Application Inflation and the U of C

Colleges & Universities A-Z University of Chicago ✅
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<p>Well, the report I read was reprinted in full in a special issue of something that I think used to be called the Chicago Gazette, a newsprint publication which used to alternate with the glossy Alumni Magazine until a few years ago. It showed up in our mailbox shortly after my daughter was accepted. I didn’t look for it or anything; I just opened it up. At the time, I didn’t have any idea who John Boyer was. It was an amazing document – 9-10 pages of dense type with tons of information about the university. The McKinsey study, if I remember correctly, was focused on alumni giving, but that (of course) turned out to be a window on the whole place of the college in the university and why the “Ivy” strategy had produced much healthier institutions than Chicago’s historical strategy had.</p>

<p>Yale’s expansion is pretty big news: A $600 million (and counting) project that has been in the works in one form or another since I was a student there, and the first expansion at Harvard or Yale since coeducation. Princeton also got a fair amount of attention when it built Whitman Collage and expanded from 1,000/class to 1,250/class five years ago. Chicago didn’t spend quite so much on Max Palevsky or South Campus, and South Campus mainly only replaced existing dorm space. And there isn’t (yet) quite the same feeling that slots in Chicago’s entering college class are a rare commodity.</p>

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<p>I’m not going to pretend to have read this whole discussion, but I, from a student perspective, I don’t see a substantial change in the class of 2013 vs. the class of 2014. Additionally, my friends who are now admissions counselors stress to me that they are <em>not</em> changing the admissions process, nor are they looking for different kinds of people to accept.</p>

<p>Now as for how they are dispersing information. As for the Maroon, it is a student run news paper that writes on exactly what they want to write on. It is highly skewed proportion of the university and I wouldn’t suggest what is written there to be taken as how much the school is giving out knowledge.</p>

<p>The knowledge is there (JHS has mentioned probably the main source). Why doesn’t anyone care about it though? I think it is because no major change is happening in the first place! The student body is, more or less, the same (very little pre-professional types, tons of econ students, most students still plan to go on to graduate school, etc.). The majority of classes are still small; teachers are, more or less, still highly interested in teaching undergrads; classes are still ridiculously hard; etc. etc. etc. The student body is increasing, but, with it, so are the dorms, the amount of teachers/faculty, etc. :-)</p>

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<p>Cue7, </p>

<p>Are you reading the same article I am? I ask, because (1) the one I read in the NYT did not appear on my doorstep until Sunday adn (2) the one I read in no way implied application inflation w/r/t UofC. Tulane? Yes, given their dismal yield of 11% as mentioned in the article. But nowhere did I detect this pejorative attitude you did. </p>

<p>Of course I don’t search the web or have alerts that tell me when something pops up regarding UofC. </p>

<p>Comparisons to Yale? Somehow I view them in a different world, renowned for its undergrad programs much more than its grad programs (although its law school alum seem to do pretty well these days?) So the fact that they might manage the PR regarding expansion a bit differently is no surprise.</p>

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<p>I dunno, newmassdad. It’s the same NYT article – I bought it at the store Sunday morning, but the Education Supplement was probably online Wednesday or Thursday. I’m not going to go back and read it again, but I thought it pretty much made Chicago a poster child for beating the bushes to find more applicants. Not that it was the only one, but it was featured because it had the biggest recent changes (of people, Behnke/O’Neill -> Nondorf; of policy, Uncommon -> Common; and of course of numbers). Also because, for better or worse, Nondorf seems to have a reputation as Mr. Application Volume. I also thought the article was fair in providing the rationale that Chicago was less well known to students who ought to be considering it, and also that maybe it was broadening its appeal. Chicago wasn’t exactly accused of soliciting no-chance applications . . . and Harvard was.</p>

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<p>I thought not a bad article for the NY Times. perhaps it was the influence of the Chronicle’s co-author. I think moving beyond training scholars is fine as long as uChicago still trains scholars as well. I wonder if the future of universities will require as many PhD scholars in the future?</p>

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<p>JHS,</p>

<p>I guess I did not interpret comments about how Chicago went from a quirky place with a quirky application that turned off a lot of students to one with a more mainstream applicant friendly place to be a criticism of the approach. </p>

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“It’s not that we weren’t getting students of quality that we wanted, because we were — they were terrific,” says John W. Boyer, dean of the college since 1992. “But we still had the feeling that, as much progress as we were making, there were still a lot of people out there who had these older images of the place. We were not using our admissions office to the maximum degree to say what the college was to the American people.” /quote]

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<p>Only the last could be remotely interpreted as critical, and most would argue that it was there for balance. </p>

<p>I suppose you’re right. It got the most lines because it’s had the most radical changes with a huge increase in numbers.</p>

<p>BTW, anyone recall the yield numbers over the past few years? Did yield go up or down with the rise in applications?</p>

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<p>Basically stayed the same, in the high 30s. The final tally on last year’s season turned out to be 38.8%. That’s higher than it had been in the recent past. Not by a lot. The yield in the past 6-7 years had bumped around in the 36-38% range, with no unidirectional trend. For the class of 2012 it was around 38%, too, while for 2013 it was just under 37%. </p>

<p>The difference last year was probably a function of the fact that they accepted 300 or so more kids EA than in previous years, but the same number of students overall as the year before. The difference between the EA yield rate (reputed to be ~50%) and the RD yield rate (~25% if I am right about the EA rate) for that many kids would amount to about 2% of overall admissions. With the 2012 class (pre-dating Nondorf), they did something similar percentage-wise by accepting 200 fewer RD applicants than they had in the previous few years.</p>

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newmassdad - Get your stats right, please. Tulane’s dismal yield is 16%. LOL. It is all so meaningless, though. Tulane was simply trying to survive after Katrina and had no idea if people would return at all, much less continue to apply. In fact the year after Katrina the class size was very small. Then everything exploded. Tulane wasn’t and isn’t particularly worried about yield or admission %, they are completely focused on the fact that this admissions strategy has not only given them very full classes (actually oversubscribed by almost 10% this year, 1640 freshmen compared to a target of 1500), but the past 4 classes have been the best in school history, academically. That last point is, after all, the real goal, isn’t it? Anyway, I think the article kind of missed the point there.</p>

<p>Schools that are top 15 or so are in a different category, and really cannot be compared to schools like Tulane that have more room to move “up” in that regard. In any case, I fail to see what the issue really is anyway, and why getting lots of apps is a bad thing, other than the amount of work admissions has to do. The whole argument that kids are “misled” into thinking they have a chance is pretty thin, IMO. I am sure it happens, but with the internet and the incredible ease of being able to compare your statistics to the school’s typical admit, one would have to be pretty unaware to think they can get into Harvard or whatever with mediocre credentials.</p>

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<p>fallenchemist, </p>

<p>mea culpa for missing a few percentage points. Memory is not so good these days. I guess there’s a huge difference between 11 and 16% yield? </p>

<p>I meant no diss on Tulane. Heavens knows it is a fine institution dealt a terrible blow recently, and in a struggle to re-establish itself. So it needs all the help it can get. I’m glad to hear things are turning around. Wish the same could be said for the rest of NO.</p>

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<p>That’s funny because as a whole, Yale’s grad programs are clearly superior to Chicago’s. Chicago, as a graduate program, is vastly overrated. Chicago supporters love to say that academically it is at the level of HYPSM. But no facts support this myth. That said, it is not nearly as overrated as its undergrad institution. Let’s face it. The stars at Chicago are the faculty and to a lesser extent, the grad students. It is, first and foremost, a graduate institution and the undergrad part is not much more than an afterthought. As JHS points out: “in the 60s Chicago’s college class size dipped down below 500, and the viability of the college was seriously in question.” </p>

<p>Below is an interpretation of the NRC results by a Princeton grad (who is obviously not biased towards Yale). According to him or her, Chicago is closer to, say, NYU than it is to Yale in terms of academics.</p>

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<p>infinitetime,</p>

<p>I think you need to understand the NRC study a bit better before you jump to any conclusions. To start, you might be aware that by design, it made comparisons like the one you cite a bit questionable.</p>

<p>But you misunderstand more fundamentally anyway. My statement did not say UofC grad programs were better than Yale’s. Instead, I made a relative comparison. Maybe you think Yale is more renowned for its grad programs than undergrad? If so, then why the long quote?</p>

<p>Geesh…</p>

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<p>No, YOU misunderstand. My point is that despite the fact that Yale’s undergrad programs are more renowned, its grad programs are still superior to those at Chicago. Needless to say, Chicago undergrad is (literally) not even in Yale’s league.</p>

<p>P.S. It’s so unseemly for you to brag. I know that it’s relatively rare when a Chicago student wins the Rhodes, but still:</p>

<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/821229-experience-ivy-reject.html?highlight=ivy+reject[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/821229-experience-ivy-reject.html?highlight=ivy+reject&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>What is it about you Chicago parents? You seem to have as much of an inferiority complex towards the Ivies as your own kids.</p>

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<p>Just to go back to our conversation, I didn’t take it as you dissing Tulane. I was playing along with you. No, there is no major difference between 11% and 16%. The major point was that Tulane isn’t using the strategy talked about in the article to look better stats wise or crush the hopes of marginal students. They are simply trying to (and succeeding) turn what was a devastating situation into a major improvement from where they were even before the disaster. It required some hugely controversial steps, such as eliminating more than half the engineering majors and collapsing the venerable Newcomb College into the structure of the university (they have had to fight a long lawsuit on that one and just won Round 2). But it has been a tremendous success, so I have to think their attitude, at least for now, is “why change our admissions strategy?”. Eventually they might, but it is working for them. BTW, even New Orleans is better than it was. Has it progressed as fast as Tulane? No, it surely hasn’t. But the schools are much better than they were, people are far more involved, Tulane is helping to take health care back into the neighborhoods, and the new mayor has, I think, a real chance at cleaning up the police department. I have to say it I think the vibe is way better than it was pre-Katrina.</p>

<p>Anyway, what does any of this have to do with U Chicago? Only this, I think. Tulane’s admissions experience has become well known to other institutions, especially the part regarding changing the very character of the school in some ways. I think that is what the people from Chicago were trying to say in the article. By opening up the admissions process somewhat and attracting more applicants, they can “tweak” or maybe even more than tweak the nature of the student body somewhat while retaining what makes U Chicago the unique and wonderful school it is, all without losing any academic quality. Frankly, I would worry if others were not paying attention to the success of the Tulane experiment. It takes some courage to ignore the stats if they go in the opposite direction of the conventional wisdom, but in the end the school benefits. If having a low yield were all that detrimental, how come Tulane gets record numbers of apps, record entering class sizes, all with the best academic stats in the schools history? And OH BTW, the retention rate for both freshman and juniors also set records for Tulane this year, at 91.1% and 85% respectively, if I recall correctly. Not the stratospheric numbers of Chicago, but still very good.</p>

<p>So my hat is off to Chicago for not sitting on their ass and becoming complacent. Universities need fresh thinking and new dynamics from time to time, like anyplace.</p>

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<p>infinitetime - I guess I’m a bit confused by your NRC ranking. You state that Yale’s graduate programs are “clearly superior” to Chicago’s, and then point toward the roughly 13 “point” disparity (62.0 to 48.6) between the two schools as justification for this argument.</p>

<p>Would you then also argue that Princeton is “clearly superior” to Stanford because of Princeton’s 10 point “lead” according to this version of the ranking? Or, put another way, are Yale and Columbia (to use the converse of your language) “vastly inferior” to Berkeley or Stanford because of the 20-30 point disparity between these schools?</p>

<p>Again, you seem to say that Chicago’s grad programs are overrated, and shouldn’t be talked about in the same breadth as Yale’s, as your ranking indicates. This ranking, then, also seems to tell me that Columbia is way way behind Berkeley, that Stanford really shouldn’t be in the same sentence as Princeton or Harvard, and that Yale is a far cry from Stanford.</p>

<p>Is your point to demonstrate that schools that people would oftentimes group together (Princeton and Stanford, Yale and Princeton, etc.) are actually separated by a great deal on the graduate level? </p>

<p>Again, if I take the step to believe the ranking you present, I’m unclear as to what your ranking should tell me. It seems to indicate that I should, at the graduate level, never talk about Yale and Chicago in the same sentence AND, similarly, never talk about Stanford and Princeton or Harvard and Stanford in the same sentence either. </p>

<p>With all of this in mind, the ranking you present is confusing to me because it upsets comparisons I used to have no problem making (Harvard & Stanford, Yale & Princeton etc.) at the graduate level. Do you think that, just as you argue there is a big gap between Yale and Chicago on the graduate level, that there is a similar gap between Harvard and Stanford, or Columbia and Berkeley? Put another way, just as you see Yale as “clearly superior” to Chicago on the graduate level, would you make the same statement about Princeton against Stanford, or Princeton against Yale?</p>

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<p>This is not “my” NRC ranking. It’s a Princeton grad’s interpretation of the NRC results.</p>

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<p>I don’t necessarily endorse the Princeton alum’s (pro-Princeton) spin on things. My point is that he would have no reason to be biased in favor of Yale over Chicago. That said, the Princeton alum did group Stanford and Princeton together, so he probably doesn’t (despite his Princeton bias) think that Princeton is clearly superior to Stanford. </p>

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<p>Based on the Princeton alum’s separate groupings, he’d probably say so. I tend to agree that Berkeley and Stanford’s academics are, on the whole, stronger than Yale and Columbia’s. For the STEM fields, there’s no contest. </p>

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<p>IMNSHO, while Yale is superior to Chicago, it is indeed overrated relative to HPSM (especially in the sciences). It’s generally acknowledged that Yale’s academics don’t quite have the breadth of HS and the depth of HPSM. This is, for example, reflected by Yale’s slightly lower Peer Assessment ¶ score compared to HPSM.</p>

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<p>infinitetime - I guess I think you’re just being a bit too adamant about differences that don’t seem to be that wide, at least according to this Princeton grad student’s study. </p>

<p>You argue that Yale is “clearly superior” to Chicago, given the 13 pt gap in this ranking. On the other hand, you temper your language when comparing Berkeley and Stanford to Yale or Columbia (for example, you state: “I tend to agree that Berkeley and Stanford’s academics are, on the whole, stronger than Yale and Columbia’s.”). Despite this fact, according to the ranking you present, there is a much wider gap between Stanford and Yale than there is between Yale and Chicago, yet your language in making these two different set of comparisons is quite varied. You “tend to agree” that academics at Stanford or Yale are “on the whole” superior, but with the Chicago & Yale comparison, the language you use is much stronger.</p>

<p>Overall, if after reading this NRC ranking, people continue to at least compare Stanford and Harvard to one another (13 pt gap between the two schools), why can’t people continue to compare Chicago and Yale to one another (13 pt gap between the two schools, and, supposedly, a huge separation between either C or Y from Princeton or Harvard)?</p>

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<p>The NRC ratings don’t work well enough to support the kind of analysis PG2000 tried to do. I wish they did, but they don’t. The “S” rankings were determined by giving people a list of twenty or so objectively measurable features of graduate programs, and asking them what relative weight they would assign to each in evaluating the program overall, and then applying those weightings in a sophisticated way to the data from each program. The problem is that the most important things to know: who gets the best students, what faculty are the most intellectually exciting and have the most leadership? – aren’t on the list of measurable data. So the “S” rankings, while interesting, get kind of random because they are missing the content.</p>

<p>The “R” rankings attempt to correct for that by asking people to rank which schools they admire most from a limited set of choices. Then, there was an attempt to take all of those rankings of schools by people with different sets to choose from and correlate them with specific categories of data. Well, guess what? R rankings seem to be based on student GREs and institutional wealth. Whoop-de-doo.</p>

<p>When you put 'em all together, they don’t mean very much, except that the top universities in the country are still the top universities in the country. Not terribly surprising. But trying to use those metrics to figure out who is better than who else, and by how much, is like trying to rate athletes based on the length and resilience of their toenails.</p>

<p>PG’s method also assumes that all intervals are created equal, that #4 compared to #1 is three times worse than #2 compared to #1, and that #10 is 10 times worse than #1. Just not true.</p>

<p>Also, the numerical reductions for these universities mean different things. It’s amazing that MIT does so well, given that it doesn’t offer half of the subject matters at all. Chicago and Yale are hobbled by their lack of engineering, total or relative, depending on which you are talking about. Out of the 32 areas, maybe a fifth just aren’t relevant for Chicago. At the same time, by not acknowledging the contributions of law, medicine, education, and business school to the intellectual life at a university, you lose some of what makes many of them special.</p>

<p>This isn’t a whine about Yale vs. Chicago, or Harvard vs. Yale. They are all among the 20-30 truly great universities in the world. Based on breadth and depth, some of those are doubtless a little greater than others. I, for one, would have no trouble saying Harvard is greater than Chicago, as if that mattered. That doesn’t mean that Harvard’s X Department is greater than Chicago’s X Department, or that a single X student at either could perceive the difference, or that any difference was actually significant. It would mean that Harvard does a few more things fabulously well than Chicago does, is right at the top in more fields, and where it isn’t the absolute best it tends to come a little closer. But why that should matter to anyone other than the Presidents, Provosts, and Trustees of the two institutions is beyond me. It doesn’t speak to the experience any individual student or faculty member would have with either.</p>

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<p>“Purity” has its costs.</p>

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<p>This speaks to Chicago’s lack of breadth relative to Harvard, Stanford, etc.</p>

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<p>Law: HYS > Chicago
Medicine: HYS > Chicago
Business: HSM > Chicago (Congratulations for outranking Yale SOM, which is 20 years younger than you are.)</p>

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<p>No sane person would have trouble saying this.</p>

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<p>Again, infinitetime, I don’t quite get the intensity of your posts in looking to put Chicago in its place, so to speak. </p>

<p>Again, as a counter to what you presented above, you could argue that Stanford beats out Yale in every metric presented above besides law school (med school, business school, grad school), but I don’t know if your post would be tinged with as much sarcasm if you compared Y and S (I doubt you’d say, in seeing that Stanford’s GSB was better than Yale’s SOM, “Congratulations, Stanford, for outranking Yale’s SOM, which is X years younger…”). </p>

<p>I guess I just don’t see what the big deal is. People probably compare Stanford and Yale, even though Yale, from your perspective, wouldn’t have Stanford’s breadth or strength of professional schools overall.</p>

<p>Put another way, why do any comparisons between Chicago and Yale on the grad level seem to annoy you? Would a comparison between Yale and Stanford on this front also strike you the same way?</p>

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<p>I see analogies are not your strong point.</p>