<p>According to <em>cough</em> Fiske's 2008 book, The University of Chicago's acceptance rate is 40%.</p>
<p>Anyone else surprised it's that high, considering the rigorous academic expectations for admission?</p>
<p>Depends on how you define rigorous? From my school kids have an easier time getting into Chicago than most of the schools of its caliber, because of the high admit rate.</p>
<p>I think at least part of that is because applicants are more self-selecting than at other, similar-caliber schools. There's the Uncommon Application to deal with, plus Chicago seems like it attracts a more specific type of students.</p>
<p>^^^I agree with upsilamba. chicago, apparently, is insecure about this stat, which is why they're switching to common app next year. still, students still have to contend with the essays.</p>
<p>another unfortunate fact: Chicago loses a lot of its accepted students to the high ivies.</p>
<p>Note: (1) It hasn't been as high as 40% since the class of 2008 was admitted, I think. (2) For this year, it's pretty much guaranteed to be around 30%. (3) Chicago's admit rate is affected by its lack of binding ED. Chicago and comparable schools, other than HYPS, MIT, Columbia, and Brown, all have about the same yield on students who have not promised in advance to attend if accepted. So they all admit the same number of students for each slot they fill that way. But Chicago fills ALL of its slots that way; many of the others fill only 1/2-2/3 of their slots on that basis. (4) Chicago does get fewer applications than schools that are either nearer the East or West Coasts, or that have the reputation of being more Fun, or both.</p>
<p>There have been some enormous and comprehensive threads about this.</p>
<p>Switching to common app? Yes! That actually makes me much more likely to consider applying.</p>
<p>I feel like I prefer Chicago over most of the Ivies. I know what you mean about self-selecting - many are turned off by the school's somewhat absurd reputation.</p>
<p>I suppose I was somewhat confused at the fact that admission at Chicago is often considered more of a reach for people than, say, NYU. (For example, according to Naviance, the average GPA of NYU acceptances is 3.57; for Chicago, it's a whopping 3.88.) And yet Chicago's acceptance rate is at least a few points higher. Smell the contradiction?</p>
<p>God, I should be ashamed for scrutinizing these statistics so closely.</p>
<p>Check out the average SAT ranges at the ivies and Chicago as compared to NYU. You'd be suprised.</p>
<p>What aboot it is surprising, beefs?</p>
<p>Chicago's is a few points higher, to say the least ;)</p>
<p>I posted this on the other thread going...</p>
<p>I understand why you, as a high-school student, are so focused on the admission percentage, but I can promise you that it's the last thing you'll think about once you get here, when you'll realize how silly it is to evaluate a school based on how many students it turns down. Your more immediate concern will be that the students around you are smart, interesting, awesome people. And they are.</p>
<p>If you ask me, I think that we are too selective.... I feel I've gotten to know a lot of posters here who were deferred EA, and they seem as smart, interesting, and awesome as any. My good friend and I were actually talking about this situation last night.... both of us fear we're becoming a school that just rejects qualified applicants for the fun of it.</p>
<p>Fair enough, unalove.</p>
<p>I understand why you, as a college student, are not focused on the admission percentage.</p>
<p>But this statistic, as pointless and meaningless and trivial as it is, has a whole lot of bearing on whether or not I do actually "get there".</p>
<p>The higher acceptance rate at Chicago is deceptive. In general, the self selection at chicago means that the students that do apply in general have very high statistics both SAT and grade wise. This is different than a lot of schools that are similarly or lower ranked that get lots of kids with lower stats applying just for the heck of it, hoping that they will win the lottery. Thus the lower acceptance rates. When it gets down to it, I would bet that the number of students with high stats who apply to Chicago and the number of students who apply to similarly ranked schools with high statistics are comparable and the only reason that a few more of these kids are getting into Chicago is because Ivy league schools, Stanford, MIT and Caltech do often tend to be first choices of many top students. The statistics of attending students speak for themselves, they are comparable to most of the ivies and other top schools, if not higher. The quality of the students at Chicago is equal to the quality of students at any other top university. In fact, in academic circles, the students and education at Chicago are often considered to be among the best in the world. I live in the Yale community and I can assure you that those in the know at Yale have nothing but the utmost respect for Chicago students and love to admit them to their graduate schools. I agree that the admission rate at Chicago, which was around 35% last year, will probably fall to around 30% this year, so it still is a pretty tough school to get admitted into with most of the rejected kids having pretty impressive credentials.</p>
<p>Anytime I look at the "decision" threads for elite colleges on CC, I am struck by how difficult some of the choices the admissions committees have to make are, and how random some of the results seem. If Chicago's admissions are a tad less random -- fewer really admirable students rejected for no apparent reason, a little more room to take risks on really interesting applicants who aren't perfect -- it's hard for me to see that as a bad thing. Chicago still winds up rejecting a lot of awfully strong students, and the body of students it admits, and then enrolls, is great.</p>
<p>I think UChicago is just more self-selective than a lot of other schools, where many unqualified applicants send in applications "just in case".</p>
<p>(z), I think you'd be comforted by data that doesn't exist.... a data list that charted every student, every school they applied to, and every admission and rejection. Then, you could come away with statements like "88% of students who are admitted to Chicago are also admitted to school X" and "20% of students admitted to Chicago are also admitted to school Y." Even this data would be misleading and skewed, as not every applicant applies to every school.</p>
<p>If such data were to exist, though, I would imagine that Chicago is about equally hard to get into as Northwestern, Johns Hopkins, Cornell, and WashU on the research U side and about as hard to get into as Carleton, Wesleyan, and Vassar on the liberal arts college side. Usually when I hear "I turned _____ down for Chicago," those are the schools that come up most frequently.</p>
<p>I think you guys are on to something with the Self-Selective Applicant Pool Theory (SSAPT).</p>
<p>Whether it's the inconvenient uncommon application, or the school's intimidating reputation, I suppose a lot of potential applicants are scared away.</p>
<p>If they really are switching to Common Application, this could make a big difference.</p>
<p>The kids who apply to Chicago from my high school are the top of the top. Only seven or eight apply every year (a small number for my superelite high school), and out of those seven or eight, six or seven get in. So sure, Chicago accepts a higher percent of students, but if you look at the ones who get in-- and the ones who don't-- its admission difficulty is on par with a lot of schools that have a lower acceptance rate.</p>
<p>I remember reading "somewhere" that Ted O'Neill is trying to change the overall student body at UChicago, moving away from the overly (and only) nerdy. The result would be something more like Northwestern than Reed, if you catch my drift. Have you noticed anything along those lines?</p>
<p>When S1 was applying he had three friends who were virtually tied for #1 in the school, had great test scores, EC's etc. He asked if they were considering Chicago. They all said no. The reason? Chicago was much to academically demanding, they wanted a place that had name recognition, but not the demanding work of Chicago. They felt all their work in HS was so they could go to a name college and not have to work so hard. Their reply suggested Chicago filters out top students as well.</p>
<p>
[quote]
When S1 was applying he had three friends who were virtually tied for #1 in the school, had great test scores, EC's etc. He asked if they were considering Chicago. They all said no. The reason? Chicago was much to academically demanding, they wanted a place that had name recognition, but not the demanding work of Chicago. They felt all their work in HS was so they could go to a name college and not have to work so hard.
[/quote]
This is a common sentiment. Out of the ~40 students in the top 5% of my graduating class, only 3 or 4 even applied to Chicago. The rest went to universities like Stanford, Columbia, Cornell, etc. citing the reason of "deserving prestige after four years of hard work."</p>