Wow. I am stunned at those increases. @marlowe1 should chew on that a little. I am willing to believe that those kids at Hotchkiss, Andover, Milton, and Horace Mann really are finding an elemental connection with Chicago, but it certainly looks like the current ED regime may be handing its advantage to a pretty privileged bunch of kids! Which is more or less what one would predict from the dynamics of ED. I just thought it would mainly be a slightly different privileged bunch of kids, but if Cue7 is right they (the wealthy suburban public school kids) are getting in on the action, too.
Of course ED has benefits for kids, lets them show their love for a first-choice college, and gives them a better shot at admission there. But only if they feel comfortable applying ED, which tends to limit the pool to kids who are mostly very affluent and sophisticated, and who go to high school with others like them. For those kids, it’s great. It’s great for the University, too. It can be completely need-blind in admissions, and fairly generous with financial aid, especially for actually poor students, and yet be comfortable that its need-blind process won’t break the bank or produce a class dominated by the needy instead of the well–to-do. It also guarantees that the vast majority of students really want to be there, too, and that’s also good thing, for the University and its students.
@JHS - you’ve summed up the reasoning behind Chicago’s push to ED very nicely! 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.
This also aligns nicely with what @HydeSnark says - recruiting at wealthy boarding schools is low-hanging fruit. Clearly, Chicago is spending a lot more time mining for talent at these spots than in MN, upstate NY, SD, etc. Of course it makes sense, but, again, let’s call it what it is: admissions with an eye toward the bottom line.
BTW, you can google New Trier’s college stats - I think they sent close to a dozen to Chicago in a recent year. Fairly certain other top, wealthy publics would be similar.
I’d love Chicago’s new admissions mantra to be:
“No Barriers… especially if you’re a full pay kid at Exeter!”
Well, the kids at Hotchkiss are rather more identifiable because of their critical mass than the kids who come one by one or handful by handful from a thousand and one public schools, even small ones in small cities. And how do you guys know that all these Hotchkissers and others of their ilk have applied ED? Oh how I would love to see a breakdown of the ED pool. I believe you are severely underestimating its breadth. Applications must be pouring in from all directions.
Er, and it’s not just the east coast elite high schools. Look at the west coast: Harvard Westlake has sent 43 students to Chicago in the past 5 years (that’s more than the number sent to Columbia, or Northwestern, or UPenn, or Duke or Cornell or Dartmouth).
Chicago also is a top destination for students from the Cate School in CA - with more matriculants than Brown, Yale, Dartmouth, Duke, and Columbia, and equal to Georgetown.
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 can’t find the article @marlowe1 - but at top prep schools, an insanely high number apply early (and even Early Decision) nowadays. I think, maybe in the Washington Post, they cited like 60% of the class at Sidwell Friends applying somewhere Early Decision?
In any case, it’s a big number. I’d estimate that, at the tippy top schools, 60-70% of the admits from a top prep school are admitted early.
I’ve heard a few college counselors at a nearby top prep school say “if you’re applying regular… you’re applying late.”
There’s certainly a big push to apply early at the top prep schools.
In my corner of the prep school world (not in the Midwest, where I would expect UChicago to enjoy a natural advantage), UChicago is a go-to for high-grades (but not valedictorians), high-scoring (but not toll-free 800-level) and preferably full-pay kids that are relatively less likely to get a bid from HYPS because there are too many legacies, kids with super talents, academically-elite URMs, recruited athletes and academically ultra-elite kids lined up in front of them. The UChicago kids are very strong candidates, but they calculate that they aren’t going to jump out of the HYPS pile, so they apply ED to UChicago, get in and go. 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.
ETA: picking up on @Cue7’s point, 80% or so of the kids at elite preps apply early somewhere - that’s the way the game is played - and at some of them, you’re strongly discouraged or prevented from applying anywhere RD if you get an early bid from a private, even if it’s non-binding (because the college counselors are representing to the adcoms that you’ll enroll if they admit you, and turning down an early bid would damage the school’s credibility with the college).
I know @JBStillFlying probably won’t like this (as it flies in the face of the ethos behind “NO BARRIERS”), but, isn’t it kind of weird that so many prep schoolers are going to the University of Chicago… of all places?!
I get it, but it’s such an about-face from even 10 years ago.
“The University of Chicago - THE Destination for the Unhooked Prep Elite!”
I would be surprised if only 60% of the class at Sidwell Friends applied early somewhere. My kids’ former school was really an awful lot like Sidwell Friends, and basically any kid who wasn’t applying early somewhere had to have a darn good reason and undergo a lot of counseling (including the parents) to be allowed NOT to apply early. And, yes, anyone accepted early at an SCEA college was not welcome to apply to any other equivalent colleges.
Even at the public school my kids graduated from after they left the private school, 100% of the kids near the top of the class – everyone who aspired to go to a very selective college – applied early somewhere.
(I know, I know. I said ED discourages applications from middle-class kids. Not at this high school. The counselors are stretched thin, and the ambitious kids pretty much counsel each other. Enough of them are demographically identical to the private school kids that they import that culture. They put enormous pressure on one another to apply early. The big question there is ED at Penn – which still has close to a 100% admission rate for ED applicants from this school in the top 5% of the class – vs. anywhere else. The kids understood and trusted Penn’s financial aid. At this school, however, kids who were accepted EA or SCEA somewhere almost always applied to more colleges because of the economic issues.)
ETA: If there are NO BARRIERS then the people closest to the entrance who start earliest tend to get in first.
Agreed @JHS re the NO BARRIERS. Oh, and being wealthy sure can break down a lot of those barriers…
And yes, 80% is probably more accurate than the number I initially gave. I just didn’t remember, off-hand, the exact stat from the article (and I didn’t want to mollify @marlowe1 with some high number).
But yes, from the prep school crowd, tons apply early.
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.
Would love to see what the early admissions reception in Boston or NYC look like…
My Lord, Cue, you’re as giddy with excitement over the thought of all these fancy prep schools pouring their contents into UChicago as ever a promoter of Florida real estate could be about sunshine and palm trees. I say the word needs to go out that this place is a cold crime-ridden hell-hole of endless stress where the sound of pages turning in the library is the biggest thrill on campus. Would that image turn back the hordes of the well-groomed and the Canada-Goose-wearing?
It absolutely would, @marlowe1 - heck, that certainly worked in the 90s!
But I thought the biggest thrill on campus was the roll of Dungeons & Dragons dice? (Or have the kids moved on from that?)
Also, no clue if the wealthy crowd at Chicago actually WEAR Canada Goose or Gucci. The key, though, is they have the means to do so now, if they wanted. That ability never existed for 99%+ of us in my day.
Well, Cue and Cu, if that group got themselves to Chicago in those numbers at a time when FA was less good than it now is, why would their numbers now fall off and fail to participate in the new growth? Has Chicago become less attractive to them as it has become more attractive to the wealthy? Is it beginning to seem to them like an exclusive club in the ivy mold? That would make at least one of you very happy, but it fills me with fear and loathing. I don’t think it is so, however, inasmuch as the Chicago ethos is the glue that holds this new world together.
@marlowe1 - I think the “middling ground” has indeed grown as Chicago has grown. I just don’t think the growth there has been nearly as explosive as the growth from the wealthy segment.
I also think, back in the day, Chicago’s ad comm was more willing to take chances on students - kids who didn’t have perfect test scores and grades. Nowadays, that’s much more rare. And guess which SES group has the highest concentration of top test scores and grades?
This====> In my corner of the prep school world (not in the Midwest, where I would expect UChicago to enjoy a natural advantage), UChicago is a go-to for high-grades (but not valedictorians), high-scoring (but not toll-free 800-level) and preferably full-pay kids that are relatively less likely to get a bid from HYPS because there are too many legacies, kids with super talents, academically-elite URMs, recruited athletes and academically ultra-elite kids lined up in front of them. The UChicago kids are very strong candidates, but they calculate that they aren’t going to jump out of the HYPS pile, so they apply ED to UChicago, get in and go. 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.
The non-hooked kid “RD Hunger Games.” Love that. So true. In the south, most kids are looking to Duke with this same calculation.