<p>I'm a little disgruntled at the NYTimes labeling Uchicago an easy safety school along with Kenyon. Did anyone else read this?</p>
<p>Yes, the University of Chicago... a "fallback campus." :rolleyes:</p>
<p>link, please.</p>
<p>I was going to provide one in my last post, but the link didn't work if you weren't signed in. This link should work fine though:</p>
<p>That's outrageous, even with the tiny caveat about self selection. </p>
<p>Whatever. After Chicago goes to the Common Application next year I think its acceptance rate will go way down, even if it still requires its usual essays.</p>
<p>"Easy safety" is very misleading. "Easy safety for highly-qualified applicants" is probably more apt. As he says, it's a very self-selecting school; the people who seek out and apply to Chicago are usually qualified enough (and small in number) that the admit rate is high. </p>
<p>If it had the prestige of an Ivy and the matching number of applicants, it would hardly be a safety at all, and would have a admit rate similar to Columbia's.</p>
<p>Seriously? No, seriously?</p>
<p>Ha, I wish it was a safety.</p>
<p>Apparently, we're a good fallback for Penn kids who want an academic school in an urban environment. Ummmmmmm...... I think a typical Penn kid wouldn't want to be caught dead here and vice versa.</p>
<p>I also love how this article quotes Michele Hernandez, who is a purported expert on all things admissions-wise, and even had the audacity to tell me that I would have been much better off at the Hard Knocks High School I would have gone to had I not gone to Elite, Nationally-Recognized High School. Why? Say nothing of academics, funding, or my own happiness-- I wouldn't have a prayer of a chance of getting into an Ivy from the elite high school, whereas those suckers at Hard Knocks don't even know what the Ivy League is.</p>
<p>Yes, Michele Hernandez, I should let my own happiness take a back seat to getting into one of these schools.... what the hell???????</p>
<p>I like to think that if you're smart and if you want to go to Chicago, you can get in. I really dislike the whole college admissions hoopla, and the fact that there are so, so many smart kids that all apply to the same schools and that so many get denied is disheartening for the kids and empowering for the schools' public relations offices. Columbia might have X thousand applicants, and I'd be willing to say that at least half of them are of Columbia quality, but of course, Columbia can only take 9 or 10 percent of their pool. College admissions is not "selective," it's "unpredictable," and I can give you so many instances of "This school took SALLY and not JOE?!?!?!" that it's all rather ridiculous. No admissions officer has a good answer for why some kids get in and others do not, as the decisions are by nature irrational.</p>
<p>I'm happy that Chicago isn't denying kids arbitrarily... as much.</p>
<p>Just for perspective, the Chicago admission rate is about what the Harvard and Yale rates were a generation ago, when fewer kids were applying to college, they were submitting fewer applications, and the notion that going to an elite college is an advantage was confined to a relatively small group. (Relatively few people in my hometown knew what "Yale" was when I was in college. The Teamsters I worked with the summer after my freshman year thought I must be some kind of mental defective, because I had to go so far away to get into college. They knew plenty of fairly dumb people in college, and all of them had been able to get into local schools. So they concluded I must be even dumber than that.)</p>
<p>That's still something of the position Chicago is in. People in professional and academic elites think of it as one of the great universities in the world, but it has very little public profile. Rory Gilmore and Veronica Mars didn't talk about applying there, and it hasn't produced a lot of Presidential candidates or colorful secret societies.</p>
<p>On the one hand, I'm sure it's galling to get called a "safety" school. But on the other, there's nothing objectively awful about having reasonably rational, predictable admissions. I'd bet the Harvard and Yale admissions staffs, in their heart of hearts, wish they could be a bit less selective and more rational. It's nice to be able to say, "This is a good kid who shows some spark. Let's give her a chance.", without having to take that chance away from someone even more deserving. So, enjoy it while you can . . . I don't think the admissions rate is going to stay this high much longer.</p>
<p>I don't really have a problem with Chicago being called a safety; frankly, my college advisor said that the U of C was practically a safety for me. Safety does not necessarily connote last choice (or it shouldn't, anyway). The article didn't just call it a safety, though, but a "fallback." The term fallback does imply that the school is a last choice--that it falls behind all those other schools you like better.</p>
<p>Also, our admit rate has not been 40 percent for several years. Next year, it should be around 33 percent. This past year it was 35.</p>
<p>yeah, forgot to mention they got the admit rate wrong too. i know i can't let these things bother me, but the New York Times should get their facts straight.</p>
<p>I suppose the Common Data Set Initiative has standardized definitions for what it reports. I'll post some comparable pages for some other colleges, chosen on no particular basis. </p>
<p>There are, of course, other bases for comparing colleges besides base acceptance rate. Acceptance rate and test score range of enrolled students and high school rank of enrolled students are all issues to consider when putting together a college llst that includes at least one "sure-bet" college. </p>
<p>For what it's worth, I think very highly of the University of Chicago and of all alumni of Chicago that I know personally. I will talk to my children about their college application lists as they reach the appropriate age--very soon for my oldest son. It's up to my children to decide where to apply.</p>
<p>That sounds like a good plan. I don't think a parent has even forced a kid to go to UChicago. Bleed their pocketbook AND make their student miserable studying irrelevant things?</p>
<p>keep in mind that the article was the NY Times. National paper perhaps, but with a very NE perspective. I suspect most of their readership (maybe even the author) was mixing up UIC with UofC. :-) The media does this. I was reading a guidebook for Bolivia a few days ago that mentioned the work of a well known UofC anthropologist, Alan Kolata. Got his work right, but said he was from UIC. Go figure.</p>
<p>At any rate, this safety/not safety debate will go on forever, but consider that the same debate goes on for other schools, too. Is Cornell a safety? Penn was thought to be so until very recently, and in some circles still is. Very curious.</p>
<p>Er, I'm going to Dartmouth, and I didn't get into Chicago. Safety school? Hardly.</p>
<p>You're hardly alone. I know people who got into Columbia, Yale, Brown, Penn, etc. who did not get into Chicago. In part, it's due to the complete randomosity of college admissions, that there are so many qualified students applying and only so many spots so that admissions is hardly like the totem pole that USNWR pretends it is (a Yale/Princeton admit was WL at Columbia, Duke, Penn, and rejected at Amherst; a Harvard/Brown admit WL at Penn; a Penn reject accepted at Williams/Pomona, a Stanford/Yale admit rejected at Harvard, a Harvard/CalTech admit rejected at Yale/Stanford/MIT, I could go on and on).</p>
<p>As I mentioned before, Chicago has too many applicants and too many students who want to attend to accept all of the qualified students who apply. This is not reflected in the Chicago's admissions percentage but rather in the profiles of students both on CC and in real life who do not get accepted, despite being highly qualified. Schools that I think tend to accept all or almost all of the qualified students who apply include LAC's like Oberlin, Bryn Mawr, Colby, Bates, Bowdoin, Wesleyan, non-ivy elites like Emory, Vanderbilt, Tufts, Notre Dame and the flagship state schools like Berkeley/UCLA, UMich, UVA. I think one will find the admissions decisions at these schools much more predictable than at the very top schools.</p>
<p>So Dartmouth is a safety for Chicago applicants? Just kidding...</p>
<p>I knew of a kid who got into Standford and was rejected by Chicago (RSI winner to boot!)</p>
<p>But the admissions world is full of anecdotes like this...</p>
<p>University of Chicago base admission rate: </p>
<p>University of Illinois at Chicago comparable figure: </p>
<p>It shouldn't be possible to confuse these. </p>
<p>Test score profiles </p>
<p>also shouldn't be confused between those two colleges.</p>