<p>I discuss plenty of issues I do not … really care about! For the sake of arguing, perhaps! </p>
<p>Years ago, we had spirited discussions about this precise issue. At that time, I opined that the prompts and the overall image projected by Chicago had a negative impact, and that it did hinder Chicago to not only gain in a wider recognition by applicants but be considered an alter ego to the HYPS on this world. While I understand that for some --and you might count me in that group-- there is a world that is NOT impressed by the Ivy League and does not pronated in front of its grandeur, it remains that prestige and … rankings are determining factors. </p>
<p>In the end, the changes at Chicago, that include revising the submitted data to the ranking organizations, upping the marketing, and making the applications more straightforward catapulted Chicago to a heightened “status.” </p>
<p>In the end, what I have argued (or cared to express) is that the prompts are NOT a positive feature, and were not a smart device to select the “best” applicants as it reduced the selection pool. </p>
<p>And, like it or not, the positioning of schools among the uber-elite UG programs is tied to its selectivity and admission rate. No matter how one looks at it, Chicago could not “enter” in the higher group without emerging from the group that admits 30 to 50 percent of its applicants, and has a lower yield. Asinine as it might be, that is what the schools have to do!</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Not different than at other schools. The difference in years not that far away was that plenty of students who would attend peer schools did not apply or turned down the easy-to-get offers of admission at Chicago. The statistics of 1990 to 2010 easily support my argument. I do not make those up! And those statistics are what drives the entire higher education world. </p>
<p>Some kids look at the essay prompts, uncommon app, self-conscious quirkiness of a Chicago and say - hey, that sounds just like me. Count me in. Others roll their eyes and call it pretentious.</p>
<p>Likewise, across town, some kids look at NU’s positioning - Chicago’s Big 10 Team, great academics with all the typical college trappings of Greek life, sports, blah blah blah – and say - hey, that sounds just like me. Count me in. Others roll their eyes and say they want no part of that, they want an ivory tower experience or bust.</p>
<p>No positioning will ever be universal. That’s ok. Chicago’s is no better or worse than anyone else’s – just different.</p>
<p>^
And that is “OK” as long as being deliberately different holds you back. Unless I am mistaken, there are few schools who would reward their deans and enrollment managers for reducing the applicant pool and the ancillary yield. It is just the nature of the beast! </p>
<p>Imagine there is a maker of cream cheese who decides to be different … and markets the cheese for its high fat and calorie contents. Obviously, it would taste better than most “diet” cheese, and would be applauded by plenty of gourmet and chefs. On the other hand, 99 percent of the shoppers that are bombarded with health scares and “slim” is in will pass on the new cheese. With languishing sales, the marketing manager might decide to tone down the message and sell a different idea. </p>
<p>But heck, I ain’t a marketing guru and I never had to sell cream cheese. :)</p>
<p>I don’t disagree that the “Make up your own prompt” is the best prompt of all, for the kid who can do it. But most of us work better with some parameters. I did hear at least one college on our info tours admit they loved it when people made up prompts because by the end of application season they were bored to tears with all the standard answers to the Common Application prompts. One of the things l liked about the Chicago prompts was how many different ways they’d get interpreted. The large mustard story might end up with an essay on philosophy, economics, or growing up in a large family. My younger son told a little short story with the “How did you get caught” prompt.</p>
<p>I’d buy the real cream cheese - there are some things you shouldn’t get the lite versions of, you just eat them less often or in smaller portion sizes. :)</p>
<p>I found college admissions essays to involve a lot of navel-gazing that seemed rather pointless. Any essay prompt, quirky or not, that was not all about me was a welcome change.</p>
<p>From my visits to my grandma in Europe, I remember that the aisles were filled with all kinds of fresh cheeses --something between sour cream and yoghurt-- that came in various percentages of “creme.” The double and triple creme were just fabulous. And my grandma would never buy the diet or light versions. But in that country they do not eat to live, but the opposite.</p>
<p>It doesn’t matter if 99% of the shoppers will pass, if there is a market to be made from the 1% who will like it. And I <em>am</em> a marketer who has had to market - not cream cheese, but similar things :-)</p>
<p>Indeed, a big part of marketing is portfolio management – how do I segment the market and target my product to appeal only to those people who really like it, and ignore the rest. Do you read Seth Godin or any other marketing guru? That’s standard fare. My most successful clients are the ones who aren’t afraid to make their product or service stand for something, even if x% of people are turned off by it.</p>
<p>Yes, and no. I have no doubt that 17-year-old Eddie Wilson, or Ollie Sacks, or Billy Maxwell, or Wiggy Danticat, would be best served by writing about whatever they cared to be writing about than by writing about something suggested by someone else. People like that represent an infinitesimal portion of the applicant pool, though, and I suspect (a) they write about what they want to write about anyway, and do fine, or (b) they write something responsive to a prompt that might have been better had they not been responding to a prompt but which is perfectly adequate to show what great writers they are.</p>
<p>For most kids, however, picking something to write about is agony, and they screw it up all the time. They let themselves be boxed or bullied into writing a rehash of their resume that makes them look duller than they could possibly be in real life. They write the same essay hundreds of kids have written before, and dozens of others are writing right now, to be read by the same admissions readers. And they are so-so earnest and so-so devoid of life or individualism. (The same is true, by the way, of many, many graduate school SOPs.)</p>
<p>People are always accusing Chicago of doing everything it can to boost application numbers (and thus, indirectly, perceived selectivity). But they could probably double this year’s applications simply by dropping the unique essay prompts and being willing to judge people’s writing ability from their Common App essays. If they don’t do that, despite the huge advantages in terms of admissions tactics and fewer readers necessary for processing, I think it’s obviously because they value whatever information the “quirky” prompts are generating.</p>
<p>Do you really think the exact essay topic required or the postcards being sent are so influential? My daughter loves the cards she gets from Chicago–they are probably the most interesting, and she is going to tape the one that arrived recently onto her door. But she decided without even looking at the essay questions that she is not going to apply because she doesn’t like Chicago and neither of us are comfortable with the neighborhood. 100 cool postcards and 100 quirky essays can’t erase that location.</p>
<p>@JHS (#14): It’s not so much that my son “got away with” not biting on Chicago’s quirky essay topics, since one of the options was to write an essay on a subject of your own choosing. But it’s also true that he didn’t have a burning desire to attend Chicago, or any other college that he applied to. For sure, he had “the numbers” and accomplishments in high school to be a good candidate for admission then and now. He wrote an essay that was good enough for all but one of the colleges he applied to. But he only visited UofC for the first time on admitted students’ day, liked his experience and declared “this will do.” And so his college search was done. </p>
<p>Later, of course, but mainly after he had graduated, he came to realize how special the place was. And they also regard him as one of their exemplary graduates, who does his part when called upon as an alumnus.</p>
<p>My broader point was that Chicago wasn’t being quirky just to project an image. They wanted different kinds of essays partly to protect their own sanity, and they were hoping to find some applicants who themselves were quirky or unconventional. Better to give them quirky or unconventional prompts.</p>
<p>The quirky U. Chicago prompts are a fun break from all the stress of the college applications. If nothing else, they brings smiles and that’s got to count for something. :)</p>
<p>Haha! People are accusing Chicago for a very simple reason! And that is because they are simply guilty of those practices. Next to Tulane and the oft-cited WashU/WUSTL, there are few schools that are as egregious as Chicago. </p>
<p>As far as doubling the number of applications (or even more) … they just DID what you seem to advocate in a rhetorical way. Did as in the past. As far as doubling the current number of applications, any astute observer might tell you that it would be a bit harder. </p>
<p>As far as “dropping the unique essay” I still believe that this is feasible today by picking the sixth option? Or do you think that Chicago has made one of their “smart” prompt an unavoidable step? </p>
<p>As far as the value of those quirky essays, I also think that the essay that was made public by the Chicago admission chief spoke volumes about what they seem to cherish. Unless one believes that among thousands and thousands of essay, he had poor luck in picking that “great one.” I am pretty sure that you remember the story. And perhaps how bad and silly the CHOSEN essay was. Well, you might remember but, of course, would rather losing a pinky than admitting that it was a horrendous essay, not to mention quite questionable. </p>
<p>Here’s a different reality. Chicago, just as any other school, wants to gather as many as applications as they possibly can. Hence, the aggressive marketing. Hence, the non restrictive Early Admissions. Cannot blame them for ANY of those things, but dropping that uncommon crap and the holier than thou has been in order for quite some time!</p>
<p>My D2 spent weeks mulling over the U of C topics before putting fingers to keyboard. She started with one topic, but just could not generate an interesting and coherent essay out of it even though she liked the prompt. So she switched to a different one… mulled it for a while, and finally wrote an essay (eventually) that seemed to be okay with the admissions. But the amount of time she spent considering her essay was actually a lot longer than any other essay she wrote. Which maybe is something U of C is also trying to accomplish…</p>
<p>I learned something about her from her “favorite things” essay, one of the topics she wrote about was a painter I had never heard of. The other was an unusual book which I had also read, so I was familiar with that segment of the essay.</p>
<p>I actually thought the kid in the article didn’t do himself a favor by writing on last year’s topic of “Where’s Waldo”. A very high percentage of the applicants picked that topic last year (I bet 75% of the apps did, based on postings on CC about applications). I suspect U of C admissions is heartily sick of that topic and will not find it “creative” that someone recycled last year’s prompt. Just my guess… I was glad that my D ended up picking a prompt that it seemed almost no one else undertook last year.</p>
Which is in line point I was hoping to make at the start of the thread. The essays don’t matter as much for their content as to what they convey about a student’s interest. It probably was a decent essay, but what really mattered to U of C is that it is something she had to create just for them and it showed. Other colleges do a similar thing such as Stanford that did (perhaps still does) ask students to write a note to their future roomate. As open-ended a prompt as you get, but someone who really wanted to go to Stanford could agonize over it for hours. </p>
<p>I think the reporter entirely missed this, thinking the essays were about being creative or showing a special side. To me the colleges don’t really care what you write, although I guess a particularly captivating essay would never hurt. It’s more about taking a measure of an applicant’s interest.</p>
<p>I don’t know… I think Chicago does appreciate a really good essay on their topic. They do care what you write. Some people would write a mundane essay no matter how long they thought about the topic. I think Chicago is looking for interesting people… at least they used to. Not so sure now… or at least I think their # of apps has gone so high that they are having trouble separating “interesting” from “striver”.</p>
<p>Chicago is really not the school it used to be. Every year it is getting more and more cookie cutter, like every other selective college out there. It’s a shame. It used to be something special and unique.</p>
<p>Xiggi is exactly right. I would define an “intellectual” as someone who wants to use their brain to further knowledge, and a “pseudo-intellectual” as someone who wants to use their brain to show how clever they are.</p>
<p>Post #5:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>That is exactly the type of prompt that would send an intellectual running from Chicago, while attracting the pseudo-intellectuals.</p>
<p>Chicago seems a bit like the nerdy kid who suddenly decides he wants to be cool. But he just doesn’t know how to do it, and comes off looking foolish. Chicago is trying too hard to shed its bookish imagine for a cool one, but it doesn’t understand “cool.” Harvard and Stanford manage to be cool without prompts like the ones at Chicago.</p>
<p>Harvard is lots of things, but I really don’t think cool is one of them.</p>
<p>My older son hated that roommate prompt at Stanford - he really made a hash of it! He didn’t apply to Chicago, but once when we were discussing Chicago prompts we were talking about one from that year, which was what was your favorite equation and why. I was amazed at how quickly he had an answer and ideas, and wished he’d had a question like that when he was applying.</p>
<p>On one hand, you’re dissing U Chicago for the quirky prompts, which (in your direct words) “deters applicants who could and should have been interested by a school such as Chicago for its academic programs.” In other words, you think that getting more applicants is a good thing - and here U Chicago cut off its nose to spite its face by requiring applicants to jump through a silly hoop (could I put more clich</p>
![http://m.ourcheeses.com/services/resizer/435/435/data/images/fromages/brie-double-creme-gourmet.jpg[/url]](http://m.ourcheeses.com/services/resizer/435/435/data/images/fromages/brie-double-creme-gourmet.jpg%5B/url%5D){kind=link}
