<p>And the uncommon rep lives on!</p>
<p>I see no reason for Chicago to drop EA... It's just like RD but with different deadlines.</p>
<p>... and in Chicago's case, anything that gooses the yield rate - even a little bit - is important.</p>
<p>I still dont see why Harvard's plan hurt disadvantages students. UVA and Princeton's were ED, so I can understand that, but they shoulld have switched to SCEA like HYS did after they dropped ED.</p>
<p>Well why don't you ask the Chicago Admissions Office to reveal the demographic details of the EA pool vs. the RD pool. I would be surprised if they are willing to do it. Few colleges are.</p>
<p>Chicago's EA and RD acceptance and yield rates are about the same. Since there are no restrictions on where else one may apply, admission is need blind, and financial aid decisions are not influenced by when one is accepted, there is no reason not to continue EA. One other advantage of EA has gone unstated and is probably the most important for Chicago. By spreading out the admission process, more time can be given to evaluating each applicant. This is particularly important at Chicago where each application is read entirely at least twice.</p>
<p>As far as demographics, there is some published information:
[quote]
Of the early admits, 4.66 percent were black, and 5.8 percent were Latino, which is consistent with last year’s numbers. Dean of Admissions Ted O’Neill is optimistic about the new program’s potential. “I think it’ll help the minority numbers either in this year or in future years,” he said. “We’re going to do it again next year.”
<p>
[quote]
The class of 2010 will have an increased number of minorities. Seventy-nine black students and 105 Latino students plan to attend, up from 54 and 93 last year, respectively. Deposits from international students are also up slightly, from between 8 and 9 percent last year to 10 percent this year. ...Equal numbers of male and female students were accepted, O’Neill said. Unlike at some other colleges, the gender balance “is not something we need to manipulate,” he said.
<p>The EA admit rate and yield are higher - not "about the same" .</p>
<p>If this were not so, the program would make sense neither for the applicants nor the University. </p>
<p>And there is every reason to believe that the qualifications of those in the early pool - from which in excess of 35% of the class is drawn - are lower, and that the early pool is less diverse.</p>
<p>The admit and yield rates for EA and RD ARE about the same, see Libby Pearson's post on this topic in her thread.</p>
<p>I'm glad you felt a need to share this with us, Byerly. As it were, I don't see a need to drop EA. Many students, after getting accepted EA, decide not to apply to other schools. It saves them money, especially if they are in the income bracket where they don't get a fee waiver, and it certainly saves them time and stress.</p>
<p>You can speculate all you want on unpublished data, but the fact remains that EA is open to everybody, and the school regularly reports that EA and RD have similar acceptance rates. We have an awful lot of clever economists, and they don't believe that we should drop EA just because Harvard dropped their slightly more controversial SCEA.</p>
<p>Byerly:
There is no way that the EA applicants are less qualified. I was deffered EA and accepted regular without any suppliments, which would go directly against your statement. Not only does this example illustrate this, but so do the statistics released by the University. Once you get to a prestigious school such as the UofC, you are completely humbled, not only by the student body, but also by the faculty. At Chicago, as elsewhere, it is not the applicants they accept, and most certainly not the number of appicants they accept, but the students they graduate. A school does not derive merit from rejecting large amounts of people but by producing alumni that contribute to the world in a positive way. Are the people that are accepted by Harvard bound to contribute to the world even if they don't attend? Perhaps, but education propels people and teaches them how to think and reason. I am so utterly sick of acceptance rates being used to define the merit of a school that I am closing my CC account and disassociating myself with this community of elitists. I don't know who makes the blanket and ignorant statements about schools with acceptance rates over 20%, but they have no idea about what education entails and the aim of it.</p>
<p>Chicago is a fine school; no argument there. So is Stanford. So is Duke. So is Yale,and so is MIT - so is Harvard. But that doesn't have anything to do with the venality of any and all early admissions programs, no matter how many economists endorse them! See "The Early Admissions Game" by Zeckhauser et als, and James Fallows article in the Atlantic Monthly captioned "The Early Admissions Racket."</p>
<p>The fact that some early applicants are deferred and accepted later - which happens at virtually every school with an early program - is no proof that the early pool is "stronger." Rather, it may have something to do with the less diverse character of the early pool, and the school's sense that such deferrees are more likely to matriculate if admitted.</p>
<p>My good sir, we can argue by proxy as much as you want, but I'm not going to go out and buy a copy of "The Early Admissions Game". According to the Harvard Magazine, though, the statistics are probably exagerrated:</p>
<p>Furthermore, the University of Chicago aggressively targets disadvantaged and minority students. Unfortunately, and nobody likes saying this, you're going to find that most disadvantaged and minory students are not of the caliber required by top universities. If early action were really disadvantageous to such students, don't you think that universities would drop the program, so that they could brag about an increase in minority applications?</p>
<p>It is costly and inefficient for colleges to have to admit two people for every vacancy - or, in Chicago's case, three people for every vacancy. Hence the attraction of early admissions programs and the expanding use of waitlists. </p>
<p>The goal being to attract a pre-defined diversity mix, insofar as possible, anything to raise the yield rate helps to achieve that goal with more precision. Great for the school - not so great for the applicants. Students from the lowest economic quadrant are far less likely to apply early.</p>
<p>Chicago had record minority enrollment this past year and took very few if any students from its wait list. The EA admit rates for minority students were only slightly less than for RD. Chicago also had a record yield, over enrolling about 120 students. It is also inefficient to have to wade through 20,000 application, 10,000 of which have little or no shot at admission in order to be more selective. (A parent in the Parent's Forum provided an analysis some time ago that suggests that if one were to limit the applicants to those who truly in the admit ballpark, the admit rates for most of the "highly selective" colleges are in fact much higher.) </p>
<p>Chicago makes clear what it is about, there is no promise of a job, or immediate name recognition, the promise is for hard work, often theoretical rather than practical experience, and a "life of the mind." It is this that makes it unique. Yes, people do recognize the name, and yes, people do get good jobs, but that is not the institutional goal. Others recognize this about the University, it is academically and intellectually second to none. I think this was best expressed by the faculty representative on the recent president search committee Robert Pippen:</p>
<p>"As we traveled... we would ask for what the view form the outside was of The University, and we would hear... The University is the purist of universities, dedicated to research, creation of new knowledge, and education more than any other, that it is a kind of intellectual hothouse, that the value of ideas and the life of the mind mean more here than anywhere else. We heard this so often that I was tempted to ask, 'So what is it you do?'"</p>
<p>It is this ideal that the University strives to maintain, whether its admit rate is 70% (as it has been in its past, and was just as highly regarded), or 30% where it will (unfortunately, in many respects) probably be in a couple of years. Students must confront this reality twice, once when considering to apply and again when considering to attend. Often the life of the mind sounds good, but time and again I have witnessed admits wrestle with the reality of what that entails and decide, in the end, that it was not for them. Accordingly, I'm not sure that there is much Chicago can or will do to improve its yield.</p>
<p>I suggest you read the link I provided, with real September numbers rather than relying on projected numbers from April or May press releases.</p>
<p>Incidentally, most of the cut and pasted propaganda in your post is irrelevant, really,since the issue is not "what Chicago is about" or any of that stuff, but the venality of ALL early admissions programs - including Chicago's - and the disingenuous rationalizing that is used to justify what Fallows rightly calls "The Early Admissions Racket."</p>
<p>Every school wants (or should want) the highest yield rate possible - since it means the school has a higher "batting average" in attracting the students it would most like to have. A lower yield rate means the school, in many cases, is settling for its 2nd or 3rd choice candidates.</p>
<p>IMHO, Chicago can do two things to improve its yield other than utilizing "enrollment management" techniques, including an early admissions program - both of them, unfortunately, expensive.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Upgrade the athletics program; there is no reason that "the life of the mind" (as the cliche goes) and the life of the body must be mutually exclusive. </p></li>
<li><p>Start spending more liberally from the endowment to invest in surrounding real estate. The setting is clearly a negative, but Chicago can do what other schools - including Trinity (in Hartford) and Yale (in New Haven) have done: become a major developer in the area near the school, since the market seems unlikely to do the job in the near future.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>The "official" link does not breakdown EA vs. RD, which was what was being discussed. The EA data showed a minority admit rate of nearly 5% (4.66%) for African American Students. The official overall rate was about 6%, which is identical to the rate reported in the article I referenced (79/1322).</p>
<p>Further, Chicago refused from the outset to "game" the early decision practice. It did not ever use ED or SCEA, students always enjoyed full choice and financial aid comparisons between schools could always be made. Chicago's practices do not put minority or other students at a disadvantage since there is no numerical benefit to applying early.</p>
<p>Oh, stop rounding numbers or percentages up or down, depending on whether it suits your purposes!</p>
<p>ONE example:</p>
<p>If you take the time to compute the numbers (making sure to net out the early numbers from the total numbers to get the regular pool numbers for comparison), you will find the the URM representation in the early pool/early pool matriculation numbers are at least 50% lower.</p>
<p>And pardon me if I cynically observe that ED wouldn't work for Chicago - and indeed, SCEA wouldn't either - because they wouldn't get an early pool large enough for their purposes. Remember, when Harvard switched from open EA to SCEA its early pool dropped nearly in half - from 7,600 to 3,850. And when Yale and Stanford switched from binding ED to SCEA they achieved their main purpose which was to DOUBLE the size of their early pools!</p>
<p>Even with open EA, Chicago still only gets an early pool large enough to fill 38% of the class, despite a 40% EA admit rate. If it switched to binding ED, its early pool might drop to 1,200 or so, and they'd need an admit rate of 50% or more to net the same number of matriculants. (Moreover, the smaller the pool, the less diverse it is likely to be, exacerbating the problem.)</p>
<p>A similar situation can be found, say, at Duke or Northwestern; there just are not enough potential applicants for those schools, at the moment, to achieve a critical mass from which the school can fill a meaningful fraction of the seats via binding ED, while maintaining academic standards.</p>
<p>Byerly,</p>
<p>What is your point? </p>
<p>You open with a grand statement about yield and early action. Nowhere do I see any mention about the effect of early action on yield.</p>
<p>Then, you reference the "Early Admissions Game." From your comments, I doubt you've actually read the book, as if you had, you would know it does not discuss programs like Chicago's that are open and non-binding. </p>
<p>Then, you spout off on your suggested fixes. If you had ever been to the university, which I doubt, you might realize that Chicago isn't New Haven, and that the areas around the University are pretty nice and getting better - a LOT better than New Haven, for one.</p>
<p>Then, when someone deals with actual data, not just links that don't even support your point, you disparage them with rounding comments. </p>
<p>it seems to me you're the one playing with numbers.</p>
<p>Please, Byerly, crawl back into your hole. You don't like U of C? fine. Leave. Frankly, you are a bore.</p>
<p>Are you guys kidding me? I live in Chicago, hyde Park is beautiful, especially the surrounding are around the University.</p>