people the like of which you will never see again. The father and brilliant old math professor, played by Anthony Hopkins, an English speaking version of someone you might meet in Math 151, says: “I love Chicago in September. Perfect skies. Sailboats on the water. Cubs losing. Warm, the sun still hot with the occasional blast of Artic wind to keep you on your toes remind you of winter. Students coming back, bookstores full, everybody busy ---Yeah, I like it. I like watching the students. Wondering what they’re going to buy, what they’re gonna read. What kind of ideas they’ll come up with when they settle down and get to work” Tony and I say “welcome”.</p>
<p>Speaking of the movies: When admissions people get together after-hours they all tell this one story – everyone has his or her own way of telling it, a simple story that has made the rounds for years and years. The old timers tell it, and the new ones tell it. Usually it isn’t for the public, but since your arrival is so belated, maybe you deserve to hear a rendition.</p>
<p>Kid comes into an admissions office, says I’ve got an act for you admissions guy says, “What kind of act?” and the kid says, “A family act.” “Okay, how does it go?” Kid says, “High school junior spends $4,000 on a Princeton Review class and SAT scores go up 120 points, now he figures he doesn’t have to go to #10-15 on the U.S. News list but can get into 1-10, so the mother takes a second job to pay off the Princeton Review and buys the Platinum Package from an independent college counselor for $30,000 so Junior can be advised about when to help his fellow man and how best to package the experience, and when to take power naps, father, meanwhile, talks to the accountant, finds out that even a home equity loan won’t bring enough cash to get the kid into the right summer program to help repair castles in Carcassonne as a community service project, without which Junior won’t get into college 1-10, to say nothing of having the money to send the boy to Tibet to practice spinning prayer wheels as proof of his spirituality and concern for diversity and international harmony, and besides there is the tuition for sophomore daughter’s harp camp in Maine, so he decides to sell the car, which means mom and dad have to use the Metra to get the younger brother to his 2:00 a.m. hockey practice, which he’ll need if he wants to use the athletic hook to get into an Ivy or at least a “Little Three,” a trip which takes one parent away from Junior’s homework – the family has a pact that at least one parent will write at least one draft of each required paper due in the senior year and the first draft of the college essays - and Junior has carefully chosen the “most challenging” senior coursework – AP Stats as his math, AP Psych as his science, “The History of the Vietnam War” as the social science, “The Literature of the Vietnam War” as the English elective, and “Reading a Balance Sheet” as preparation for his college internship, which he means to be the culmination of his liberal arts education. Parents are working so many extra hours and otherwise spending so much time on the Metra train on the way to hockey practice that sister is ignored and stops practicing the harp, thereby settling for a future without a prestigious college education, hence, perdition, has herself heavily tattooed, drops out of the Key Club, joins a heavy metal harp band, and spits venomously whenever Junior pulls out his SAT word-list and adds another entry to his on-line collection of homonyms. Metra goes on strike, little brother can’t get to hockey practice, is kicked off the team, begins to think of a future at the community college or emigration to Germany where he can join an apprentice program for tool and die makers, and mom and dad begin to feel strains in the marriage, but vow to stay together to see Junior through the second administration of the SAT IIs, because they know that with support, and coaching, he will be able to get an 800 on the writing exam unless he is tempted to be either original or imaginative, which would result in a lower score, and his having to settle for, heaven forbid, a state university which means no job at Goldman, Sachs, so why bother to go to college at all? Father finds that he begins to day-dream of the time when he carried Junior’s egg on his toes beneath a flap of his own skin during the long Antarctic winter, and vows that the boy will never go to college in a windy and frigid Midwestern city where, if the egg drops, cracks will reveal the icicles which had been his not-yet fledgling son, and in his identification with the precarious, fragile frosty egg decides that we will only apply to Duke, Emory, UVA, and, of course, Dartmouth if we can get in, damn the cold, they are rated 7th in U.S. News. All the while, mother swims under the ice eating enough chum to regurgitate meals for her newly hatched chick to make him strong enough for cross country practice, which should look pretty god on the application despite the fact that his little webbed feet limit his speed, and he finds that flopping on his belly to slide along the ice doesn’t really improve his time, not at all in Raleigh, Atlanta or Charlottsville. Family meets and decides to prune away younger brother and sister to help foster the blossom that they wish Junior actually had turned out to be, they sell the home and move to Kazahkstan, hoping that geographical diversity might work the trick at any, please, just any, top 10 college or university, and they are last seen deciding to which school they will apply Early Decision.”</p>
<p>The admissions guy looks at him and says, “Wow! that’s quite an act – what do you call it?”</p>
<p>The Meritocrats.</p>
<p>Well, that’s enough fun for this lifetime.</p>
<p>For the second time in four years we begin the academic year following a national tragedy. In 2001, despite the national sense of shock and loss, every first-year showed up for the beginning of the school year determined to carry on with life and to learn how to put the world back together. This year we have watched some combination of nature being nature, and human nature being human nature, bring the destruction of a vital and irreplaceable part of our country. </p>
<p>Some of you are New Orleanians, and as far as I know, you have all made it up here to begin the important task of educating yourselves, even if you lost your houses and every other material thing you owned. Some of you, with more to come next week, have left your home colleges and universities to join us temporarily while Tulane and Dillard and Xavier and the University of New Orleans rebuild. Welcome to Chicago, everyone, a city that has been a refuge, not at every moment in our past a kind refuge, but a place people have come in order to escape floods, (remember the Mississippi flood of 1927?) poverty, and racism. So many new Chicagoans have over the years come here from New Orleans, and especially the Mississippi Delta, right up those famous county highways and the Illinois Central railroad. King Oliver and Louis Armstrong and Big Bill Broonzy and Muddy Waters and Buddy Guy and a whole lot of just normal, hard-working people travelled up the Mississippi to this city, and have transplanted their culture and watched it grow with a particular Chicago flair. If New Orleans is the birthplace of jazz and the Delta the birthplace of the blues, Chicago is the place where those most important American art forms came into full flower. The south has made its mark here, and Chicago has made its mark on hundreds of thousands of Louisianans, Mississippians, Alabamians, Arkansans and Tennesseeans. You can be sure that a lot of the people you will meet in Chicago have family down in the flooded regions, and for that reason as well as for the simple fact that we feel for people who suffer no matter what, or where, you new and old Chicagoans have a special connection to the recent disaster.</p>
<p>I am very proud to present your class, the best ever, to a person who, in his tenure here, has most clearly understood the strength and cultural richness of even our most impoverished neighbors in the city, and has done the most to bring the University of Chicago and the great south-side together, and that is the President of the University, Don Randel.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I remember dropping my D off for an admissions interview with Dean O'Neil this past year. She was extremely nervous, having made the mistake of Googling him and discovering what an admissions "rock star" he was. Not only did she survive the experience but I'm convinced that it was a significant factor in her decision to attend the University this fall. She was really looking forward to the convocation speech. I hope that he will be delivering it one more time.</p>
<p>This is the Newsweek article they quote on the UChicago News article of 3/5/09:</p>
<p>He pays all this lip service to the school maintaining its focus on the individual, but whatever that means, the near universal consensus by students and alumni is that the College has exhibited a seismic shift in the quality and demeanor of its student body over the last decade (precisely in the direction of Williams or Yale and it did game the rankings along the way to get there). Simply put, he clearly has reservations about implementing Zimmers more aggressive marketing efforts which intend to make the college as selective and in turn socially sexy as possible, and basically does not want to say it. Additionally, the two are diametrically opposed in their perspectives about funding the sciences at the direct expense of other dying fields (anthropology, romance languages, sociology, etc), and have sparred implicitly about this through their quotes in the Maroon. </p>
<p>All in all, his departure comes as no surprise. I suspect a much more aggressive recruiting team will coalesce in time as his absence will also engender a change in the composition of who gets hired as an applications reader.</p>
<p>In looking back at the Newsweek article, I think this quote summarizes Dean O'Neill's admissions mantra, and his contention with President Zimmer: "We're not 'building a class,' creating this ideal little world with so many of these and so many of those," O'Neill says. "We accept the best, and hope to get as many as we can." </p>
<p>Now, President Zimmer is hoping to "build a class" and not simply recruit as many of the brightest young minds as possible. I'm assuming he'll want the new Dean of Admissions to appeal to certain constituencies more - such as the offspring of Chicago alums or students with more "hooks." In the past, all you needed to get into Chicago was academic brilliance and curiosity - that mattered the most. Now, Zimmer's vision of the school should fall more in line with admissions at Chicago's immediate peers (Columbia, Duke, etc.). </p>
<p>I'm not sure how I feel about this. I'm glad Dean O'Neill bowed out graciously, aside from maybe a few barbs thrown toward Zimmer. At the same time, I think the past three presidents that have taken Chicago in the direction of becoming essentially a "middle-to-upper tier ivy" have done extremely well in improving the school.</p>
<p>Starting with President Sonnenschein, to Don Michael Randel to Zimmer, Chicago now has an endowment and financial resources that eclipse the finances of UPenn, Duke, and Cornell, and nearly match Columbia's offerings. Incoming students are undoubtedly more capable and adept at dealing with the rigors of a Chicago education (so grade deflation is less of an issue). Additionally, Chicago's admissions statistics have fallen in line with institutions such as Duke, Penn, and Georgetown in terms of selectivity. </p>
<p>Moreover, as much as I grumble about this now, in 5-7 years, as Chicago continues to improve in traditional ways and students become more savvy, it is very, very unlikely that Chicago will continue to trail its immediate peers in law and med school placement. Students continue to boast higher incoming test scores and each class is stronger from top to bottom. Savvier students more adept at dealing with the challenges Chicago presents can then also succeed in more "traditional" ways. This kind of culture produces more success in the future, and feeds upon itself.</p>
<p>Cue7: I think you may be right about the direction Zimmer wants to take the student body, I just hope the intellectual integrity of the University is not sacrificed in doing so. The country needs at least one university dedicated to inquiry and ideas above all else, even law & med school admissions. As a country we don't need another UPenn, Duke, or Princeton, we need a Chicago. I hope you are correct that these two outcomes are not mutually exclusive and that the next presidential search committee hears the same refrain reported by faculty search committee member Robert Pippen:</p>
<p>
[quote]
"As we traveled... we would ask for what the view form the outside was of The University, and we would hear... The University is the purist of universities, dedicated to research, creation of new knowledge, and education more than any other, that it is a kind of intellectual hothouse, that the value of ideas and the life of the mind mean more here than anywhere else. We heard this so often that I was tempted to ask, 'So what is it you do?'"
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Another, somewhat longer article about Ted: ONeill</a> steps down as Admissions Dean, returns to full-time teaching</p>
<p>idad - I've thought a lot about this too, and I don't think changing the admissions strategies will affect the U of C all that much. This is because the college students have not - and have never been - the jewel of the university. Instead, when people refer to the greatness of the U of C, they talk about the faculty, and the spirit of the school created by eminent faculty members. </p>
<p>Chicago is an "intellectual hothouse" because the faculty and administrators work to create an environment where faculty and top grad students debate - sometimes ferociously - the merit of their ideas. This spirit trickles down to the undergrads, but the undergrads certainly do not create the very trademark of the University. This environment contrasts what you see at a Yale or Princeton, where the College plays a much more central role in the life of these universities. </p>
<p>I think, as long as the U of C doesn't greatly expand its athletic program, allow ill-suited athletes in, and allow for rampant favoritism for legacies to become the norm, the college will be just fine. If Chicago could get, say, more of the students that are accepted to Yale on ACADEMIC MERIT, would the College really be that different? </p>
<p>What Chicago needs are extremely bright, capable, and intellectually curious students. We don't need the useless athletic recruits or bottom dwelling legacy admits. As long as Chicago stays true to this, it will be fine. </p>
<p>I think one of the reasons Dean O'Neill quit is because Zimmer will most likely endorse strategies to drum up applications. Instead of focusing on careful recruitment and attention to the individual, Zimmer would want admissions officers to get more extraneous applications, and mine for academic talent more generally. I think the numbers will change because of this (e.g. if all goes to plan, the number of applications will, in the next 3-4 years, go up to the 15000-20000 range, the accept rate will drop to 15-20%), but again, finding the type of students faculty enjoy teaching can still occur under this system.</p>
<p>I think Dean O'Neill laments the move away from a more personalized form of admissions. Yale, Brown, etc. all rely on this less personalized system, but I really do not think the students admitted on ACADEMIC MERIT at these schools fall a step behind Chicago students. It's possible to go for "big numbers" admissions and still get a wonderful class full of academically gifted, promising individuals. Again, you could take the students accepted for academic merit at Yale, Brown, Harvard, etc. and the faculty would love teaching these students just as much as the current crop of Chicago undergrads.</p>
<p>& again - the key at Chicago has been, as John Boyer as stated, to find students that the Chicago faculty would enjoy teaching. This is still certainly possible under a "big numbers" admissions schema. The personalized admissions process that Dean O'Neill cherishes, however, would fall to the wayside. </p>
<p>I just hope the College can find another dean as charismatic as Dean O'Neill. I'm not sure exactly who can fill that role, but it seems if we could launch a bit of a coup and get a top official from Yale or Brown (two schools that play Zimmer's game but also generally create classes that Chicago may envy a bit), that may work out well for the U of C. What do you guys think?</p>
<p>I am in general agreement, but can Chicago attract more students without changing its academic environment and unique character in order to do so? It is indeed true that the faculty are the driving force at Chicago, or at least have been. When S1 attended an orientation with Dean Boyer he made it quite clear that they (the students) were admitted "for the faculty." Hopefully, they will continue to have some say about admissions. I think that the VP of Enrollment will be from outside the University, but the Admissions Dean should have some connection to the school and its traditions, which is one reason Zimmer was chosen as president.</p>
<p>I'm certainly sad to see him go. He came to my HS and it was the first time I had heard of the school but he had me sold after that 1 hour session.</p>
<p>How much of the last discussion is based on knowledge, and how much on speculation? There seems to be a tendency to demonize Zimmer somewhat. Apart from his few years at Brown, he has been part of the Chicago faculty for decades. I don't have any sense that he is trying to turn Chicago into some generic brand, or that he gives a hoot what its USNWR ranking is. I do have the sense that he wants the University to compete straight up with its strongest competitors at every level, and I applaud that. I also have the sense that he is more or less in tune with the faculty former Young Turks (including John Boyer) who have been remaking the College for the past 20 years, quite successfully so far, and, more, that he doesn't see the College as necessarily the focus of his attention.</p>
<p>So, while I certainly notice the resignations of Behnke and O'Neill, and wonder whether some conflict with Zimmer was involved, all I really have is the barest and weakest of circumstantial evidence for that. It's not as if Behnke and O'Neill haven't been moving the College in the general direction Zimmer (and others) seem to want, and pretty well, too. It's not as if Chicago doesn't have great marketing materials, and spread them around liberally, without losing much of its unique character. I think it would be very hard to conclude that Behnke and O'Neill haven't done an excellent job, or to predict that their successor(s) will be a clear improvement, from Zimmer's point of view or anyone else's.</p>
<p>Is it possible that Behnke really IS leaving for personal/burn out reasons? And that O'Neill has resigned because the University is not going to have two college admissions deans going forward, and a decision had been made that O'Neill should not have the one job? (There must be some significant shortcoming in his abilities, or else the University would never have gone to the double-dean structure in the first place, however seamlessly it has appeared to work.)</p>
<p>If you want to see where Zimmer holds undergrads, take a look at his participation at things like family weekend. His predecessor Randel held a reception (actually two) for all families to come to, and was there to meet/greet everyone. Zimmer? Nowhere to be found.</p>
<p>Take the College graduation last June. Where was Zimmer? Certainly not anywhere afterward.</p>
<p>In November 2007, three UofC students won Rhodes Scholarships, and one won a Marshall. In early December, the U had a reception for the winners, friends and family. Did Zimmer show up? No, he sent his Provost. </p>
<p>To add irony to the above, he did show up at a reception for top scholarship winners just before convocation this past June. (Must have been grad students there, too?) One of the Rhodes winners introduced herself to him. He had no idea who she was. </p>
<p>If he could care less about (1) parents and family or (2) the top undergrads who bring fame and honor to the U, I doubt he cares much about undergrads in general.</p>
<p>I welcome contrary examples from the readers here, but from my POV, Zimmer just views undergrads as a profit center for which he can generate $$ for moves into things like molecular engineering.</p>
<p>JHS - I agree with idad here. All Zimmer has been doing/proposing is the exact same strategy that Sonnenschein started at U of C in the late 90s. Don Michael Randel followed Sonnenschein's plans as well, but he did so with a charisma and affable nature that made the entire scheme much more palatable to the University Community. I was disappointed to see Randel leave so soon, because he drove the U of C forward with diligence and a personal touch.</p>
<p>Zimmer, unfortunately, seems to have more of Sonnenschein's detached, arrogant air. Remember, all three presidents want essentially the same thing - for Chicago to once again compete head-to-head with the big boys, but their methods have differed. Randel was friendly, accessible, and open. Zimmer and Sonnenschein were/are detached and aloof.</p>
<p>As I'm sure you know, being a University President requires appealing - or at least giving the impression of appealing - to all of your constituent groups. I think Zimmer has done a better job of maintaining good ties with the faculty and researchers, but he has put the undergrads on the backburner in terms of keeping up appearances. Of late, he has also made statements of "needing to get at least 15000 applications a year," something that may not go over well with the Admissions Office. </p>
<p>To conclude, I think Dean O'Neill just got tired of it. Starting with Sonnenschein, and then improving a bit but continuing under Randel, and now with Zimmer leading with Sonnenschein's characteristic (and not exactly beloved) air, I think O'Neill had enough. Remember, Behnke was brought in to further Sonnenschein's goals, and I think while O'Neill grew to enjoy his work with Behnke, Dean O'Neill is not particularly pleased with the gradually - but inexorably - changing approach at the College.</p>
<p>Here is an article about Zimmer's admissions goals:</p>
<p>Prospective</a> students judge evolving admissionsprocess - The Chicago Maroon</p>
<p>To be blunt, I can't remember Randel ever making such specific statements about the admissions process. I think Randel wanted admissions to improve, and he let O'Neill continue the work of strengthening Chicago's applicant pool. Zimmer, on the other hand, seems much more engaged in creating a highly selective, elite college - one that resembles its mid-ivy brethren. Saying that we "need" 15000 applications for a healthy college seems a bit suspect, and falls more in line with the "big numbers" admissions strategies employed at Duke, Penn, Brown, etc. </p>
<p>In any case, with 13500 applications this year, Chicago should achieve the goal of 15k applications in the next year or two - a full two years ahead of Zimmer's proposed plans. If all goes to plan, within 4 years or so (assuming a modest 5-7% growth in admissions each year), Chicago should receive around 17,000 applications a year. Assuming we still admit roughly the same number of students, that'll work out to around a 18% acceptance rate. It's not inconceivable, with more aggressive growth, that Chicago's admit rate dips to 14-15% within six years. These numbers rival the stats found at any college, save for the top 5 or so. </p>
<p>Since I doubt admissions can change drastically at Chicago's peer schools, I'd imagine the rates of admission at Dartmouth, Brown, etc. will hover around 15%. After literally decades of accepting 50-75% of students, in about 9 years, Chicago's accept rate will have dropped by 35%. These are significant changes over a short period of time, and I'm assuming Dean O'Neill, if asked in private, would have some strong opinions on this trend.</p>
<p>Cue7, you are confirming some of my points, I think. I completely agree that Zimmer is a continuation of Sonnenschein - Randel (and really Gray, too). I didn't know that Behnke was Sonnenschein's guy, but that makes sense. I still don't know why Zimmer wanted Behnke to leave, if in fact he did, since they seem(ed) to be on essentially the same page. I suppose O'Neill may have been a secret dissenter, but he has been part and parcel of what has been a very successful effort to expand the college's attractiveness over the past decade +. The genii isn't going to go back in the bottle -- I think Chicago would hit the 15,000 application mark by 2012 on autopilot, if there isn't a second Great Depression.</p>
<p>I don't understand why anyone, including Zimmer, would see simply increasing applications as a good thing. The USNWR theory is silly: notwithstanding its high admission rate, Chicago is rated about as high as it possibly could be under the magazine's algorithm. Perhaps if it were as selective as Dartmouth it would go up a slot, but there is effectively a Berlin Wall of factors that would keep it from getting any higher there (starting principally with endowment). And, as newmassdad points out, it's not at all clear to me that Zimmer spends a great deal of time thinking about the college, much less how to fine tune admissions.</p>
<p>The genius of Chicago's marketing effort, for me, is that it has doubled applications over the past 5 years while continuing to appeal to students who like the special character of the university. It is by far and away the best college marketing I have seen, because it doesn't pander, and it does represent pretty faithfully (with just a little puffery) what the university is all about. I don't know who to thank for that -- Behnke, O'Neill, the publicity VP? -- but it's pretty admirable. I can't see anyone getting fired over it.</p>
<p>If, as behind the scenes policy, U Chicago really wants to be competitive with the universities mentioned above, then it has to improve its financial aid policies. I know of students who weighed going to U Chi & elite LACs, such as Williams, Amherst, & Swarthmore, who chose the LACs. A good part of the decision came from not wanting to go into debt. I would imagine, given the discussion above, that Chicago would become even more of a "safety" for students applying to Ivies who do not check the financial aid box.</p>