Admit Rates, Standardized Test Averages, Cross Admit Results

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of Chicago ✅
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Wow, I haven’t visited this thread for a couple of days, and there were over 50 new posts - all very interesting.

“There are a large body of students who came here with romantic ideas about “life of the mind”, “quirkiness”, etc. and that value acquiring knowledge for the sake of it and like thinking hard and deeply about things. In my experience that group still makes a large part of the UChicago student body, and for many of them (I would hazard to guess even a majority), UChicago was their top choice. Otherwise, the schools they were considering were schools like Swarthmore or MIT (STEM focus nonwithstanding) that attract similar sort of romantic ideals, not HYPSM.”

This is my DD, and this is why she chose UChicago. Just like @JBStillFlying D, my D did not want to apply to any HYPSM, even though she may have had a decent shot to getting into one. She decided long ago that they weren’t for her. We didn’t even go visit any of them. UChicago was her reach and her first choice, and the only school that she considered applying ED. Her other schools were a wide assortment, but her #2 and #3 were Carleton and Univ. of Rochester. She was going for a fit and these were the top 3 schools that she thought fit her well.

I like that UChicago has an ED round, and if they are admitting over 50% of the class in that round, then that is also wonderful because don’t we want an incoming class where the majority of the students REALLY want to be there. Wouldn’t that make for a better connected, more engaged class?

Last summer when my DD visited UChicago on one of those summer Friday prospective student events, Nondorf spoke to the group in Rockefeller Chapel. He broke down the 4 admission cycles, and I wish I could remember exactly what he said, but the gist was something like this: RD is for kids who go to a dance and just stand on the sideline not really dancing. If somebody asks them the dance… maybe they’ll try. EA is for the kids who go to the dance early but also stand on the sidelines. ED2 are for kids who go to the dance and do enjoy dancing, but just not sure they want to be front and center for everyone to see. ED1 is for the kids who go to the dance, know they want to dance and will boogie all night long center stage.

Maybe somebody else reading this thread has heard Nondorf describe the application choices with this dance analogy and can clarify what he said. Anyway, this little speech really stuck with my DD, and by the way, this visit is when I fell in love with Nondorf!

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“Her other schools were a wide assortment, but her #2 and #3 were Carleton and Univ. of Rochester. She was going for a fit and these were the top 3 schools that she thought fit her well.”

  • There are a lot of Carlton accepteds at UChicago! My kids didn't like the small town of Northfield - preferred the "big city." But Carleton is well know for its rigorous academics! Quarter system too, I believe. Rochester has been a "freshwater school" along with UChicago for decades. I knew many grad students at U of C who came from Rochester. And others who went there as faculty.
  • That dance analogy is interesting. Now I'm more convinced than ever that they knew the old EA pool had a ton of ED1 wannabees in there. Same with RD and ED2. What this tells me is 1) it's ok to be a bit "shy" as an ED2 - they don't hold it against you or ask where you were earlier in the evening; and 2) probably not a good idea to apply RD. If you are going to stand on the sidelines, go early - higher chance of getting asked to dance.
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“What this tells me is 1) it’s ok to be a bit “shy” as an ED2 - they don’t hold it against you or ask where you were earlier in the evening; and 2) probably not a good idea to apply RD. If you are going to stand on the sidelines, go early - higher chance of getting asked to dance.”

Yes! I think that’s exactly what he was saying. Nondorf received a good laugh from the audience during this explanation because he demonstrated a few dance moves as visuals.

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Brown: “Please do not assume that your admission chances are improved by applying under the Early Decision plan. The Board of Admission makes the same decisions under Early Decision that it would under the Regular Decision plan.”

Columbia: “Although a larger percentage of the Early Decision applicant pool is admitted than of the Regular Decision pool, that higher acceptance rate reflects the remarkable strength of a self-selected group of applicants. A candidate to whom we otherwise would not offer admission is not going to be accepted simply because he or she applied under the Early Decision program.”

WashU is especially shady in its FAQ. Note how two questions are asked, and only one clearly answered. People are supposed to get the feeling that standards are lower in ED, but the actual language is evasive:
" Should I apply ED? Is it easier to get in ED?
" If you know that WashU is your first choice, the answer is YES, you should apply ED I or II. Early Decision applicants demonstrate the same level of academic preparation as their Regular Decision counterparts."

ETA: Chicago, Carleton, Rochester makes perfect sense.

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Almost every school is taking nearly half there class or more via early plans, those that say there is no preference given to the early applicants are claiming a stronger cohort to choose from. I find it more likely that the applicants are not reasonably stronger but in fact just putting more effort into that particular application and/or they do get a preferential bump. Of course part of that is the snapping up of highly desirable candidates (including those whom have strong hooks).

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Given Brown’s 18% ED rate for class of '23 vs. well under 5% for the RD pool once you consider deferrals, those with a strong preference for Brown should consider applying ED (especially considering that the school says it meets full demonstrated need). With only 4,300 or so apps (out of 38,000 total?) ED is a pretty select group (not in terms of qualifications per se, but rather in terms of indicated interest).

Columbia’s ED admit numbers aren’t even published (or is my google-fu deteriorating this evening?). Is UChicago mimicking Columbia, or the reverse? (UChicago didn’t release early #'s publicly even prior to the Class of '21, IIRC).

WUSTL’s FAQ’s on ED also include the information that they will meet full demonstrated need. Perhaps that’s why they encourage ED1 if WashU is your first choice. I didn’t infer that standards were lower but that they were falling back on that “stronger applicant” pool explanation for why admit rates might be higher (not sure if they release them). They just introduced ED2 this year; remarkably, applications are down about 5-6K over the prior year. Not sure what’s going on there. Perhaps, like when UChicago introduced ED1 and ED2, there is a transition year where a chunk of applicants avoid the school. Makes you realize just how much kids are depending on stuff like admission rates to inform their decisions on applying. Guessing these are RD kids dropping off (much as they did at UChicago two years ago).

EDIT/UPDATE: mis-read WUSTL’s statement on ED and academic prep. They seem to be saying it’s a bump, all else equal(?), perhaps indicating that demonstrated interest via ED is enough to get you in early - or that the applicants are better fits than you see in regular? Not sure. It’s evasive, as already pointed out.

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Speaking of value, you guys need to differentiate value pre- and post acceptance. An ED application has more (strategic) value than a non-ED application pre-acceptance because it has an additional signaling element. An ED application has less (option, arbitrage) value post-acceptance because it is assumed to be committed. Both have unique advantages over the other, but differ on when that relative advantage is excercised.

CMU is not 180 degrees different from UChicago. These top schools have more in common than their differences… especially if you look into programs/majors that they are both strong in.

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“In applying ED you are declaring that we are your top choice and are agreeing to accept our offer of admission should we make one. We will take your preference for us into account along with all other features of your application. We stress, however, that applying ED will not overcome deficiencies in other areas.”

That’s the Marlovian take. Pretty imprecise, I admit, but it does signal that some indeterminate amount of weight will be given, which is what most of us think. If so, why not say so?

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@Marlowe1 - that’s WAAAAAY too honest for most college admissions offices.

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Duke is rather upfront that ED offers an advantage. An excerpt from their RD vs ED page:

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  1. My point on these wishy-washy statements is for all of you who are in love with the "ED contract." You can't really be in love with the ED contract if the colleges aren't even offering something of real value, i.e., a better chance of acceptance, in exchange for the applicant giving up any ability to compare offers or to bargain from strength. Yet the colleges are awfully reluctant to admit they may be doing that. Even Duke, above, doesn't come out and say it, it just says a bunch of other things that wouldn't make any sense if that were not true.

It’s a weird sort of contract, no?, where the contract is crystal clear about what one party’s obligations are, but not straightforward at all about the other side of the bargain, leaving everything to nuance and speculation. Doesn’t that make you suspect something stinks? Or at least suspect that the people in the college admissions offices are not as proud of what they are doing as you seem to be? Why do you think that is?

  1. @FStratford Of course there's plenty of similarity between colleges. I say that all the time, especially when I think people are according too much importance to the things that are unique about Chicago. (Things that I value, too, by the way. But not to the point of fetishizing relatively small differences between fundamentally similar institutions.) That said, when JBStillFlying challenged me earlier today, I went and looked closely at the catalog and curriculum for CMU's School of Humanities and Social Science to check my memory. It's as different from Chicago as any college curriculum I have seen. Go look at it yourself.

(This isn’t the place to detail all the differences. But, for starters, imagine developing an interest in Anthropology, or Sociology, or Classics, or Archaeology, or History of Art, or any language that does not have commercial importance in today’s world.)

I know that CMU, like Chicago, is full of smart kids who take their education seriously and work hard. I don’t doubt that most Chicago students would thrive as CMU students, and vice versa. But notwithstanding their similarity of tone, the vision they represent of what a university is for is profoundly different.

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@JHS - obsessing over these meta differences is curricular navel gazing. Most kids are flexible enough to be able to deal with their “second best choice,” so suggestions about how it simply can’t be an informed decision because some of the syllabi are different is probably not very helpful to up-and-coming families looking for advice. Most of us are well aware by now that YOU would never allow YOUR children to apply to both UChicago and CMU. We tend to have a slightly different approach with our children. Families can be different.

“My point on these wishy-washy statements is for all of you who are in love with the “ED contract.” You can’t really be in love with the ED contract if the colleges aren’t even offering something of real value, i.e., a better chance of acceptance, in exchange for the applicant giving up any ability to compare offers or to bargain from strength.”

  • I'm surprised at this hyperbole. No one disagrees that schools retain the bargaining power through ED. But as has been pointed out several times already (most recently by @Hebegebe), the signal value definitely IS positive. Brown has an 18% rate of acceptance for ED vs. 5% for RD. Does anyone really think that the ED contract has no value to an applicant who views it as first choice? I think the families who undertake ED are perhaps a little more intelligent than you appear to give them credit for being.

“Yet the colleges are awfully reluctant to admit they may be doing that. Even Duke, above, doesn’t come out and say it, it just says a bunch of other things that wouldn’t make any sense if that were not true.”

  • I think you are complaining that it looks like Admissions offices don't aways tell the absolute truth. Newsflash: they don't. We don't need to examine the ED statements of elite schools to understand that little insight :wink: The Harvard discrimination lawsuit should put to bed any notion that the admissions depts. at even the tippy top schools are above lying.
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A kid I know visited CMU recently and concluded not to apply because they found it too different from schools like the Ivies and UChicago, but whatever…

Re: ED, other applicants may not be as savvy, but the full-pay prepsters and kids from high-end publics who make up an increasing share of UChicago ED applicants are consenting adults and know exactly what they’re doing. They understand that getting up and doing the Nondorf dance is the price of admission.

That’s not to say that applying ED means they know in their bones that they’re uniquely UChicago kids; personally, I think the great majority of the ones who live on or near the coasts would take an HYPS bid in a heartbeat. They just understand that, pace @marlowe1, the top 20 private US research universities are a lot more similar than different and that there are thousands of applicants with similar profiles to theirs, so they’re making the percentage play to get into one of the better ones.

Once students are admitted and committed - to any university, to be clear - it’s common for them and their parents to start rationalizing their choice to themselves and others. Every quirk of the school can be explained and celebrated, every aspect that could be seen by others as a flaw or shortcoming is dismissed with handwaving or recharacterized as a virtue that outsiders can’t fully understand and that makes the school special.

And because these places are so much more similar than different, and all are filled with thousands of bright, interesting kids, it’s generally straightforward for most people to learn a lot, make friends and have a good time, further validating the choice they made and solidifying their view that they’re in the best of all possible worlds for them.

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The Duke statement is pretty darn clear. I would advocate for clearer statements all around, but there are less nefarious explanations for why we don’t get them.

First off, these schools don’t need to over-signal the ED advantage, which everyone assumes, and they do want to continue to draw from an entirely different pool - the talented kids who don’t have Chicago as first choice and are shopping the market, either finance-wise or prestige-wise: ED applicants are highly desirable, but the RD pool also needs to remain healthy. That it won’t is a constant and reasonable fear of @JHS .

And how can the degree of ED advantage be precisely stated in any event? So far as I know the admission process doesn’t assign numerical weights to the differing features of an application. Isn’t a less mechanical and more organic sort of approached implied by the oft-used descriptor, “holistic”? We don’t ask for this kind of explicitly stated precision with respect to grade-averages, test scores (if any), essays, EC’s, diversity, regional and demographic background, character and personality and a host of other factors. As with many important policies and decisions a degree of ad hoc-ery is not only desirable but baked in to the process.

To demand precision in this one instance and assert that its absence is the sure sign of something shameful going on - well, that’s a bit disingenuous if it isn’t just rhetoric.

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@DeepBlue86 , you know this world of east coast prepsters pretty well. I am ready to take you as my authority on it, but I’m not quite ready to credit you with absolute knowledge of the hearts and minds of every kid in your domain. You’re probably right that most would prefer HYSP if they could get one of them, but will take Chicago as a second-best if they have to. You avoided offensive terms like “no-hopers” and “settlers”, but that’s what you mean when you describe the ones who will calculate that ED is the best way to get them to a school almost as good as their preferred ones. I reckon you’re right about that as well. I see no reason to doubt your assertion that many in that crowd are indifferent or nearly so as to the particularities of a UChicago education. Many but not all. That’s important. You in your adult wisdom have concluded that there’s not really much difference between the top schools and that in the end most kids will sign on to whatever school they wind up in. But do all kids themselves really see things that realistically, or I would say cynically? They can’t all be cut from that cloth. I entertain the hope that quite a few of those who are will be discerned and winnowed out by the Admissions people. If the “Why Chicago” essay is as important as everyone says it is, those kids will be at a disadvantage (one that undercuts whatever advantage the ED signal sends). The AO’s must have become pretty good at separating the formulaic or phony answers from the heartfelt and original ones. That must be why we are continuing to see on the Chicago campus the large core of kids described by @HydeSnark, kids who truly did think they were coming to a unique sort of place. Some of them must even have come from east coast prep schools.

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@CU123 I totally agree with you. If you have a first choice it is only natural that you give that one application 100%. I still believe that UChicago type students will stand out in the application process. If you are gaming ED to get in, then I think you are in danger of showing that you are not a UChicago type student.

By any non-socioeconomic measure, the classes’ quality continues to rise. The steps the administration is taking to reach the lower of the socioeconomic groups are clearly spelled out in the latest changes to the admissions policy. The one area that I do see struggles in showing how they are reaching out to the group that can’t/won’t pay full price, but don’t qualify for much financial aid. However, I don’t really know any of the elites that are trying to focus and address that issue. It isn’t a big pain point in our society to worry too much about that group of people.

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Friend using the online college calculators said WashU estimated they the family would need $10,000 per year less in financial aid than the next stingiest college. Word from independent education consultants is that ED is really, really important there, as is visiting in person.

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I’m visiting Texas to tour Rice this weekend and was reading Ashley Jardina’s book on White Identity (great book btw) on the flight to Texas and a question popped into my head. Maybe the ED choices are being driven by totally different criteria?

Ashley points out that as the US becomes more diverse, there are a many rich White Americans all over the country (so NE as well) for whom whiteness has now become an important part of their identity. She also points out that her research finds that white Identity and racist beliefs have very small correlation to reach other.

I’m wondering if Chicago’s position on free speech is drawing these rich white identitarians to Chicago over HYPS where the diversity play and speech censorship is getting more play? For white identitarians these issues seem to be important. Maybe for rich whites, Chicago had now become their go to school, because they feel that their whiteness is not as much under seige as the other schools?

Also what about Jewish students who may feel the BDS movement at Chicago may not be as strong as @ HYPS and feel Chicago is probably a little more friendlier to Jews now?

I have no idea if these are true, but reading this book made me ponder on other reasons why Chicago may now so popular amongst coastal upper class white kids beyond it being difficult for unhooked white kids to get into HYPS. Maybe they feel a little more secure at Chicago?

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College admissions offices really only care about one goal: putting together the class that the university wants to put together that year. They will use all sorts of means to increase their opportunity set and give themselves the best choices in order to achieve that goal, including increasing the applicant pool and introducing special admission plans either to cut out the competition (SCEA) or lock in the admit (ED). Colleges are not a charity - they are, in fact, a business. They might be providing life-changing advantages to the class they choose to admit, but that’s not the primary reason those kids were chosen. The primary reason is that they help the university achieve its goals.

ED isn’t going away anytime soon because 1) it’s a notably effective way to cut through the noise and figure out who’s really interested in the place and 2) families have been very responsive, even enthusiastic. ED schools aren’t exactly reporting lower stats and quality for their admits, and there’s no doubt that “good fit” leads to better internal stats like freshman retention and years to completion, as well as better long-term relationships with alumnae. If the school is choosing and producing lasting and fruitful connections from the ED application pool, you can bet that in the eyes of the trustees it’s considered a winning plan. Of COURSE they are going to phrase it positively - to them ED IS a positive development, and the families selected aren’t really providing evidence to the contrary. At least for UChicago, they seem quite happy. Most of the negative criticism is from people who wouldn’t be choosing ED anyway so they have no skin in the game and their vote probably doesn’t count :neutral:

The criticism that ED skews the college toward the wealthy is legitimate, especially if they are by-passing highly qualified modest-income candidates in that pool. Not sure how it’s all shaking out for UChicago specifically, but the news from a recent trustee reception apparently is that they ARE increasing the number of Pell admits this year (perhaps substantially) and have increased outreach and admission to less urbanized areas of the country. There is a trustee or two who is very committed to these goals. This completely dovetails with our observations at the various admitted receptions we attended. The College isn’t perfect but it’s headed in a very good direction.

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“The one area that I do see struggles in showing how they are reaching out to the group that can’t/won’t pay full price, but don’t qualify for much financial aid. However, I don’t really know any of the elites that are trying to focus and address that issue. It isn’t a big pain point in our society to worry too much about that group of people.”

  • We have friends in that "in between" group with a kid at UChicago. Most looking at her qualifications and background would assume "ED-admit"; however, her family knew they wouldn't qualify for financial aid due to certain (non-cash-generating) assets, but they also just didn't have the funds to send her there w/o a reduction in tuition. Had they been able to afford it, they would have chosen ED because they loved the school and she was a great fit - but they couldn't, so they didn't. However, the College still admitted her EA and gave her decent merit. They had met with Admissions and Fin. Aid. and explained everything. UChicago was honestly her first choice; however she couldn't commit until she had everything in front of her and - yes - could compare financial packages. Perhaps because they knew her situation so well, they were convinced of the family's sincerity and need. Maybe she was just an outstanding candidate in their eyes and a shoe-in for EA despite not having the obvious "hooks." In any case, not sure that EA is only for those who they are trying to recruit heavily - it might also be for those who have UChicago as their top choice but who need to apply EA because that is their only option.