@HydeSnark Agree. Lots of insecurity on this board. The irony is the back in the day which Chicago wasn’t fixated on numbers and yields, Chicago students were far more secure. They went to Chicago because it was different. The thought of comparing to the College to Penn or Yale would have struck people as funny. Now all the talk is how Chicago stacks up. Disappointing really.
@CU123 What is an “elite” student? By definition they aren’t students with high GPAs and test scores because there are literally tends of thousands of students with those qualifications. If you are talking in terms of holders of the really prestigious national scholarships–Intel, Gates, Coca-Cola–Chicago enrols no more than other universities, and considerably fewer than Stanford or Columbia. But does it matter?
Furthermore, the USNWR rankings are only one ranking, and a flawed one at best. What about some of the other ones? UChicago has work to do on some fronts - maybe not with respect to selectivity and reputation, but there’s more to college than that. Constantly touting the USNWR ranking is kind of embarrassing. It’s a great school and I am more than happy that my kid found it and is reasonably happy there. The ranking thing is phony and showy and I feel sorry for the kids of those whose world revolves around that.
Had we attended a college admissions event like that, I and my child likely would have “lost our lunch,” left for home before dessert, and we would immediately send in our enrollment deposit to a college that seemed to care more about the value of learning. Perhaps they have no desire to recruit the likes of us.
USNWR are not sad, they are a starting point for students to think about what college to attend. Most students don’t have the time and wherewithal to visit 20 or more colleges and decide which fits them. You can learn quite a bit about colleges from USNWR as an unbiased source (given that they tell you there criteria is for rating). Its a tool that is handy and to be used with the knowledge of its capabilities and limits. Yes, if you only look at the number in front of the college than you are selling yourself short.
MIT admit rate 7%. Yield ~77%. The metrics to beat/match for UChicago 
based on how close they have been to MIT for a while.
Too early to tell re UChicago. Likely admit rate for UChicago this year will be between 6.5 -and 7.2 percent. The admit rate for ED1 and EA was 9 percent. Very low.
It is amazing that MIT gets that kind of yield with unrestricted EA and no ED. Even if Chicago has a lower admission rate and higher yield, given that it would accomplish that by admitting 2/3 of its class through ED, the impressiveness of its “achievement” (if you want to call it that) will be much less than MIT’s. In this regard, MIT illustrates the difference between class and sass.
What’s sad to me is that Chicago was doing extremely, historically well following essentially the same ultra-classy high road that MIT takes. I’m not sure why they felt a need to abandon the high road in order to pick up what can’t be more than a percentage point or two in figures that mean very little to anyone (except, perhaps, a few posters on College Confidential).
MIT is a specialty school. It has only one real competitor in its class – Caltech. Apples and oranges.
Very true, a friend of my daughters was rejected by MIT, and he was literally “very disappointed” he had to go to Stanford for engineering.
It’s true that Caltech is the only clear equivalent, and maybe the only other meaningful choice for some portion of MIT’s applicants. But others clearly compare MIT to Ivies or top public universities.
Some years ago, longtime CC poster molliebatmit participated in an MIT admissions study on where accepted applicants who turned down MIT went instead. At the time MIT’s yield was more like 60%, I think. Anyway, although Caltech was important, it wasn’t the most important, Harvard was, and MIT lost people to all of the Ivies. Also Berkeley and Georgia Tech. (Others, too, but only a few students. Caltech, the Ivies, Berkeley and Geargia Tech were the only schools that got 10 or more people MIT accepted.)
Yale and UChicago, for example, would not be an alternative for MIT by any stretch.
The other posters are correct. MIT is the only super elite school in its niche other than Caltech, and Caltech is smaller than any liberal arts college. For many students of a particular technical bent, MIT is going to be their clear (and only) top choice. That doesn’t mean that every single student who applies to MIT views it that way, but thousands and thousands of their applicants do feel that way. Even Harvard doesn’t have that unique niche.
For students of other interests, they have multiple choices among super elite schools: HYP, Chicago, Stanford, Duke, JHU, Columbia and the other Ivies, the top LACs like Amherst and Williams, etc. .
This is a critical point. MIT can afford to be “classy” because it is competing for a very different and smaller set of kids and for those kids it is one of an extremely small set of super-elites. This is seen in their smaller application pool. Chicago would be following the MIT model of “Being classy” instead of “being sassy” at its own peril.
People have very short memories, Nothing prevents Chicago from becoming “classy” after “being sassy” for a few decades and building a big fat endowment. Its easier to be classy when you are rich
It’s ridiculous to see how many people rationalize UChicago’s ridiculous admissions practices.
This is an absurd premise! Having a marginally higher acceptance rate and a lower yield would not be the end of the world. I think it’s wonderful that UChicago has dramatically improved the undergraduate experience, but it isn’t like all of Chicago’s endowment would disappear, great professors would stay away, and no one would take the school seriously if it had, say, a 15% acceptance rate and 50% yield, or even if it had a 20% acceptance rate and 40% yield.
UChicago did have a niche. But one day it woke up and realized it had a choice to either be a first rate UChicago or a second rate Princeton. I think it’s clear now what they chose, and I think that choice has had plenty of downsides (see: @Cue7’s assiduously catalogued criticisms of the school). But there’s value for good morals, even if that value isn’t reflected in US News rankings or acceptance rates. I think UChicago would be a better school if it, as an institution, changed its philosophy back to trying to be the best UChicago it can be.
I’m someone who actually went to that UChicago of the past. It kind of, well, it sucked. The academics were great, but life was not great. As a result, few wanted to go there. Some of the class was self selected well-qualified people, but the rest of the class was mostly second tier prep school or rich suburban kids who were there because it was the only top school they could get into (including me). Because of the limited applicant pool, many of the accepted students were not prepared for the rigor and flunked out. Others transferred or dropped out from depression. I entered with a class of 800 and graduated with a class of 500.
I love the changes that have taken place over the past couple of decades, and I don’t see the increase in interest and qualification of applicants as a negative at all. To me the downsides are pretty much imaginary, a form of navel gazing that compares an excellent current situation unfavorably to a mythological past that never really existed.
I don’t disagree with you.
Like I said, I don’t think the changes they’ve made to the undergraduate experience are bad. The changes to the core, increased support for career services, expansion of the college, etc. are all positive changes and I commend Zimmer and Boyer for it and their ability to improve the College without losing what made it unique.
However, I think it’s possible to praise that and still be critical of the admissions office and the administration’s ranking chase at the expense of applicants, students, and professors. There are a lot of people who end up here because of the marketing and the ranking expecting Princeton or Yale. And, well…we aren’t.
It’s not possible to achieve a lot of this without a lot of money which comes from being viewed as a desirable destination ( a school’s bond rating for example is directly tied to its brand and ability to attract top talent) and you can’t do that without a desirable rank.
…is anyone even reading what I’m writing?
Edit: Oh never mind lol, you edited your comment.
Most of these changes were done earlier, before the current push for rankings. Nondorf wasn’t hired until 2009, and Zimmer not until 2007. The core was shrunk in the late 90s, and the College has been steadily increasing at about the same rate for 3 decades - hitting 1000 in 1994, 1225 by about 2003, and 1500 by 2011. Boyer has been improving the College for years, with or without prestige.
Frankly the assertion that the sky would start falling if UChicago doesn’t keep up its assault on the acceptance rate is unsubstantiated fiction.
@HydeSnark 
I do read what you write. I like your posts. Even when I don’t agree with them