Interesting that Nondorf is now turning his attention to rural areas. He will leave no stone unturned in pursuit of his class.
To find that diamond in the rough 
I’m thinking that is where they found @marlowe1
“Rural” might be UChicago’s niche. Byron Trott, among other trustees, seems devoted to the prospect of bringing in more rural kids.
And now apparently Nondorf & Co. have decided that it’s time to release the #'s. 34,600 applicants, 6% accepted ====> 2,076 admits. At 83% yield, that’s about 1,723 enrolled. The actual number will vary a little bit but 1,723 has to be in the ballpark based on what’s been released, either officially or unofficially, by the College.
10-15% of either admitted or enrolled class is TO (the articles are not quite in agreement on exactly which group). I had also heard a similar percentage range. That means of those 2,100 or so admits, at least 200 were TO. That’s a tad higher than some of us were predicting this time last year. UChicago clearly took that policy quite seriously. It wasn’t just a marketing ploy. Of course, that’s obvious since total apps only increased by about 7% over last year - steady, but about what you’d expect to happen anyway.
“Chicago also announced that 10 to 15 percent of students in the freshman class did not submit SAT or ACT scores.”
10-15% TO is significantly higher than what many on CC expected. 20% increase in first generation and low income students is also very significant
In my case, @CU123 , the last part of that description was/is certainly true. I do believe there has been a longstanding effort in the College to attract small-town and rural kids who may have been slightly deprived of intellectual oxygen in their native milieux. In the sixties there was a specific program called the “small town talent search”. The present initiative is broader than that and is folded in to a plan that encompasses URMs, first-gens, rural kids, veterans, and the children of police and firefighters, but I do see a continuity that is specific to the history of the College as a heartland institution for the gifted of all backgrounds and geographies.
I applaud these figures. They scupper and put to the lie several of the perennial kvetches about the U of C, including that it is deficient in URM and Pell grant holders in comparison with its peers and that TO was only for show and numerical manipulation. Nondorf is paraphrased as saying that the 10-15 percent figure for the non-testers was “similar” for both the total of all applicants and those offered admission. I particularly liked what he had to say about a very diverse range of kids coming in under TO (though skewed toward non-STEM, as was to be expected), the common denominator being only that they needed to make the case by other means than “the be-all, end-all of test scores” that they had qualities and talents worthy of a UChicago student. It would be nice to know some of those stories.
^ UChicago doesn’t need more STEM majors - it has plenty and will always have plenty. If talented applicants wish to major in Art History at one of the universities in the world, it’s great that UChicago found them and offered them admission. Look for some of their stories this fall when the College begins showcasing the Class of '23.
What’s clear is that UChicago is taking seriously the decision to broaden and diversify the student body. Whether that’s in response to bad press about lack of Pells or as a preemptive attempt to find non-traditional students before the traditional base declines in a few years’ time . . . or because Nondorf, who initiated the Coalition Ap. as a means to provide easier access for everyone regardless of socioeconomic status, genuinely has a vision to increase outreach to the non-traditional groups, will be a subject of discussion for years.
10-15% is meaningful. I take back any mean things I said about it. Good for them.
^JHS several of us didn’t - or wouldn’t - see what this new policy meant. Personally, I suspected Nondorf had finally jumped the shark.
So far, so good. We can see that the initiative was not a sham, and we can be pleased in principle that it has produced greater numbers in these categories. What can’t be known yet (except perhaps to Nondorf and his troops) is whether these kids really do have the right stuff to thrive and be happy in the high-octane academic world of the University of Chicago. I have to believe that the admissions people were on the lookout for kids cut from the right cloth for that job. Perhaps there will also be some additional attention given to them after arrival. However, every kid who steps on campus will have a job of work to do. All of them must surely know that.
I’m curious what attributes they are seeking and how they are making the search. The rural areas I’ve in which I’ve been working , do not tend to come with kids so qualified or even want to go off far from home. Trying to get them into state schools a challenge, even as those schools have been offering incentives and some leeway in admissions standards.
Where I see a lot of fine minds and ability not recognized are in the city neighborhoods. No recruiting from top colleges there. No college nights at these schools.
@cptofthehouse - for low income students in particular, college enrollment has been surging. As there is also a greater number of low SES in our urban centers than in rural America (heck, there are more PEOPLE as well), it’s quite likely most of these gains are coming from there.
https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2017/11/income-poverty-rural-america.html
@Marlowe1 has mentioned upthread UChicago’s history of attracting certain students from the small towns and rural communities of America. It’s a wide geographical area. As for attributes, UChicago is more likely to see the cream of the crop than the typical high schooler (by the way, that was also true at my son’s urban high school. Most simply aren’t interested in the school for a variety of reasons). There have always been smart, hardworking kids from Small Town America - that they leave and don’t return is the biggest challenge facing those communities.
I have to rise to defend the honor of all those lonesome bookish kids growing up in the landlocked towns of the midwest, west and south. They have their challenges, their formal educations are not of the best, and they are often dismissed and disregarded, but many a brilliant kid has come out of those circumstances. The first American Nobel Prize winner in Physics, Albert A. Michelson of the University of Chicago, came from a raw town in Nevada. The figure of the lonely autodidactic kid coming of age in the hinterlands is a staple of American fiction. Vachel Lindsay, Eugene Debs and Thorstein Veblen came from such places.
No one would contend that an education at the University of Chicago is the norm for these or any other kids - but the idea is not to overlook the nuggets there by failing to even look into the pan. It’s only one place to look and it isn’t in the least inconsistent with looking in the big cities and the suburbs. Chicago is, I believe, announcing that it will look in all those places. The right kind of kid for a Chicago education could come from anywhere. Everyone deserves a crack at it.
I wonder how rural is defined? I grew up in a small town in Indiana, but in the second most populous county. I’ve lived in the UP of Michigan in the most populated city, which felt much larger than the stated 20k census numbers.
I now live in one of the most populated areas in PA. Of the three, it probably has the most rural feel.
Growing up, we all tried to get into Purdue, IU, or failing that Ball State etc. However, I do know fellow students who probably could have thrived at UChicago type schools if they knew about them.
There is a thread on this forum going into the demographics of kids in select colleges and it came to different conclusions looking at specific college numbers. I’d like to run UCh numbers and see how their undergrad demographics have changed.
I’d love to see a certain bright jug eared , small town boy in a family of high school drop outs get a taste of a school like this but it seems so far fetched. He’d be awestruck at the thought.
Not quite sure what you’re suggesting, @cptofthehouse . That there are few if any bright ambitious kids out there in the hinterlands? Or if there are any at all, they are likely from a family of drop outs? Or that such a background would make going to UChicago unthinkable for every single one of them? --You might as well throw in depleted gene pools and drug addiction, and then you’d have all the bases covered.
Look, only the tiniest number of kids in such places and from such backgrounds will have the smarts and self-confidence to want to go off to the big city and attend its terrifyingly rigorous university. They will be rare birds. There were some of them in my class at the University of Chicago a long time ago. I was sort of that bird myself. The University must have had the idea that a Chicago education could serve us as well as the city kids. They might even have had the crazy democratic idea that our urban classmates could learn from us as we from them.
It’s a big country and a big world from which the College chooses its small entering class of very special kids. At these magnitudes the stereotypes, to the extent that they’re true at all, don’t have much meaning. Every kid chosen will be singular and suitable for a Chicago education.
The “jug eared” reference was poignant. Sounds like @cptofthehouse won’t be bothering with those “rural types” - bright or no. Wonder if he/she has the same (lack of) regard for city families who struggle with food deserts and high drop out rates in their communities. Cycles of poverty aren’t defined by population density, though it appears that attitudes towards such might be.
Gosh, there’s a lot of touchiness and negativity here all of a sudden. I thought cptofthehouse (who has made clear lots of times she is a cis-female who uses the pronouns she and her) was referring to someone specific she knows. I didn’t get any sense at all from her post that she was mocking rural kids and their qualifications for Chicago.
^ Agree in part with #18. Comments about physical appearance and missing someone’s gender announcement have no relevance to the topic at hand.