<p>Hi everyone,
A lot of inaccurate information about our the possibility of admission in the RD cycle has been floating around; I'd like to correct some of this, just so everyone is on the same page.
We've been receiving e-mails in the office from students worried that we will only be accepting 600 or so more students (a statistic derived from somewhere on CC) and that space for international students is limited. College Confidential is filled with many inaccuracies and these are some of them. Rest assured we will be admitting many more students in the regular cycle than we did during our early action program- we're not sure how many, but it is much higher than 600. Many colleges, including ours, intentionally overadmit students because we know that not everyone offered admission will choose to attend. There is no set number of places for international students. Please do not worry! If you want to apply RD and have not done so already, do not let this number-speculation discourage you from doing so.
Best,
Grace</p>
<p>Grace,</p>
<p>Thanks for the message, but I’m a bit unclear about some of the assertions made in your post. As far as I know from reviewing threads on this discussion board, the speculation is that Chicago only has 600-700 SEATS left to fill in the RD round for the Class of 2014, but NOT (by ANY means) that Chicago will only be ACCEPTING 600-700 students in the RD round. </p>
<p>Most posters (myself included) instead seem to posit that Chicago has about 1700 ACCEPTANCES left to dole out to fill the remaining 600-700 SEATS remaining. Is this assertion inaccurate? </p>
<p>Of course, all of this hinges upon exactly how many EA acceptances Chicago sent out this past december. Various websites and consulting firms tracking this sort of info indicate that Chicago sent out around 1600 EA acceptances. If this is WAY off, then of course the projections on the RD round will be inaccurate. If this 1600 figure is accurate, however, the projections for the RD round (that this will - BY FAR - be the most competitive RD application cycle in Chicago history) seem feasible. </p>
<p>If possible, please do clarify where the inaccuracies in previous threads and posts lie. From what I can tell, not a single poster posited that Chicago will be sending out only 600-700 acceptances come April. Rather, the general belief right now is that, given how many Chicago accepted in the EA round, there will only be 600-700 SEATS left to fill in the RD round (meaning Chicago will accept perhaps 1700 in the RD round). I have stated earlier that, to fill the remaining 600-700 seats, Chicago’s RD accept rate (assuming some growth in the RD app pool) would be around 12-15%, because Chicago would need to accept about 1700 of the, say, 12K RD apps or so to fill the remaining seats. If I gave off the impression that Chicago would only be accepting 600-700 more students, I apologize - I was certainly taking Chicago’s traditional yield into account in my projection. There’s no way Chicago could fill 600-700 seats by only sending out 600-700 acceptances in the RD round.</p>
<p>Yea, I don’t see where they could have gotten it from. Still, only 1700 RD acceptances is a scary thought as well!</p>
<p>While I thank Grace for typically providing great info, I think this time the Adcom is just trying not discourage people for applying RD so that they can increase their selectivity.</p>
<p>“While I thank Grace for typically providing great info, I think this time the Adcom is just trying not discourage people for applying RD so that they can increase their selectivity.”</p>
<p>Quoted for the truth.</p>
<p>Unless U of Chicago can pull up some hard facts, numbers and statistics, I sure as hell won’t be putting as much effort if I know that my chances are <1% of getting in.</p>
<p>^That is a really stupid way to go about college admissions.</p>
<p>Raddd - for the RD round, your chances are a LOT better than <1%. Unless our projections are wildly off base, the RD accept rate this year should be roughly around 12-15%, which is completely in line with a lot of Chicago’s peers like Dartmouth, Duke, etc. Would you not put much effort into a Dartmouth or Duke application just because the RD accept rate is on the low side?</p>
<p>Again, all projections aside, the key to applying to any extremely competitive college, such as a Chicago or Duke or Brown or whatever, is to NOT worry about the odds, and really pour your heart and effort into creating the most compelling, persuasive application possible. After that, sit back, know that you’ve done all that you can do, and see where the chips may fall. </p>
<p>To all Chicago applicants, I think it’s important to be aware of the projected statistics and competition, because people shouldn’t head into this process completely blind. Having said that, if you love Chicago, it makes no sense to worry about the odds - instead, as stated above, concentrate on creating the best application possible. For any top school, that’s pretty much all you can do.</p>
<p>This makes me wish I applied EA…</p>
<p>Except for the fact that I am an international student who needs financial aid. I think that slashes my chances for U of Chicago by a huge amount.</p>
<p>“^That is a really stupid way to go about college admissions.”</p>
<p>And pray, tell me why? I could potentially do the Chicago’s Extended Essay and spend over two hours on it. Or I could probably do something more valuable with my time such as catching up on all my other essays that I have for school, working on Canadian scholarship applications, or hell, go out and have some fun with my buddies. University of Chicago is one heck of an university, and I would love to go there, but the chances are too slim for me right now.</p>
<p>Radddd, I am not affiliated with the University of Chicago in any way, so the following comes as disinterested advice. </p>
<p>Apply to Chicago. It is an excellent school, and there is no way for anyone outside the admissions process to predict the number of variables that will play into the specific decisions that the committee will make this year. We can guess, we can speculate, but we will never know. </p>
<p>Sure, it may mean a couple of extra hours out of your time, but they will be well spent.</p>
<p>Who spends only two hours on a main Chicago essay???</p>
<p>I spent FOREVER on mine. </p>
<p>Apply or regret it. but really, if you don’t…at least you’ll save on a fifty thousand dollar education!</p>
<p>Who spends only two hours on a main Chicago essay???</p>
<p>Two hours writing it, countless hours of editing it. Which means it further proves that my time could be spent elsewhere. My common application essay took me 45 minutes to write, and had more than 7 drafts. </p>
<p>@beatitudo</p>
<p>I probably will apply regardless because I have my heart set on it, but I’m still pretty bitter about getting shafted.</p>
<p>Yeah, the main Chicago essays written at our house were done over weeks, with dozens of drafts.</p>
<p>Sometimes an essay will pop out virtually fully formed (S2 had two like that in his first round of apps – he wrote one of them while tending a campfire over Labor Day weekend and it was terrific), but most need a decent bit of fine tuning.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Quoted for truth. Most people don’t realize how editing is possibly the most time-consuming part of the writing process. (And this would be why I tell people to just finish the essay first without regards to quality, and then to start editing.)</p>
<p>Hey, guys! I love how passionate everyone is about the whole college admissions process and hope that you’re all just as passionate about the University of Chicago. It saddens me that some think that the U of C has lost sight of everything that makes us different from other top universities. And I, like Grace, encourage you to apply and it’s not from any hope that my university will suddenly skyrocket in the national rankings. There isn’t any super secret plot to take over College Confidential by the University of Chicago admissions office. In fact, we are all students- just students, not admissions counselors- who love our school and want to share that with prospective students. So as much as you’d love to hear insider information about the admissions process we sadly do not have it. If I did I would scrap my English major and sell out to the New York Times. Kidding. But you get the idea, I think. If you have further questions that us mere students can answer I encourage you to ask them. Heck, we wouldn’t be spending our winter breaks on CC if we didn’t love you guys! </p>
<p>Enjoy your evenings and try not to stress too, too much. </p>
<p>Sincerely,
marcellad</p>
<p>To be fair, 1,700 is about the most aggressive prediction imaginable of the number of acceptances in the RD round. One could take the same information we have and predict 2,000-2,100 quite reasonably.</p>
<p>It would still remain true that the average student’s chances in the upcoming RD round will be lower than they have ever been before. But that could be 18-20%, not 12-14%.</p>
<p>It would be very self-defeating for anyone not to apply because of this.</p>
<p>JHS - I agree, shooting for 1700 accepts is quite aggressive, but accepting 2000-2100 in the RD round seems quite high to me. Say Chicago needs to fill about 650 seats in the RD round, accepting 2100 students would make for a 30% yield - probably the lowest yield for Chicago in more than a decade. To be conservative, if Chicago’s RD yield were around 35-36%, that’d still only mean around 1800 acceptances.</p>
<p>On another note, assuming even conservative growth in the Chicago RD app pool, how do you get an accept rate of around 18-20%? Lets say Chicago’s RD growth is very limited - say 7% this year (in comparison with the 50+% jump in EA apps). This would mean about 10,700 RD apps. Lets also assume that Chicago deferred a low number of people to be considered again in the RD pool - lets say they deferred around 35-40% of the early pool, which is about 2300 applicants. </p>
<p>This would mean there are about 13000 applicants (10700 + 2300 deferred EA applicants) being considered in the RD round. Assuming a poor yield of about 33% to fill the 650 or so seats remaining in the class of 2014, that means Chicago would accept 2000/13000, or about 15.3% of applicants. </p>
<p>Again, this is assuming very conservative growth. It’s not crazy to think that normal RD apps may be up by more than 7% at Chicago, and that Chicago could safely admit fewer than 2000 students to get to a class of around 1300. Even in this cheerier (for potential applicants) scenario, I’m not getting an RD accept rate of much higher than 15%, so I’m curious to see how you’re getting a potential RD rate of up to 20%.</p>
<p>You know, we could sit here and play with numbers all day, but when push comes to shove, what gets you in is that you have a stellar application and you show and tell why you want/desperately need to go to UChicago. It’s fine to play a probability game here, but remember - the person who has the better application will get in, not the person who flips a heads.</p>
<p>Cue7: OK, I was in a hurry when I did the math. I was assuming an RD pool of 12,000 (10,000 + 2,000), and I thought 1/6th (2,000/12,000) was about 18% (it isn’t), and then I forgot that that was about the best case, not the worst. What I meant was 15-17%.</p>
<p>But 18-20% sounded more comforting!</p>
<p>And you are completely right, anotherazn.</p>