Admit Rates, Standardized Test Averages, Cross Admit Results

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of Chicago ✅
141

I meant to add that the Bowen & Bok book is chock full of data supporting their critique of early admissions. At this point, since the book is more than 10 years old, it’s old data, but there it is.

SES data for a particular college is very hard to come by. Colleges don’t like to publicize that. People use proxies like percentage of students receiving financial aid (but schools differ significantly in the income/asset levels at which they phase out financial aid, so it’s not always apples to apples) and percentage of students receiving Pell grants (reflecting ultra-low-income students, but not the vast majority of working- or middle-class Americans). ProPublica has a nice website where it’s possible to compare individual colleges on that basis, but the data is 5 years old, so it may be a while before one can assess the impact of ED on Chicago.

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.)

142

I admit that I see non-financial virtues in ED, @JHS , which you and others do not, and which make me like it despite these deleterious effects. If it’s not being applied in a discriminatory way at Chicago, then that it IS being applied that way elsewhere isn’t an argument against it. Bowen-Bok are writing broadly about educational policy for the generality of selective private universities, and they were writing some years ago. Greater familiarity will remove some of those barriers. Chicago will also have to do more to pierce through them.

How am I demanding statistics that will never be available? Those statistics - as to the relative wealth of students at Chicago and peer schools - were available in the quite recent past. Why will they not be available again after ED at Chicago has taken hold? In that old discussion of a year ago you and Cue kept telling me that my statistics about Chicago being an outlier with its significantly lower SES student body were out of date and that everything must certainly now be different. I took your points seriously, and now I am waiting for those statistics. When we get them we may not be able to tell perfectly to what extent any rise in the average wealth of the student body is due to ED as separated from the various other factors that have driven up Chicago’s popularity and desirability, but we will be able to look at Chicago in relation to the non-ED peer schools. Even now we can have hunches about this. It’s the reason I keep bugging Cue to suggest a non-ED peer school he thinks might have a lower SES student body. Chicago’s demographic may have risen, but has it risen above that of Harvard, Princeton et. al.? If that is so, it may be time for me to jump ship. [joke]

I have not read the Bok-Bowen book, but as you describe it I have the sense that their main concern is with a much lower demographic than the middling one that people are most concerned about on this board. Chicago like other elite schools is searching vigorously as it should be for kids from the lowest quintile. The Odyssey Program and the Chicago Initiative have been designed to benefit them. Any further outreach would also be a very good thing. It is hard for me to believe that with the other challenges of these kids the existence of ED will be a deal breaker. A talented kid from this demographic will be able to write his ticket, whether it is at Chicago or elsewhere. I want Chicago to be in the fight to get that kid, but I don’t worry that the kid will do just fine.

It is the middling group of the sort that Cue remembers as being the dominant one for his era and I remember as being dominant in my era that may be adversely affected. Chicago needs to combat this in its mailings! I simply don’t believe that the sort of bright kid of middling background and who longs for what the University of Chicago offers would be incapable of figuring out the true scoop on ED - its neutrality financially and the edge it gives him or her in admissions. That includes not only figuring it out for himself but convincing his parents, having the gumption to analyze and reject the received wisdom. Indeed, I’m inclined to see the ability to do those things as a sort of filter winnowing out the kids who have the right stuff from those who don’t.

143
  1. All of the statistics people cite are the rough ones I discussed above. I don't know of any university that has public information breaking out its student body composition by income quartile, or anything like that. Such statistics are available on a group basis in various studies, but they are aggregated. It would essentially be a state secret to find out what percentage of a particular university's class came from the second-highest income quartile (roughly $60,000 - $115,000 annual income) . . . and in essence, that's the question that really interests you. But we know from the aggregate data that selective colleges in general have relatively few such kids.
  2. It's just not true that ED is neutral financially for kids who are neither very poor nor very wealthy. A college may not treat ED acceptees any differently than it treats RD acceptees for purposes of financial aid awards, but different colleges reach surprisingly different conclusions about the same candidate from the same information. Posters on CC have reported shockingly different financial aid awards from colleges you would expect to be very similar -- differences of as much as $10,000/year or more in cost to a family. That is most likely to be true with a family that owns a farm or a small business, since there is a lot of art in valuing those things. A student accepted ED at Chicago may be confident that he gets the same financial aid offer he would have gotten RD, but there's no way he can be confident that he would not have gotten a financial aid offer from his second-choice college that was more than enough to affect his preference order. Furthermore, one college will often revise its financial aid need assessment if it sees a more favorable assessment from a peer college -- that happens all the time. Families that expect to pay a fair amount for college, but to which $5,000 or $10,000 per year of additional debt makes a big difference, really have to think hard about applying ED to any college.

Plus, remember that Chicago – almost uniquely among peer universities – makes significant use of so-called “merit” aid, not based on need. Generally, colleges use discretionary, non-formula merit aid (like Chicago’s) to get RD acceptees to enroll; ED acceptees usually get little or none of that. Chicago does award some discretionary merit aid to ED acceptees, but I haven’t seen anyone say that they don’t reserve a disproportionate amount of it to use in the RD round, or with EA acceptees who may have other options.

144

@marlowe1

You asked me to name a non-ED peer school with a lower SES student body. Based on pell grants (students who come from roughly the bottom 40% of the income distribution), here are some non-ED schools with more pell recipients (and thus, more low SES students) than Chicago: Georgetown, Yale, Harvard, Stanford, Princeton, MIT, probably more, but those are the non-ED schools I know off the top of my head.

And, here are a bunch of ED schools with a lower SES body than Chicago: Columbia, Brown, UPenn, Cornell, Dartmouth, Vanderbilt.

The only peer with fewer SES students than Chicago? Wash U.

(Chicago has 11% pell recipients, whereas many of its peers are in the 15-20% range, except for Wash U, which is at 10%).

Sources: https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/rankings/national-universities/economic-diversity

and https://www.chicagomaroon.com/article/2019/2/28/changing-financial-aid-landscape-pell-grants-hold/

Somewhat amazingly, in 2008, Chicago had 13% pell recipients, and in 2018, that number had FALLEN to 11%. Given all the push for accessibility, no borders, etc. etc., how can we explain that @JBStillFlying ?

(Source: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/09/09/upshot/09up-college-access-index.html)

Also, per the NY Times article, in 2014, Harvard etc. actually were more economically diverse than Chicago. I doubt that’s improved now, with Chicago’s increased emphasis on ED and higher cache in the wealthy zip codes.

Finally, I know marlowe is most interested in the “middling group.” Well, the bottom 40% isn’t well represented at Chicago, and I’m not sure why, with the advent of two rounds of ED and clearly heavier recruitment at elite high schools/boarding schools, we’d see great representation in the 40-95% range.

I mean, again, despite all the hooplah of no barriers and Odyssey scholarships and the like, Chicago actually doesn’t seem as economically diverse as its peers. As it’s clearly gained more cache with the Harvard-Westlake and Exeter crowd, why would we expect the middling group is thriving?

marlowe, we can’t offer the robust data on the middling group you seek. But, given what we can infer from the data we have, I’ll say this: don’t hold your breath.

145

@Cue7 , what I had in mind was an average measure of parental wealth at these schools. The Pell grants would be a measure of the lower end only. Chicago does slightly less well among those students. I suspect that it has to do with the prestige factor - talented kids from that group have more knowledge of the ivy league schools and an understandable longing for the prestige and entree into wealth and power associated with those schools. Chicago will have to fight that. Also, while I don’t know how these grants work well enough to know whether the Odyssey program cuts into their applicability or numbers, that may be a factor as well.

You’re not suggesting that the average wealth of students’ families at the schools you reeled off is exceeded by the average at Chicago? Pardon me if I wait for the statistics before I believe that. You must not believe it either, despite the trend you perceive. I looked for but couldn’t locate the New York Times article that ranked parental wealth of the major schools from a decade back. Chicago was an outlier on the low end at that time. If you can find the 2014 article you refer to above, I’d like to see it and confirm that it indeed concluded and had a basis for concluding that “Harvard, etc was actually more economically diverse than Chicago.” And what did it mean by “economically diverse” - perhaps only a lot of very high-income kids and a lot of very-low ones. That’s not quite what I have in mind.

I stress again, though, that while I would like to see a good spread of all SES groups at Chicago, what I really care about is the maintenance of Chicago-style education, coupled with an egalitarian student culture, of the sort that you and I knew, Cue. The latter doesn’t depend in my mind on the actual representation of social class at the University.

@JHS , I acknowledged your point 2 in a prior post: the kid whose primary objective is to make the best deal for himself and doesn’t have any particular attachment to the University of Chicago should avoid ED. It’s not neutral for that kid and isn’t designed for that kid. I wonder how many of such kids are objectively modest of income and how many are simply cost conscious. In any event there’s a trade-off there as between whatever edge ED gives you and whatever fabulous deal you might have got somewhere else if you had sold your wares in the largest possible market. ED is neutral for you only if you really want to attend the University of Chicago above all other universities.

146

@marlowe1 - you’re thinking of this (somewhat old) study: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/college-mobility/university-of-chicago

Which showed that, in comparison to its ivy plus peers, Chicago had almost no students from the top 0.1%, generally less from the top 1%, and a (lower) median family income of $135k (most ivy plus were in the 170-190k range). (During this time, there were also less bottom 40% students at Chicago - as the pell grant % was low at Chicago, as discussed above.)

That analysis, Marlowe, demonstrates what you assert - that Chicago wasn’t typically sought by the top 1%, and certainly NOT sought by the top 0.1%. Further, lots of “middling income” families sought Chicago.

Well, that’s because Chicago probably got the highest number of qualified applications from “middling income” families - the sons and daughters of teachers, junior faculty members, etc. The sorts of folks who valued what Chicago offered. Yes, as @JHS will assert, it was popular with certain slices of elite americana, but generally less so (across the board) than the very tippy top, and places like Brown and Williams.

BUT, Marlowe, all of that happened in the pre-Nondorf era. What SES groups do you think have responded most strongly to his recruitment? I doubt there’s a big uptick from the middling income folks, and, as the Pell recipients show, not much of a big response from the bottom 40%.

Yet, enrollment is up and selectivity is down. Which group responded most strongly to Chicago’s newly energized marketing efforts?

From what we can infer, and given a huge boom in matriculation rates from places like andover and harvard westlake and new trier and milton and trinity, it looks like the wealthy from fancy zip codes have responded most favorably to Nondorf’s outreach. (Especially as ED has kicked in!)

I’d be fascinated to see how many from the top 0.1% (it was negligible before) attend Chicago now.

Yes, we’ll have to wait on these finalized numbers. But, as I said earlier, given the trends found at Chicago, their new initiatives, and a clear desire to bring in tuition revenue, I doubt the boom is coming from increased recruitment in zip codes featuring lots of teachers and middle-market managers.

147

But what of it? In absolute numbers, the college can still be serving the same amount or more of every SES since it increased its school population. So when you say less, you mean proportionally less, not really less.

Is there a rule that says UChicago should allocate specific percentages of its student population to maximize income diversity?Maximize percentage of Pell grant receipients? Is that a rule that should also apply to other top schools? And what is the correct percentage allocation, if there ever is one? Is there increased social justice value perhaps of maintaining or increasing the percentage allocation of the lowest income groups, without regard to financial consequence? The “haul” from top 0.1% or 1% was close to nothing, any additional 1 person will be a humongous growth; 3 would be a skyrocketing growth - is it so wrong to add a few more, given that all income groups are increasing in absolute numbers anyway?

My take is that UChicago was in a financial bind that threatened the school’s existence, part of the solution is they had to have more high earners to pay full, but instead of reducing the number of lower income groups, they instead increased the tippy top earners proportionally more than the other groups without reducing the actual volumes. I think that would be a fair move.

148

@marlowe1 Your contrast of the kid who loves the University of Chicago more than anyplace else in the world with the kid who just wants the best deal for himself is more than a little insensitive to the reality of most kids outside the top 1%. If you spend time elsewhere on College Confidential, you will see experienced parents warning college admission newbies all the time that no university – not Chicago, not Harvard, not Stanford – is worth going more than $20,000 into debt for, at least as long as there is a reasonable alternative that does not require that much debt. Obviously, the precise figure can be debated, but $40,000 in debt makes a huge difference in the post-baccalaureate life of a college graduate. It affects what jobs he or she can afford to take, what careers to pursue, where to live. It affects marriage prospects.

It isn’t at all uncommon for financial aid awards at peer colleges to differ by $5,000 per year, i.e. $20,000 total, and $10,000 isn’t out of the question. Chicago historically has been on the high side of those numbers – it assumes a greater percentage of home equity and retirement savings are available for college costs than most of its peers. Harvard, for example, at practically any family income level above near poverty, is systematically likely to charge a student meaningfully less than Chicago.

Only the very wealthy and very privileged – or the very unsophisticated and vulnerable – can say "I love the University of Chicago so much I don’t care what they charge me. Sure, some people whose families have very simple finances can calculate pretty accurately what financial aid they will receive at various colleges, and can decide that Chicago is worth the amount they will have to pay there vs. elsewhere. Those people can apply ED (although most of the evidence is that very few of them do). I advocate for people to apply ED all the time, understanding the risks and the details, and with adequate advance research, because I think it can give them a better chance to attend the college they like most. But that doesn’t mean ED is a good program or a fair program. It’s not. It stinks.

One other note: Based on the study McKinsey led for Chicago in the early oughts, its core financial problem was not having too few full pay students. It was having too few wealthy donors. I don’t think they have been turning themselves into pretzels to bring in an extra $100,000 or $200,000 of tuition revenue annually. They want some people who are going to give that much annually for perpetuity, without increasing marginal costs.

149

@FStratford - but the proportions matter.

In the past, the biggest difference I saw between Chicago and its peers (and I attended one of Chicago’s peers after college) was a connection to the power/moneyed elite. That, frankly, was a failing of the school.

In terms of proportions for a school that wants to connect its students to a rarefied network, at least some non-negligible portion of a student body should come from the very upper rungs of the income bracket.

What that looks like on the ground, of course, can vary. As a comparator, I’ll present Yale. As @JHS and others have described Yale, the school is not lacking for connections to the power/moneyed elite. On the ground though, many describe a lack of ostentatiousness or overt signs of a moneyed class. Nevertheless, these connections serve the school well, and, ostensibly, serve graduates well too.

Chicago, in the past, had negligible connections to that strata. That was not, in my opinion, healthy for the financial viability of the school, or what it could offer its grads.

@marlowe1 asserts the dominance of the “middling ground” made Chicago a special place. To the contrary, my hope is that Nondorf has established inroads to the groups that traditionally shunned Chicago - as that’s good for the school’s financial viability and for the students’ network after graduation.

We don’t have current data re the breakdown of Chicago’s student body, but, from what we can infer (matriculation rates from fancy zip codes/schools, for instance), it certainly looks like Nondorf has created demand from a market that usually avoided Chicago. Ultimately, that’s a very good thing for the school and its grads, long term.

To sum, my hope is, when the next study comes out, Chicago’s breakdown looks more like Yale’s. Signs seem to point in that direction.

150

Let me dip in once more and say that I am confused by @Cue7 's reference to higher attendance levels from Andover and Harvard-Westlake, etc. The Chicago my kids attended was chock full of kids from Andover and Harvard-Westlake, etc.

I have repeated any number of times that, as of 2005, at the private school in Philadelphia my kids attended for 11 years, one roughly equivalent to Harvard-Westlake, at least in academic reputation, looking back 10 years the University of Chicago was the third most popular college in which that school’s graduates had enrolled, behind only Penn (over half the students at the school were Penn legacies, Penn faculty brats, or both) and Harvard, and just ahead of Yale. Six kids from my daughter’s 24-student vertical 4-5 classroom went to Chicago with her (and a 7th turned it down to go to Vassar at the last minute). That doesn’t happen anymore, because it’s much harder to get into Chicago (and Harvard); the school no longer reliably sends multiple kids to each every year. I find it hard to believe that Harvard-Westlake, or Andover, or Sidwell Friends, is really sending a lot more kids to Chicago than they did in the past.

151

@JHS - yes, in the oughts (probably more than the 90s), Chicago was popular with the prep/boarding school crowd. My contention is now, post-Nondorf, Chicago has gotten even more popular with its core elite high school crowd, and has also broadened out to a wider band of elite high schools/zip codes.

As an example, in the 90s and 00s, Chicago wasn’t particularly popular with the north suburb (New Trier, Highland Park, etc.) crowd. Now, it seems to be a “hot” school for those markets. Further, at many of the top prep schools (Exeter, Andover, etc.) Chicago was typically quite popular - in the top dozen or so.

Now, at many of these places, it’s literally moved into the top 3-5 college destinations. (At Groton, for instance, it’s in the top 3 - whereas it was probably never above places like Brown and Yale earlier.)

So, yes, Chicago was certainly popular with these schools when your kids’ attended, but my sense is it’s even more popular/coveted now.

As an example of this, last year, Andover sent EIGHTEEN students to Chicago. Yes, in the oughts, Andover was a big feeder to Chicago (I remember, I checked numbers then). As I recall, though, Chicago would usually get in the 7-10 range of students from Andover. I think in 2017, Andover sent 15 to Chicago and, in 2018, 18. The numbers are a little different.

And, with the high US News ranking and increased outreach, I think, again, the north suburbs of Chicago, wealthy parts of Michigan, up and down the east coast, etc., Chicago is getting a lot of traction in places like Greenwich and Newton, MA. Yes, it had it before, but not to this extent - not without the “where fun comes to die” tagline.

(Although, as an aside, as I know the Phila private school circuit fairly well, I can make a fairly good guess as to where your kids went to high school. Interestingly, at the school I’m thinking of, Chicago’s numbers are nowhere near as high any more - maybe only 1 or 2 matriculate each year, nowadays.)

152

@JHS , I don’t see how you can say that ED “gives [kids] a better chance to attend the school they like most” and at the same time say that “it stinks”. Therein lies the difference between our respective takes on this matter. I think it’s supremely important for both the kid and the school, especially a school like Chicago, to make that vital connection. That was once easy at Chicago - the fact that you were one of a small number in the general pool of applicants spoke for the fact that you were in on the secret. There’s no longer a secret. How do you show you get it about the school and are not just one of a herd stampeding blindly and driven by rankings and fashionableness? How does the school avoid the trap that Dean Behnke described in 1997 - and I myself noticed myself many years before that - of too many kids at the school unsuited for it? Certainly, a fine-tuned preparation of app by the student and a fine reading of it by the AO will be vital - especially the “Why Chicago” part of it - but these things can be misinterpreted, faked and farmed out: nothing says sincerity like making a commitment.

You speak somewhat dismissively of the rather minimal level of research required to figure out probable financial awards at various institutions. How is that research any more difficult or onerous than putting together application materials - especially the essays - that get you in to a place like Chicago? The rich and well-advised have an edge there as well. All this focuses way too much on the demographic aspect of the matter, as if these institutions existed mostly to redress social inequalities rather than to perpetuate vital cultural traditions, each performing that function in its own way and therefore each seeking the students especially suited to its mission.

We are all burdened by our personal histories. Yours and those of your children incline you to downgrade the importance of an early connection between a particular child and a particular institution. You believe these things aren’t written in the stars and that what began without much commitment can become intense and transformative over time. I can’t say you’re wrong. In fact I know you’re right, not only for your kids but for many others. My own history inclines me toward the more existential position - that this is a moment in a young life in which to seek the great good place in which you see your destiny, to choose and to live by your choice. For me that is a value greater than a few thousand dollars. If Aristotle didn’t quite say that, then possibly J.P. Sartre did.

@Cue7 , perhaps ED will snag disproportionate numbers of full-payers (and, per JHS, potential big donors), but that won’t be the whole story, though we’ll have to see how it plays out. The total effect may well be to increase the wealth of the U of C - it certainly has a fair ways to go to make up the differential with its peers from ten years ago. Not all the rise will be attributable to ED. It will be driven mainly be general popularity and enhanced appeal to this demographic, bringing into play their firepower in a variety of ways - test prep, creating of resumes, getting recommenders on board, writing convincing essays, and so on. This is far from being all bad, as both you, @Stratford , and JHS say. I am a reluctant convert myself. Rational discourse can move a stony heart!

153

I am saying this not as a compliment but U of C matriculations from top prep schools have certainly sky rocketed from a couple of decades ago.

Let’s look at the famous HADES.

Deerfield Academy has stopped releasing data since 2014.

For last 4 years Hotchkiss sent as many kids to U of C (23) as to Yale (24) and Harvard (20). Only Georgetown (28) takes more kids than U of C.

https://www.hotchkiss.org/academics/college-advising/matriculation

For the last 3 years Andover sent the most number of seniors to U of C, besting any Ivy league schools.

https://www.andover.edu/files/CCOProfile2016.pdf

https://www.andover.edu/files/PhillipsAcademySchoolProfile2017-2018.pdf

https://www.andover.edu/files/CCOProfileBrochure2018-2019.pdf

For Exeter, U of C is around top 15:

https://exeter.edu/sites/default/files/documents/2016-2018-Matrculation.pdf

For St. Paul, it is out of top 10 but we don’t know the exact number:

https://www.sps.edu/about-sps/sps-facts

On the same degree of exclusivity, Horace Mann sends more kids to U of C than to any other school:

https://www.horacemann.org/uploaded/HoraceMann/Admissions/2017_College_attended_List.pdf

In fact, Horace Mann sent more kids to U of C than to Harvard and Yale combined. That is really strange for a NYC school.

154

^ I doubt Chicago’s numbers looked like that 10 years ago. Yes, it would’ve been popular, but not the #1-3 destination at so many prep/boarding schools.

(Chicago is also the top destination at Milton Academy in MA, among others: https://www.milton.edu/admission/college-matriculations/)

Again, somewhat unprecedented to see a midwestern school take such a large share of east coast boarding/prep school kids.

155

I’m kind of under the impression that UChicago might have a higher matriculation rate at these places because it is easier to get into. I don’t really think that its lower acceptance rate makes UChicago admissions more difficult than say Penn or Dartmouth. I’m not quite sure that saying UChicago has more matriculants as these private schools than Yale does means UChicago is more desirable than/equally as desirable as Yale.

156

@Agilulf - oh absolutely, I don’t think Chicago is more/equally desirable as Yale to the boarding school crowd, BUT, I do think Chicago has risen through the ranks, to become a veritably “hot” school for this market.

157

@Agiluf: I get your point. How dare anyone thinks UChicago is equivalent to HYP? Those boarding school applicants that matriculated at UChicago must be all rejects of HYP and second class citizens at their respective schools.

Has this idea crossed anyone’s mind that sometimes a smart kid may go for fit instead of brand name?

158

I would not be surprised if UChicago was one of the top choices among unhooked Boarding School kids (ie no legacy, no URM, no sports recruit etc.) Does this make Chicago “easier” to get into for those kids? Probably. Does it make it less desirable? No

159

UChicago has done heavy recruiting at prep schools. Good place to find lots of smart, talented, full pay students quickly and efficiently (recruiting is expensive!) - kinda a no brainer for a school that needs revenue but doesn’t want to compromise admissions standards

160

Interestingly, the other families we’ve connected with today at the April Overnight say that admissions this year has been all over their state map. Perhaps we are just meeting a small, unrepresentative sample.