Crystal Balling UChicago's Admit and Yield for class of 2021

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of Chicago âś…
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I have posted this in another thread, but wanted to consolidate here, in case anyone wanted to comment. All of this is pure speculation, so please treat it that way :slight_smile:

Assumptions
*
Here were the # of ED applications for the Ivy league for the class of 2020

Brown: 3,030(9.3% of total pool)
Columbia: 3,520 (13% of total pool)
Cornell: 4,882 (10.85% of total pool)
Dartmouth: 1,927 (9.32% of total pool)
Harvard: 6,173 (15.8% of total pool)
Penn: 5,762 (14.8% of total pool)
Princeton: 4,229 (14.4% of total pool)
Yale: 4,662 (14.8% of total pool)

Overall Ivy: 34,185 ED/SCEA apps (12.5% of total pool)

If you remove the SCEA schools, the total ED apps for Ivies was 19,121 (11% of their total pool).

Average early admit rate for Entire Ivy pool was 20%. If you remove the SCEA schools, the average admit rate for ED was around 23%

UChicago got 31,411 apps for the class of 2020. So if it mirrors Brown or Dartmouth it will get around 2,900 ED1 apps. If it mirrors Cornell, it could get around 3,100 apps. If it mirrors Columbia or Penn it could get 3,800 ED apps.

Based on that my ED1 predictions are as follows

ED1 Apps: 3,500
ED 1 Admit rate: 23%
ED 1 Yield: 95%

ED 2 Apps: 2,500. This is the hard one to estimate. of around 34,100 students applying ED/SCEA to the Ivies, 80% were either denied or deferred. That is around 27,000 applicants in limbo who were ready to take a leap on ED for the Ivies. I am assuming that less than 10% will now apply ED2 to UChicago because they get nervous.

ED 2 Admit rate: 15% ( I am assuming a smaller admit rate, because I think this pool will be very strong)

ED 2 Yield: 95%

For EA if you assume like the most current year, approximately 12,000 apps were in the EA pool and remove the ED1 number from them, you get

EA Apps: 8,500
EA Rate: 6% (based on the fact that the two ED pools, will mean higher yield)
EA Yield: 70% (Assuming, that the RD yield is rather poor at around 45%, Chicago’s EA yield to fill the 1600+ seat for the class of 2020 must have been pretty high, to give an overall yield as officially stated of 66%. I am taking a conservative number of 70%)*

That means UChicago will already have firm enrollment of close to 1,200 from these ED1 and ED 2 pools alone.
Given a total class strength of around 1,600 or so, there is not much more room left for either the EA pool or RD pool. If they get around 350 from the admitted EA pool, that would bring the total enrollment to 1,550. That leaves next to no room for the RD pool. I expect the admit rate to be dismal for this pool. I mean it could be in the 1%-3% range

That gives an incredibly high yield for Chicago. Over 80% easily. If things go crazy in the ED2 pool, it could be as high as 90% overall!!

I think with the ED1/ED2 strategy, UChicago is trying to mimic the yield and admit rates of Stanford and Harvard. Remains to be seen if they will succeed.

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If they actually are aiming for 80%, even if they do achieve it it would be an atrocity. Who the hell is going to buy the idea that the growth from 66 to 80 was organic? I’d be more than happy with a 69 or 70 percent yield. That would show steady and consistent growth.

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@Trickster2212 I understand what you are saying and it is very sad, but the Math is kind of hard to ignore here. Either they admit few in the ED1 and ED2 rounds, or they will have to admit few in the EA and RD rounds.

My guess is they are trying to mimic an SCEA admit rate and yield with their ED1+ ED 2 strategy, so if they are able to get around 6,000 apps between ED1 and ED2 and they get a blended admit rate of between 17% and 19% for those two rounds, with an yield of 95%, where is there any room for RD and EA admits?

Harvard SCEA for class of 2020 was around 15%, Yale 17%, Princeton around 18.5 %. Only Stanford was lower than 10%. Even if you take the blended SCEA rates from all these schools it is 14% (only because of Stanford). Even that yields them 800 students assuming 95% yield for binding decisions. Penn enrolls about 54% of their class ED. If Chicago uses that metric, then they would need a blended rate or around 16% in their two ED rounds.

If they go lower in their blended rate, to make room for EA and RD applicants, they will send a strong signal to applicants that applying ED to Chicago is not very beneficial, and that would defeat the purpose of introducing this in the first place. They want to encourage students to apply ED not discourage them.

With a 16% ED1/ED2 admit rate, they would have netted 900 students for sure. So the rest of the large pool of applicants are now left competing for very few slots in the EA and RD rounds. Given that their EA yield is already close to 70% or probably higher, I don’t see how you can get to a 70% yield, unless you dramatically under admit from the ED/ED2 pools.

Under admitting from the ED1 and ED 2 pools will also mean they have to potentially spend more money on financial aid, so there is that cost too. Given how they are pushing for budget cuts in their operations budget, I would be surprised if they did not take this chance to spend less on financial aid.

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“With a 16% ED1/ED2 admit rate, they would have netted 900 students for sure.”

That would be 900 / 1600 = 56% class filled by EDs. Even Penn fills 54% with ED. So Chicago is going to use EDs more aggressively than Penn which is notorious on that front?

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@eddi137

I can only speculate here. Chicago has a lower endowment than Penn and is more in debt, yet it has ambitions to continue to be among the top 5 universities in the country, and that means money becomes very important. That does not bode well for Chicago being more socially conscious than Penn. I hope I am wrong about this, but I am not feeling optimistic about that

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If it’s necessary for the financial health of the university than I suppose we have no right to complain.

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@CollegeAngst said:

“Chicago has a lower endowment than Penn and is more in debt, yet it has ambitions to continue to be among the top 5 universities in the country, and that means money becomes very important.”

Hold on - per capita, Chicago’s endowment is larger than Penn’s. I think Chicago has about $500k per student, to Penn’s $450k per student. Also, as Chicago’s in the midst of its capital campaign, its endowment numbers will creep up a bit - continuing the separation between the two schools.

Re indebtedness (and Chicago is indeed highly leveraged) - as I understand it, tuition goes toward operating expenses for major universities, and there’s rarely ever any tuition surplus to pay down debt in any meaningful way through tuition dollars. Chicago’s debt is in the billions, and its wacky ED1/ED2 plan might bring in what - $5M more per year (assuming Chicago gets 150-200 more students paying full freight, which would be a big jump), maybe? Sure, this is a factor, but, for a major research university, $5M is peanuts.

I don’t know the terms of the debt, but Chicago probably has negligible interest on the loans, and can safely take a good long time to pay the debt back. Moreover, the building spree may be coming to an end - outside of the new Rubenstein forum and possibly another dorm, what are the other major projects on campus?

All of this to say - I highly doubt Chicago will end up taking 70% of their class early, as others have implied. This will look bad, and will make the RD round look like a sham (and will invite a lot of bad press).

Why wouldn’t Chicago just do what Stanford does - have all acceptance rates (for early and regular) be low. If the ED rate is, say, 10%, the EA rate is 6%, and the RD rate is 2%, wouldn’t ED still look like the “best” option?

I don’t know why other posters are presuming the ED rate will be 15%+. Stanford’s SCEA rate is extremely low (as is its RD rate), but that’s not stopping people from applying there.

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@Cue7 I guess we have to ask why Chicago went with the ED1/ED2 option in the first place. They already have a fairly low admit rate and a fairly high yield. They are already fairly high in the rankings. So what could be the reason here?

Somehow I don’t think it is to just squeeze a few more points out of its admit rate and yield or to rise one additional peg in the ranking ladder. There is a bigger long term goal/strategy here.

I am speculating that it is the “increasing corporatization of education” at Chicago and elsewhere. In this model an University pays close attention to its endowment (not just endowment per student, but total endowment), its benefactors, its trustees and the success and generosity of its alums. All these become very important because increasingly endowments are funding non-trivial portions of an University’s operating budget.

In such a model, instead of primarily focusing on the “public good” of providing a “solid education” to a broad spectrum of the citizenry, the university starts thinking about the lifetime value of each student it admits. Admitting more wealthy students is not just for the immediate impact it has on tuition revenue. These students will probably use their family connections and advantages to become successful and that will bring in a lot more contributions and gifts to the university. The wealthier a university becomes, the more options it has to attract better faculty, build better facilities, etc etc

So I think Chicago’s ED1/ED2 strategy is designed to alter the demographic of its student body by making it more wealthy/preppy and less nerdy/quirky overall. Everything the University is doing seems to suggest that, including tacitly encouraging the growth of Greek life on campus. Changing the demographics also allows the university to do an end run around many thorny social issues that may be raised by a more diverse student body.

If that is the goal, then the question is what percentage of students will be admitted via the Early decision pools, since this pool will be generally wealthier than the EA/RD pools. Penn fills 54% of its body thru ED. Davidson 61%, Emory and Tufts 53%, Vanderbilt 51%, Northwestern 50%.

I think Chicago has decided that it wants to go head to head with Harvard, Stanford, Yale and Princeton and for that it needs a LOT of money.

Having embraced ED as its application strategy, I don’t think Chicago will keep the ED pool admit rate as low as Stanford. That would defeat the purpose for why it was introduced in the first place. They will go as high as they can, as long as they don’t face a blow back.

I don’t know what that number will be, but if I were to speculate, I think Chicago will quickly be admitting a much larger pool of its class via ED than Penn in a few years. I don’t see them going the Stanford route. I am saddened by this and hope I am wrong, because I think it will change the school dramatically, but all signs seem to point towards such a trajectory.

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We’ve actually seen Chicago significantly expand its outreach to minority low-income students, I’m not sure that the percentage of wealthy students has noticibly increased, rather the College uses international students as bags of money.

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*noticeably

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I also wonder if they will release the ED admit rate numbers separately in the future. If I remember correctly they have not released the EA admit rate numbers for the class of 2019 and class of 2020 officially. They may choose to aggregate the number of apps under ED1/ED2/EA and release that but not release the admit rates under each category or even the aggregate early pool admit rate numbers. For example Vanderbilt does not split it’s ED1 vs ED2 admit rate.

That could allow them to mask their total ED intake without facing criticism. I don’t think IPeds requires them to state their ED admit rate.

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Did Yale have ED several years ago? I cannot remember correctly but think both Stanford and Princeton had ED a decade or so ago.

Those schools should not have had the supposed money problem to adopt ED.

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@eddi137 You are right. I think they started off with ED thinking that it gave students the flexibility to signal their interests, but quickly realized that ED was not very applicant friendly and discriminated against poor kids, and since they already had big fat endowments, they didn’t need to be as aggressive in attracting wealthy students. That is why Princeton, Yale, Harvard and Stanford have moved away from ED. These schools are also among the most generous in terms of need based financial assistance. Also given their prestige, they would normally only lose students to each other, so they each protected their yields through the use of Single Choice EA.

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Princeton had ED through the high school class of 2007 or 2008. Harvard and Yale had ED for a while in the 1990s, before going to EA and then SCEA in the early 21st Century. For three years starting in 2008 or 2009, Harvard and Princeton (and Virginia) had no early admissions, but they abandoned that when no other comparable institutions followed suit.

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My daughter wants to apply to U Chicago regular decision. Do you think it will be futile now that they have EA and ED1 and ED2? She is applying SCEA to an Ivy. ACT 33 only 1 B on transcript rest As or Aplus. 780 and 800 SAT II scores.

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@Houston1021 for RD the most important aspect of her application will be interesting ECs and essays. Her stats are good though.

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@Houston1021 You will never know unless she applies. Nobody here can accurately predict her chances. We can only make educated guesses.

Also just because the odds for the average student is low, it doesn’t mean that the odds for a particular student will be the same. So I would encourage you to apply because she is in the range. That’s the only way to find out. Good luck!!

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Let’s calculate the math again.
ED1: 3500 Admit rate: 15% Number accepted: 525
ED2: 2500 Admit rate: 10% Number accepted: 250

UChicago class of 2021 has 1591 students, so there are 1600-525-250 = 825 spots left for EA and RD rounds applicants who would be accepted and enrolled.

Class of 2021 yield rate is 61%, so there will be 825/0.61 = 1352 people accepted in EA and RD rounds.

Let’s assume EA has 8500 applicants and RD 20000 applicants, and EA acceptance rate is 1.5% higher than RD rate, and let’s say RD acceptance rate is x.

So the equation is 20000x + 8500(x+0.015) = 1352, then x is 4.3%, which is lower than Stanford RD admit rate but still reasonable and acceptable.

I think the previous calculation puts a much higher admit rate on ED1 and ED2.

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If UChicago wants to “look” like HYPS and not Penn/Col/Duke then its ED1 rate should not be 25% but rather it shouold be on or sub 20%, so it is noticeably different. And RD2 should be sub 10% (to signal favoring ED1 over ED2). I assume that in terms of “signalling”, ED2 will not have advantage over EA, if they want to be seen as not anti-poor. But both EA and ED2 will have advantage over RD. RD will have to be flat-ish yoy to not discourage future RD applicants.

I am assuming that this thread’s application numbers are correct so given the above assumptions as mods to the analysis, the accept rates look like this:

ED1 ~ 20%, ED2~8%, EA ~ 8%, RD~3%

In this scenario

  1. Applying early whether or not you dont want to commit in advance will be beneficial. (ED1 > 2x ED2, EA > 2x RD)
  2. Odds for Applying early but committing later = Committing early but applying later (this seems like a "fair" argument to me)
  3. RD rate can still be rounded up to so it looks flat compared to prior years at >2.51% which can be rounded up to 3%, for optics
  4. RD1/2 will account for 50% of all admits.

The new blended admit rate would be 6.5% and the new blended yield rate would be 76%, which is an improvement from last year’s 7.9% and 66% but not outrageously so

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@Houston1021 The posts here are all just guesses. And this is mine.

A school like UChicago who has noticeably gotten better at marketing itself will not make the mistake of noticeably admitting way less than what it used to admit at the regular pool. To do otherwise will be shooting themselves in the foot, because RD determines the blended admit rate, not ED1,ED2 or EA.

There is a HUGE incentive for top schools to keep the RD rate at about 4% for fear of seeing their overall applications decline vis-a-vis their peers. UChicago knows this. Look at it this way: RD chances at Stanford is 3.6%. If you can only apply to one “reach” school, why apply to UChicago if their RD chances is worse than 3.6%? You might as weell apply to Stanford. Ergo, UChicago’s RD admit rate needs to be comparable or better than the schools it sees as peers, there is no other way around it.

UChicago has no choice but to reduce the admit rate on its ED1/2/EA to keep the status quo on RD rate.