@Cue7 at #168 - I still have yet to meet a preppie and I was there the entire day. This afternoon at Rockefeller Chapel I was surrounded by more regular folks from flyover country. The dad told me he didn’t know anyone else at his D’s school who got into UChicago. Maybe the preppies were all grouped together so that they didn’t have to talk to anyone else? But I kind of doubt it - most of the kids I noticed just naturally mingled with one another. All the kids just seemed to be so delighted to be there - it’s quite likely no one gave any thought to social class or income.
@JBStillFlying - I don’t know what to tell you, but your experience seems counter to the statistical data on the class. More than 1/3 of the Class of 2022 come from the mid-atlantic and new england. About 20% come from the West (with heavy representation from California).
So, if you’re only meeting “regular folks from flyover country,” you’re missing many large chunks of the class.
Also, the preppies (but keep in mind, they may not look like “preppies”) make up a big percentage of the class. About 20 will come from Andover alone - with another 20 from Horace Mann, around 10 from Exeter, 5-10 from Hotchkiss, a handful from Groton, many from Milton, etc. etc. Chicago’s recent classes may well include more prep school alumni than Harvard’s (which, a generation ago, was unthinkable).
This is not to say everyone isn’t happy and ready to mingle. I imagine the prep school types at Chicago are very happy to be there, and probably look a little different than the lacrosse recruits going to Dartmouth or Princeton. Nevertheless, they are most likely wealthy and well-connected just the same.
You do know, right, that you could go to Harvard for a day and have the exact same experience you just had? But that doesn’t negate the heavy influence of the prep group (and wealth) in Cambridge.
“While I’m sure there are some who get nice fin aid packages (like @JBStillFlying family), I think a disproportionate number of EDs come from the Andover, Horace Mann, Milton etc., crowd - and that crowd tends to be a wealthy bunch.”
““No Barriers… especially if you’re a full pay kid at Exeter!””
“We need boots on the ground to decide these matters. @JBStillFlying is circulating at the April get-together, and I expect she’s making notes. I hope she will report her observations when she has time. I have a hunch the kids and families she is meeting will be more varied than you fellows are suggesting.”
I did not meet any preppies today but there is always tomorrow - I’ll keep looking. We pretty much spent most of our time no further north than 58th and primarily in the areas of SS, Oriental Insitute, Rock Chapel, and Ida Noyes. Most of the families I spoke to appeared to be from flyover country and their kids attend HS in-state. My D knows a lot of ED’s and we certainly met our share of those families a couple years ago …but no preppies then, either. We must be hanging with the wrong crowd.
Not even sure that someone from that world would even have liked today’s event unless they were there for the same reasons as everyone else -to get a great education and connect with stellar career and grad school resources. Pretty sure students of all means, backgrounds, and secondary school education options - along with their parents - benefitted from what they learned today,
I am at the open house as well, though I arrived late and only caught the parent reception. I generally agree with the observation that UChicago seems to be recruiting heavily from prep schools than it had in the past. My child attends a “top” prep school though it’s not in a “top” zip code. We’ve seen UChicago’s popularity go up significantly at the school in the last few years. I see this trend at other well regarded prep schools in the area as well.
I do think UChicago seems to try to find candidates w the right fit, however. I can only speak to my child’s school, but most kids who are attending or are about to attend UChicago are down to earth, (some) a bit quirky, and (all) academically oriented.
I ran into 3 families from CA at the reception (2 public and 1 private), 1 family from NY, and 3 families from the south. The CA and NY families all send their kids to top public/private schools-Henry Gunn, etc.
@JBStillFlying @Lucy11
Did either of you (or your kids) sign up in advance for the class they wanted to sit in on? Did they get an email with that information?
@PepperJo My child received an email with the sign up link a few days before the event.
There was a moment some years ago in which I looked at the possibility of one of my children attending our local private school, which has a name and recognition here in Canada not unlike the ones Cue has mentioned in the US. When I did that I discovered that the parental demographic was not as outlandishly wealthy as one might think, given the cost involved and one’s stereotypical assumptions. A significant number of parents, it turned out, are of the middling - well, skewing toward the upper-middling - end of the social spectrum: for them, sending a kid through private school amounts to a real sacrifice, sometimes entailing working a second job. They do this because they want their kid to get the best education possible. Yes, some of them no doubt want to segregate the kid from the hoi polloi or just flat-out protect him or her from the influences, real or imagined, of bad actors in the public system. However, it’s more of a mixed bag, socio-economically, than we are prone to think in our rush to compartmentalize.
So, to the point of this discussion, can we assume that these prep-schoolers pouring into UChicago nowadays represent 100 percent gold-plated privilege? Are these kids of such an outlying character and background that they will have a significant impact on the character of this institution, much less come to dominate it? As well as wealth there may be a plethora of good values, including toil and aspiration, in the mix in both the kids and their parents - the same qualities the U of C demands. Perhaps that is the very reason these kids are finding the U of C.
Cue and JHS and Lucy11 know this world very thoroughly. I would be interested in their thoughts. I’m a mere visitor.
I actually don’t know the boarding school world that much anymore. When I was young, I knew a bunch of kids from boarding schools, but as an old person all I know is two neighbors and a former partner, none of whom I know that well. Family 1 is very wealthy and sent one of their four kids to boarding school, possibly because she wasn’t feeling challenged at the (high-quality) preppy day school the rest of the kids attended. Family 2 are Canadian MDs, one something of a star. When their older kid started college (in Canada), their younger kid asked to go to a boarding school that’s reasonably well-known in Canada but doesn’t register at all here. Family 3 includes a tech guy and a very successful lawyer. They sent their only kid to a nearby boarding school that had recently gotten a transformational gift from an alumnus. Only the first of these kids was in the elite college market at all.
My impression is that the top-name schools now have a fair number of international students looking to go to U.S. universities, and many of them have really impressive endowment funds earmarked for financial aid, so there are in fact some poor and middle class kids at the schools. But there’s still a heck of a lot of wealth. There’s also a feature that is somewhat a departure from the past: Lots of students come in 11th grade or later and spend only a year or two, often a post-graduate year. So a kid coming out of boarding school today isn’t necessarily the kid coming out of boarding school 40 years ago. The range is much wider.
Private day schools – the traditional, preppy ones – are generally pretty high-income places. Not top 0.1% necessarily (although a smattering of those kids definitely show up), but except for a few scholarship recipients not so many of the 99%, and hardly any of the 98%. When my kids left one such school to go to a public school, one of the huge benefits was realizing that most families don’t need (or have) a minimum of $200-300 thousand/year income to live.
That doesn’t mean the kids wear Canada Goose, or any other brand. That differs school to school, and community to community. And kid to kid.
JHS you are onto something.
There are a considerable number of posts here about how feeder day and/or boarding schools may impact Chicago today, and how they may chance Chicago from its condition in year’s past.
The overarching stereotype (or may I politely suggest even a bit of prejudice in certain posts) is there is a singular type of student at elite Chicago feeders like St John’s in Houston, Brunswick in Greenwich CT, Horace Mann in the Bronx, Harvard Westlake in LA, and boarding schools like Choate and Andover.
Whatever stereotypes and prejudices may have been borne regarding these schools over the generations is certainly a topic for another day and another post. As a sidebar, I find today’s PC culture to have had a particularly gruesome impact on the comedy industry. Good-natured jibes about our differences are awesome ways to melt our differences with laughter—athletes and soldiers have known this forever, and have formed the world’s strongest bonds often from the most radically different backgrounds.
That said, when serious observations are being made about an institution, and in some cases used to take into consideration for policy planning purposes, I think we need to be cautious. The reason is that the schools above are not “our grandfather’s prep schools” any longer. They are no longer “elite” due to a family’s country club membership. Instead these schools are elite for serious reasons. They have multi hundred million, to multibillion dollar, endowments that have produced science, arts, sports, and campus infrastructure that equals, and exceeds in many cases, schools like Amherst. They are generating some of the nation’s top scholars, and on the sports side, not just national championships in “squash and lacrosse” but MLB and NFL talent as well. The generation of national merit scholars at these places has hit historic levels for their schools.
Much of this excellence is a result of massive recruiting on all fronts—for diversity purposes (both domestic, and international at the boarding schools), for sports, for academics, and for the arts. The color of the students, and the socio-economic makeup of these students’ families, could not be more different than what stereotypes are being used here to describe the prep schools. I am not saying these stereotypes were not true at some point in the past, but I am just posting that there there are tens of millions of financial aid being used annually at these schools above to construct classes that are the most diverse and talented in the history of these schools.
Thus, when Chicago makes a commitment to attract students of these 21st century elite day and boarding schools, they are getting the best and brightest, much in the same way they are getting the best and brightest from the number 1 and number 4 Chicago feeders—the legendary public schools in Stuyvesant in Manhattan and Bronx Science in the Bronx.
@BronxBorn very poetic, but only a minority of students are on financial aid at elite prep schools. These prep schools have to pay their bills somehow. I looked up the percent of students receiving financial aid for a few schools that I know alumni of at UChicago:
Horace Mann - 20%
St. Alban’s - 25%
National Cathedral School - 20%
Choate - 33%
Milton - 35%
Andover - 47% (hey! almost a majority! how generous of them)
Harvard Westlake - 20%
Suggesting that the idea that elite prep schools are mostly rich kids is somehow politically correct propaganda is laughable. The reality is that prep schools are still…well, preppy (speaking strictly of class, not culture). And UChicago recruits from them b/c they have a high concentration of full pay students who won’t bring down the 25/75 SAT scores.
@JHS at #140 said:
“And, in any event, I’m not certain what colleges you are going to want to compare to Chicago. MIT is the only peer with no ED or SCEA, and a very limited EA program. (MIT has never handed out anywhere near half of its acceptances in the EA round.)”
- To clarify/update the record, this year MIT offered admission to just over 50% of the Class of 2023 via Early Action. Total admitted was 1,410. Early Admitted was 707.
and like I said before MIT’s EA program is going to have a very high yield rate - 90%+
@CU123 - I’m going to apply @Cue7’s level of confidence (on the large number of UChicago ED admits who obviously are preppies) to SCEA/EA yield rates for HYPSM: they are well over 90%.
Still playing Catchup …
@DeepBlue86 at #167 said: “The question they face in the fall of senior year is whether to reach for SCEA at HYPS and risk ending up in the RD Hunger Games, or apply ED to UChicago, Penn, Columbia, Duke or one of a few others. That’s the profile Nondorf likes, from where I sit.”
- Actually, ED2 makes it much easier for all those UChicago kids - whether from elite prep schools or other - to apply SCEA to an Ivy first. That's kind of why UChicago has ED2.
Off on a slight tangent - any idea of the # of Harvard Westlake students admitted for 2022 or 2023?
ETA - never mind, I found it 8 admits for 2022
“For chicago, it’s a huge win win - get wealthy accepts locked in, right from the start. I don’t know if @JBStillFlying anecdotal experience of what the ED crowd looks like (read: financial aid and access for many from different SES backgrounds) is accurate.”
Well, @Cue7 at #168 - I have yet to meet an ED kid who didn’t get financial aid. Sorry to put a pin in the bubble that is your little narrative. My data may not be representative but it is actual data - unlike the stuff you are spinning which is based on ZERO conversations with actual families.
That rich people apply to and are accepted to UChicago - no one disagrees on that. That kids at top prep schools are encouraged to apply early somewhere - sure, that’s likely to be true. That a good number of prep school kids end up at UChicago - I’ll grant you that.
But your assertion that ED is primarily filled with full pay kids with a critical number from the eastern elite prep schools - sorry, but I haven’t seen it in the data yet. The (admittedly minimal) data that I do have involve kids from elite preps who have been admitted RD (not ED like you are maintaining) or kids from (elite? not sure) east coast prep schools who are ED with significant fin. aid. I have not spoken to any kid from HADES so can’t answer to how many are on campus or are full pay ED kids. I have no doubt there are several at UChicago. What I don’t necessarily see is this large number that you are promoting.
My general impression is that a whole lot of kids got need based aid this year. And while this second number is smaller, there seem to be several Police and Fire scholarship recipients who were admitted ED as well. (And why wouldn’t they apply ED? That makes complete sense).
Trustee Gorno, in her Keynote Address yesterday, discussed No Barriers. Surely there’s no need to bring it up if most families of the families sitting in Rockefeller Chapel were full pay?
You should try to come on campus for next week’s Overnight or perhaps sit in on next year’s so you can speak to these families yourself. It’s better to have a national sample of families than the regionally-concentrated version you’ve been getting at your local receptions. I have no doubt that you will be able to count the number of HADES prepsters quite accurately and when you report that, your giddy glee will at that point be well-earned.
It’s time for real clarity on this matter.
@JBStillFlying I have also had actual experience talking to ED kids. I’ve talked to an actually fairly representative sample of the ED admitted classes of 2021 and 2022 consisting of a few hundred students. My anecdotal experience completely contradicts yours: it seems very obvious to me that they do skew wealthier than the school as a whole. This is not something just I have noticed, other people in similar positions (which involves talking to many students, most of whom are admitted ED), agree.
This seems like a very weird hill to die on. There is a well documented relationship between early decision programs and increasing student wealth. The change in admissions was introduced just after UChicago’s credit rating was downgraded (https://www.chicagobusiness.com/article/20160223/NEWS13/160229950/u-of-c-s-p-credit-rating-downgrade) and major cuts and hiring freezes (https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/06/09/university-chicago-cost-cutting-draws-objections) were implemented to save UChicago from certain financial doom, and right as the admitted student class was massively and suddenly expanded - likely for more tuition revenue. All the pieces are telling a consistent story, even if that story is not one you may like.
This is a bit over the top for a credit rating that went from AA to AA- with a stable outlook, and two other credit agencies not downgrading at all from AA+.
@HydeSnark - not quite ready to “die on a weird hill”, LOL. I said my data was limited. I’m happy to have more representative information.
However, ED skewing wealthier than the school as a whole isn’t really the proper metric. The question is whether the College’s top line has increased due specifically to implementing ED. Presumably that is what Cue and you are maintaining actually happened - or needed to happen at the very least.
I mentioned previously (probably it was on this very thread) that it’s not hard to figure out the impact of ED just by looking at some key numbers like tuition revenue and student enrollment numbers, although addressing the precise reason - ie a greater number of rich families buying a spot vs a more optimal matching of funding to degree of enthusiasm - is probably harder to ascertain w/o detailed data.
@Cu123 is correct - The Moody’s downgrade is simply no big deal. I’ve mentioned that before - and when you read the full Higher Ed article, you get a much more complete picture of the financial challenges facing higher institutions today than what concerned theology profs and student petitioners represent. There’s probably a punchline that those parties could benefit from a few Business Economics courses, but no need to go there.
Most importantly, your experience doesn’t answer the question about what happened this admission cycle - which is really the large majority of my data (hence, my statement about what I observed for this upcoming year). For instance, how many students from the Class of '21 or '22 were admitted ED with full scholarship? Is that a current phenomenon or did those students exist in prior years? I don’t know the answer - but you just might.
@CU123 No, I said the cuts and freezes were put in place to forestall certain financial doom. It was a exaggeration, sure, but I wasn’t talking about the credit rating downgrade.
@JBStillFlying You can guesstimate some of this with the wayback machine (https://archive.org/web/) and US News. US News requires universities to disclose the percent of students on financial aid. It clearly shows that the % of students on financial aid is trending downward. Data is reported the previous spring. 2019 is the first year data includes students admitted under ED.
2019: 42% financial aid, college size: 5919 → ~3433 full pay (+248)
2018: 43% financial aid, college size: 5588 → ~3185 full pay (+83)
2017: 44% financial aid, college size: 5539 → ~3102 full pay
As expected, we see a large leap in the number of full pay students from 2018 to 2019 that is not present the previous year. This is quite dramatic considering only about a fourth of the college changes each year. I find it hard pressed to find another source other than the switch to ED, along with the reams of evidence already discussed.