<p>I wonder if Chicago has managed to get its cake and eat it too.</p>
<p>We know that 10% of deferred are accepted, as confirmed by a UChicago rep recently. This is absurdly high. MIT, a school of comparable selectivity that also operates non-EA, has a deferred acceptance rate of only 3%. When you consider the fact that Chicago's acceptance rate for all regular apps is only 4%, the 10% figure for deferred applicants seems insane.</p>
<p>But I wonder if this is just Chicago playing the US News game. Chicago has managed to raise its yield rates incredibly quickly in the last few years. Are they using the deferred people as insurance - deferring large amounts of potential applicants, seeing what the deferred people do, and then making final decisions off of that? Are they using a deferral to gauge interest? Ie. if the deferred applicants email explaining how distraught s/he is, Chicago will be much more likely to admit them because of the near certainty that that person will come. </p>
<p>This could explain Chicago's unusually high acceptance rates for the deferred and the high yield rates. If Chicago is admitting 400-600 people who they are fairly certain will attend out of around 2400 accepted, that could (and did) have a huge impact on yield rates. </p>
<p>A 10% acceptance rate for deferred candidates is incredibly high??? Actually, Chicago’s yield rate is about 60%, which is in the same range as mid-tier Ivies like Brown and Columbia.</p>
<p>If you want to criticize schools for gaming yield, you could start at pretty much any other elite university not named Chicago, MIT, or Caltech. This year, Harvard’s SCEA acceptance rate was 17%, while its RD acceptance rate will be 3-4%. (Harvard expects yield to be upwards of 90% for its SCEA admits.) And what about ED schools like Duke and Northwestern, where the ED admit rates hover around 30%?</p>
<p>Speculations that Chicago is deferring qualified applicants just so it can increase yield are pretty sound more like conspiracy theories than legitimate hypotheses. A few years ago, there were theories (usually by rejected applicants) that Chicago was rejecting overqualified applicants. This is despite the fact that Chicago maintains higher average SAT scores than Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and MIT. No one’s happy with being rejected, but blaming the school usually isn’t the best solution…</p>
<p>I’m not criticizing. I’m just trying to figure out why the deferral rate is so high. And yes, a 10% deferral acceptance rate is incredibly high when it’s more than twice the regular acceptance rate overall. I wish there were statistics for non-deferral acceptance rates, that would make this less speculative.</p>
<p>And the yield rate itself isn’t unusual, just the rise. It’s increased over 10% in 3 years.</p>
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<p>This is sorta what I was getting at. Chicago has managed to replicate REA without actually having REA. It has all the advantages of not restricting early action (lots of early apps) but with extremely high yield. When you add in the accepted deferrals, Chicago’s actual early rate (the % of early apps eventually accepted) is between 14% and 17%, which is very similar to REA acceptance rates. </p>
<p>And I’m not saying that Chicago is deferring otherwise qualified applicants to increase yield. Obviously they’re admitting qualified applicants, rejecting unqualified applicants, and deferring everyone else. I’m speculating about what happens to the deferrals once they’ve been deferred, and if they’re given preference over regular apps. I’m not blaming the school. </p>
<p>I understand what you’re getting at, I really do. But honestly, it’s difficult to judge these kinds of things because different schools have different admissions methodologies. But here’s a more important fact to consider: there’s a lot of hearsay in these numbers and not a whole lot of clear statistics to judge from. (Yes, Chicago probably should be more open about its numbers… xiggi should be arriving any moment now to preach to us how evil Chicago is.)</p>
<p>First of all, if I recall correctly, the RD acceptance rate is closer to 6% than 4%. So there’s that. Then, the Chicago admissions office has stated that “historically about 10% of deferred students are admitted in the Regular Decision pool”. But what does historically mean? If it’s an average over the last 5 or 10 years, then judging by its decreasing admit rate over the last few years, the deferred student acceptance rate may be closer to 5%, putting it below the total RD acceptance rate. Of course, Chicago isn’t open about this statistic because it doesn’t want to discourage deferred applicants. Mistakes are sometimes made by the admissions committee during EA, and it’s important to give deferred applicants another shot.</p>
<p>Chicago is fairly open about the fact that deferred students will have a greater shot at acceptance if they express interest and submit additional materials. In my mind, this is common sense. If a student’s deferred application wasn’t accepted during EA, then it probably won’t be accepted RD unless there’s more material to judge the student from. More than likely, an expression of interest isn’t sufficient to push an application into the acceptance pile; however, an expression of interest, improved grades, and additional essays or works might be. Obviously, it’s in Chicago’s best interest to create the best student body possible by admitting only students who sincerely want to be there. This is why an expression of interest is even relevant in the first place. I don’t think it has much to do with yield.</p>
Why exactly is it a shocker that the acceptance rate for the deferred is higher the the overall? If you get deferred, that means you have a reasonable shot, and they just want to make you size up to the quality of the RD pool. OF COURSE it’s going to be high!
Not necessarily. MIT’s deferral acceptance rate is much worse than the RD rate, as is Georgetown’s. What other schools have higher deferral acceptance rates?
Going to disagree with you on Georgetown. According the school’s website: “Typically, about 15 percent of the candidates deferred from Early Action are successful during the spring review.”