@CU123 I think we are making the same point. I am saying that parchment data for Chicago contains ED (UPenn, Duke etc.) vs EA(Chicago), and shows the ED schools in better light. Parchment does not isolate true cross admit battles(RD vs RD, where the applicant can choose unrestricted between the two schools)
Is Parchment self reported data?
Yes
Anecdotally regarding the type of student at Chicago today: our son, a third year math and computer science double major, chose Philosophical Perspective and Power. He took the Honors Econ Analysis sequence as electives because he found them interesting. We thought he would be happy to finish the core and be finished writing papers. To our surprise, He’s taking a Philosophy elective this quarter with a significant writing requirement. While I have no doubt that there are many different types of students at UChicago with different priorities, I get the sense that intellectual curiosity and diversity is alive and well today.
Thinking about a comment I made in another thread, about an acquaintance of one of my kids at Chicago, who won a Rhodes Scholarship (among a bunch of other cool things), I did a little research.
Here’s an interesting tidbit that is perhaps relevant to the debate over tiny acceptance rates and the push to increase yield:
The class of 2019 is the 6th graduating class to have been admitted on Jim Nondorf’s watch. Those seven classes have produced one Rhodes Scholar, in the class of 2014, Nondorf’s first. The last six classes admitted under Ted O’Neil’s aegis had seven Rhodes Scholars. Nondorf has been blanked for the last five years. You would have to look back 12 years at the end of O’Neil’s tenure to find five years without a Chicago undergraduate Rhodes Scholar, and in one seven-year stretch in the middle of those 12 (including one year with no Chicago Rhodes), there were an astonishing 12 Chicago Rhodes Scholars.
Now, counting Rhodes Scholars is sort of a stupid way to judge admissions quality. Still, it’s interesting to speculate on why there seems to be a drought of super-impressive students like that, even as the size of the College has grown, and it has gotten much, much more selective in admissions. (The early classes in O’Neil’s golden Rhodes run had acceptance rates approaching 50%, yields around 40%, and fewer than 10,000 applicants.)
My kid’s semi-friend’s father was a frequent poster on CC for a long time. From him, I know that his daughter was devastated to have been waitlisted at Harvard and Yale, her top choices. She would have gone to either of them in a heartbeat had she been accepted. She was happy to have a chance to go to Chicago. Once she was there, she adored it. She had more or less a dream career there, academically, socially, and life-experientially. Her career since then has all sorts of Chicago stamps on it. She was a biology major at Chicago who wound up as an anthropology PhD from Oxford basically using big-data mathematical methods to address issues with nutrition and metabolism. (Then she left academia and went to work for Facebook.)
Back then, there were lots of kids like her. Among other things, Chicago was a great safety school for HYPS rejects who really valued academic rigor and faculty quality. Today, Chicago’s admissions design makes it nearly impossible for a student like that to be accepted. Anyone who wants to go to Harvard and believes she has a legitimate shot is relegated to the <4% RD pool at Chicago, and there are lots of indications that, unlike in the past, Chicago tries to avoid going head-to-head with any of HYPSM, lest its yield drop below 80% and it be forced to accept more than 6% of applicants.
So . . . by limiting itself to dyed-in-the-wool fans, most of them ED applicants, is Chicago missing out on a pool of great students who are also ambitious in conventional ways and have something of a chip on their shoulders? A pool of people that is going to produce some sensational over-performers on a regular basis.
Anyone who wants to go to Harvard and believes she has a legitimate shot is relegated to the <4% RD pool at Chicago,…
@JHS I understand the point you are making in post #84 and agree with it. However, when I tried to make the point earlier in this thread that SCEA is no different than ED because it practically takes away any realistic option of gaining acceptance at a peer school by “relegating” those applicants to RD pool in competitor schools you seemed to disagree with me. Am I misinterpreting your comments?
It depends what you mean by “competitor schools.” I think there are lots of great schools with RD acceptance rates above 10%. And I also believe that really outstanding applicants still get multiple acceptances from lottery-ticket schools, although much less reliably than in the past. As I said, in the past decade I know multiple kids who were accepted at other comparable schools after a SCEA acceptance, and you can find plenty on CC as well.
I thought you were focusing on kids who were accepted. SCEA is a great deal for kids who are accepted. It’s not such a great deal for the rest of the SCEA applicants, the ones deferred or rejected. To that extent, it’s similar to ED. But it doesn’t do anyone any good NOT to apply early anywhere, and only apply RD. What’s best for students is unrestricted EA, of the sort only MIT, Caltech, and Chicago (among top schools) offer. But I am afraid Chicago’s offer is a bit of a fraud, since it seems to take hardly anyone from that pool. It’s no better than RD, really.
@JHS - jury is out on whether ED excludes kids who really value academic rigor and faculty quality. Class of '21 hasn’t had a chance to apply for Rhodes Scholar yet 
It would be interesting to know how many of those numerous Rhodes Scholars were accepted EA to UChicago and then committed early vs. landing soft as an inquisitive reject from HYPS. Not sure how UChicago could go head-to-head with HYPS in those days if it was a safety. Do you mean in terms of academic achievement of their undergraduates or admissions? Because the recent local reception we attended had quite a few kids admitted to other top schools (Y,P, Wharton) and were at this thing because they were leaning toward UChicago. That suggests UChicago is DEFINITELY going to head-to-head on its EA/RD’s (however, not all of the 900 or so non-binding admits applied and/or were admitted to HYPS).
ED2’s did have a chance, theoretically speaking, to apply to HYPS first. When the admit rate of these schools in the regular round is 4%, does it really matter that UChicago’s is below that? From what I can see, the exceptional kids still seem to be able to get into both. A lot of that 4% - or < 4% - are kids who really stand no shot at a top school at all.
@JHS My point is, after SCEA, whether accepted or not, one is facing lottery odds in RD round in many schools. That increases the yield of the SCEA accepted applicants in a fashion similar to ED
What I meant by “head-to-head” was that Chicago accepted a lot of kids whose first choice was one (or more) of HYPS. If those kids were accepted at HYPS, by and large they didn’t go to Chicago. (A few of them did. My daughter’s virtual roommate her first year turned down Stanford for Chicago. She had a number of reasons, including anxiety about being too far from her parents and her hometown therapist, anxiety about sophisticated coastal people looking down on her, and a full-tuition merit scholarship.)
However, if Chicago got lucky and they weren’t accepted at HYPS, or if they could be bought with merit scholarships, Chicago was a great option for them, and lots of them turned out to be outstanding students on many levels.
Re the class of '21 – true about ED, but Chicago had already shifted its acceptances very heavily to EA by then, insuring that most of those accepted had not applied SCEA anywhere, and thus were somewhat less likely to view HYPS as a first choice. Some of them, no doubt, were marlowe1’s ideal of great intellects from the middle of nowhere who, not out of weakness but out of strength, embraced the slightly different ethos of Chicago vs. the various slightly different ethoi of HYPS, which they somehow understood perfectly. But some others may simply not have viewed themselves as HYPS material, or not wanted to chance rejection there.
@JHS - But I do believe a good number of HYPS rejects who historically ended up at UChicago were also NOT outstanding students. That’s a “duh” observation of course, but it does stand to reason that most who land at their safety vs. view it as first choice might not be the best fit - regardless of school. When it comes to a school like UChicago that problem might be compounded.
Of course,“average” fit and experience don’t matter when you are talking about sensational over-performers. The tail of the distribution is what matters there. If ED is a “safe” strategy for competent but not highly exceptional kids, and the lack of chip-on-shoulder/something-to-prove is a key variable, then yeah, you will likely be proven correct. However, if ED instead has the purpose of tricking out those right-tailed kids who might have been getting lost in the EA rounds before (say, Chicago deferred them because they weren’t seen as likely to attend, and then LOST them tin RD to another institution that seemed to love them more), then it’s quite possible we will see more Rhodes Scholars beginning with Class of '21.
ED2 allows kids who view themselves as potential HYPS material to apply there first. I’ll bet you a dollar most of those kids are deferred, not outright rejected from an Ivy (but then, the deferral rate for Yale this year was like 56% which isn’t saying much of anything at all LOL).
Am I missing something?
UChicago Rhodes scholars
Yali Peng, LLM’17
Lucas Tse '19
Lillian Dube AB’15
On UChicago Rhodes Scholar page:
2016 Lilian Dube, Joshua Pickar
2017 Lucas Tse
2018 Yali Peng
(I guess the year listed is the year the students receive it.)
Yali Peng is a Law School student and thus technically has nothing to do with Nondorf.
https://www.law.uchicago.edu/news/yali-peng-llm-17-wins-rhodes-scholarship
Hard to say what the recent drop-off in Chicago Rhodes Scholars might mean. There have been dry patches in plenty of other eras. In a previous thread, @JHS , you speculated that it might have everything to do with a real push during that fertile period made by a few advisors with Rhodes on the mind - one in particular, if memory serves - who fostered and guided the applications of appropriate candidates. If that speculation was correct it doesn’t suggest that there is an absence now of raw material but rather a shift of emphasis away from that particular high-profile form of special guidance. It would be interesting to compare the efforts now being made at Chicago as against the efforts that are being made and have been made virtually forever at HYP. Those places must have this thing down to a science. Having the perpetual chip on my shoulder with regard to the matter of prestige-mongering, I also wonder whether the Rhodes admission committee itself doesn’t tend to lazily divide its prizes among the usual suspects, to which it adds a complement of outliers from the public universities and smaller schools. Chicago doesn’t fit either category. Just a hunch.
As JB points out, ED2 offers a shot at garnering talented kids who applied to and didn’t get into one of HYPSM in the first round. And if a kid really does want to roll the dice by applying to every top school in sight, the RD option remains available. The genius kid JHS has in mind won’t be unduly deterred by low admission rates for that round - he/she can do the math sufficiently to figure out that that rate is produced by a flood of multiple applications from a limited number of talented individuals. Thus the greatest portion of Chicago’s students at some point preferred a school other than Chicago. That’s okay in my book. Just as not every Chicago-loving kid from the provinces is a genius yet may have something the school wants, so too not every Harvard-loving kid who takes Chicago on the rebound is a genius yet may have something the school wants.
Genius, however, could come from anywhere. Whether snagging a Rhodes is the best measure of that quality I am agnostic about. The only Rhodes scholar I have ever known failed to live up to his promise and ended his life as a sad alcoholic.
Re Rhodes Production (admittedly, as @JHS says - a stupid way to gauge admissions) - the Marshall Scholarship production has been fairly consistent since Nondorf took the reins, with a very healthy 7 winners in 6 years. So, I don’t know if a dip in Rhodes but consistent performance in Marshalls will allow us to glean much.
This being said, certainly, the increase in Chicago’s class size (and anticipated uptick in receipts of prestigious awards) is a red herring. Clearly, the admissions marketing scheme has changed, and Chicago is NOT just admitting a larger number of the students Ted O’Neill (the prior admissions dean) coveted. Rather, it looks like wealth (and the ability to pay full freight), in one way or another, play heavily into the decision making of the current regime. So, Chicago (probably in ED) is pulling in a lot of qualified kids who also happen to be wealthy. This probably doesn’t add to the pool of Rhodes/Marshall talent at the school.
Put another way, does anyone think the pool of Rhodes/Marshalls talent at Chicago has increased in a way commensurate with the college’s growth? I certainly don’t.
If you look back at a remarkable number of Chicago’s winners, they often have the qualities @marlowe1 talks about so fondly. As I recall during my time in the college (a very fertile period in the mid-90s), these winners had that Chicago “quirk” and came from places like South Dakota and Milwaukee. They were drawn to Chicago for its true difference from other schools. It felt, in some ways, like a small(er) liberal arts college embedded in a bigger research university. Further, Chicago offered them a wonderful, small playground from which they could build their talents. O’Neill, famously, was willing to take chances on kids - kids who showed promise, but needed the College to cultivate that brilliance.
I doubt the total number of these sorts of students have increased in any meaningful way at Chicago.
Indeed, some of these students might be turned off (or not turned on) by the marketing sent out nowadays, and might instead go to St. Johns or Pomona or Swarthmore or MIT. Others simply don’t have what it takes to get past the first cut - I don’t think Nondorf just “takes a chance” with the dwindling number of offers he can make.
I think if you asked Nondorf, he’d gladly trade the 3 or 4 could-have-been Chicago Rhodes Scholars for the literally hundreds of millions of dollars (and increased cache) the influx of rich kids have brought to Hyde Park. Nondorf’s supervisors, I believe, are inclined to agree with him.
@Cue7 The problem of critic like you is to try to have it both ways. If U of C does not have enough money to compete in BSM, you complain about U of C lack of financial resources to fight at the big league . If U of C tries to make campus nicer and more placement friendly, you complain about the dilution of intellectual depth. If U of C tries to improve the long run prospect for the school by admitting some prospects for future big donors, you complain about marketing being a turn off.
Let’s face it. The only ideal utopia U of C that please critics like you will be an intellectually quirky but super smart student population that can either get in top grad programs or score the highest paying jobs upon graduation. And the utopia U of C will have more money than Jeff Bezos to fund all types of program.
The reality is that U of C has to move away from the 1970’s to 1990’s era to stay competitive. The marketing and new constructions are all necessary for U of C to stay in the game. You can’t whine about one problem and then whine again when school is trying to solve the problem you have been grumbling about.
You can have your 1990’s U of C back but stop complaining about the lack of funding and job placement then.
Wait’ll Cue finds out about Maddox Jolie-Pitt.
@85bears46 - I’ll be clear about my position, then:
I would ALSO trade the 3 or 4 could-have-been Chicago Rhodes for the hundreds of millions of dollars and increased cache that Nondorf has brought in. If anything, I’d be happy if the pendulum swung a little bit more (not a lot, but a little bit) more in this direction - say, with Chicago taking a clubby attitude and forming a rival club to the Ivy League, with places like Stanford and Duke.
And note, I said for the mid-90s Rhodes/Marshalls winners, Chicago was a small,wonderful playground. I never said it was this environment for ME.
In my above post, I’m actually not critiquing Nondorf and the changes the admin has made. In fact, on the whole, the admin’s decisions have probably appreciated the general value of my Chicago degree - and I much rather they go in this direction then keep with the stagnation of the 90s.
I do think, though, there’s a place where the super smart win Rhodes scholarships by the bucket load, and grads go on to be masters of the universe, too. There is a place where you can indeed have it both ways. It’s called Harvard.
And @JBStillFlying - I actually hope Jolie-Pitt goes to Chicago. I’m happy that Rory Gates is there now, along with morgan saylor from the show Homeland, that Cynthia Nixon’s son is a recent grad, George Clooney’s adopted son is there now, and that the son of Princeton’s president is at Chicago, too.
[Nondorf has assembled a nice roster of celeb kids, eh?]
Again, occasional celebs just increase the cache of a school, and, in the case of my alma mater, I’m all for it. On that note, Nondorf, although I doubted him at the start, has almost certainly been a big net positive for the institution.