Class of '25 set a few records:
- Highest number of applications - 37,977
- Largest class size - 2,053
- Highest yield - 83%
- Highest proportion international - 18%
- Highest proportion Latino/a - 19%
Proportion Asian isn’t a record at 27%? Wayback Machine only goes back four years.
Odd that ACT 25th percentile dropped.
It is not. Classes of 2017 and 2019 were both 28%.
ACT has been 33 - 35 for Classes of '22, '23 and '25. Class of '24 was the only time that the 25th percentile was a 34.
Have you seen any data for ED/EA/RD?
Still perplexing to me that students are applying with such low test scores (students admitted with a 20 ACT and 1020 SAT). And no, Chicago doesn’t require test optional students to ultimately report a score, or recruited athletes to provide a score…so that’s reflective of students applying, and being admitted, with scores that low. Kudos to Chicago for seeing beyond those scores.
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Would be interested to see the yield for RD. The 83% is not truly representative for schools that draw so heavily from ED1 and ED2.
I have seen prior speculation (given UC does not publicly disclose) that 80% of class is admitted via ED1/2. Any insights?
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I continue to be skeptical about the veracity of those unchanging minimums for both ACT and SAT.
Probably more like 50% of the admitted group and a higher percentage of the matriculated class. Anecdotally - at least prior to the pandemic - the two highest-represented admission plans showing up on campus in the fall have been ED1 and RD.
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I do find it hard to believe too, plus the numbers haven’t changed for several years. With that said, I have personally asked a senior admissions person about these numbers, more than once, and they confirm them. 
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My guess is that they don’t disclose the true mins because that might inadvertently disclose the one student with that score. So they use a safe number that no one admitted tends to hit.
The reported mins used to change. Both ACT and SAT mins were constant starting with the reporting for the Class of 2020. But here’s the data for a few years leading up to then; recall that the SAT numbers are the prior test:
Class of 2015: 23, 1100
Class of 2016: 24, 1230
Class of 2017: 20, 1110
Class of 2018: 21, 1170
Class of 2019: 22, 1120
Class of 2020 and beyond: 20, 1020
As the rSAT scales upward relative to the old test, there’s no way that 1020 can be a true number based on that history of 1100’s. It should be higher unless something fundamental about the admitted class suddenly changed that year. Perhaps ED can prompt such a shift (so conventional wisdom would say); however, ED admissions didn’t start until the following year with the Class of '21 and weren’t even announced until just before the start of that admissions cycle.
If approximately half the offers go to EA and RD applicants and if the overall yield for all applicants is 83 percent then around 40 percent of the matriculated class must be gleaned from those non-binding sources. And if we assume 100 percent yield from the binding sources the yield from the non-binding must be on the order of 66 percent. That strikes me as a pretty good balance between the competing plans and a pretty good yield from the non-binding ones considering that those kids are likely to have received acceptances from one or more peer schools.
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I can’t speak to yield (most, but not all, go if accepted, and why that is is unique to the applicant), but from the small sample size from my kid’s Scoir scatterplot, a similar number were admitted from each of ED, EA and RD. There are differences in the numbers of WL (more from RD), and the total number of applicants using each method (significantly more RD than either ED or EA).
Best admit rate was ED, worst was RD, and EA is in between. I have no info differentiating ED1 v ED2. ED seems more forgiving score/gpa-wise, RD had more high performing rejects, and EA is in between.
None that I know of were recruited athletes, but I don’t know about other hooks.
All in all, the results are consistent with what people intuit.
I am staying vague on the actual numbers because I don’t think they are helpful in the big picture and it is a small sample size.
How is it possible that the minimum SAT/ACT scores are consistently so low? They are actually below the national average for all HS graduates. The middle 50% SAT range is 500 points higher, so the gap between the minimum and the rest of the matriculating class is pretty substantial.
The vast majority of highly selective colleges used to admit a few students with similar SAT/ACT scores pre-COVID. Some example numbers are below. Most probably have powerful hooks, but score also is often less important in admissions than most persons assume. I’m more surprised that post-COVID such low scoring kids would not apply test optional. I realize Chicago has been test optional for a long time, but I think than in post-COVID years a larger portion of students believed that they really could not submit a score, with little penalty.
Lowest ACT Among Matriculating Students in 2019-20 (pre-COVID) CDS
Harvard – 18-23
Stanford – 18-23
Northwestern – 18-23
Johns Hopkins – 18-23
Georgetown – 18-23
CMU – 18-23
…
Caltech – all students are in highest ACT score range group
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I would assume a lot of those low minimum scores for the schools that you mentioned are from recruited athletes. I don’t think U Chicago as a D3 school approaches athletic recruiting in same manner.
What exactly is meant by a “minimum” test score in an admitted class? Is that figure simply the very lowest score that someone had in that class? If that’s it, then it really tells you nothing at all. In an admitted class of over 2,000 there are going to be outriders and anomalies. A kid with a score that low would be one. That’s not very surprising and not very helpful to the 99.9 percent of aspiring applicants with a similar low score. In fact I would say it’s highly misleading, and I don’t quite understand why they publicize it. However, maybe I’ve misunderstood its meaning.
One possible reason to publish it is because it is misleading, as you state. Seeing that someone got in with a 20 ACT score may encourage other low 20s ACT score kids to apply, who might otherwise assume they have zero chance. Such (relatively) low scoring kids could theoretically be admitted if they apply test optional, although this seems quite unlikely, as kids who bomb the SAT/ACT rarely ace the rest of the application including great GPA, course rigor, LORs, essays, ECs/awards, etc. Regardless of the actual chance of admission for (relatively) low scoring kids, increased applications from low scoring kids can make the college look more favorable, including, but not limited to, reducing acceptance rate.
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how misleading could it be?
They publicize the middle 50% (aka 25%-75% range) which is in many ways a standard. divulging the entire range (aka 0%-100% range) just completes the picture. To me, this is a better set of information, not worse.
Look at the ACT. It shows that the to 25% (75%-100%) are all >35. The bottom 25% is a much longer tail (20-33). I think it is good that they are being transparent. Imputing ill will as the motive on this act of transparency doesn’t make sense to me, because it requires one to assume many things about applicants and administrators that, well, doesn’t make sense to me.
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UChicago has publicized both the middle 50% and the entire range for the past several years at least. They used to publish GPA-related stats as well. Here’s an example from the old Admissions Office, for the Class of 2008. There’s lots of information here, and I wish they would be as detailed these days:
https://web.archive.org/web/20040920073724/http://collegeadmissions.uchicago.edu/level3.asp?id=377
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Are the U Chicago hooks that strong?
Since U Chicago has a reputation for academic rigor and for many classes the grading is difficult (supposedly significantly deflated compared to peer universities) and based on a class curve, every student is essentially graded relative to the performance of his/her classmates. I wonder whether the student(s) near the tail end of the testing curve (and presumably academic curve) face a significant risk of failing some U Chicago classes.
Maybe, U Chicago isn’t concerned because they seem to matriculate students with similar test scores every year. Does the university provide a tutoring/mentoring safety net for students who could face similar academic challenges?