<p>I was just deferred from Uchicago, and I was wondering if that was a sign I'll probably be rejected from Northwestern in the spring.
My scores aren't fantastic, but my GPA's decent: 4.0 uw, 4.08 w, 2160 SAT (700 m 710 cr 750 w) and 32 composite ACT (34 math 35 English 34 writing 27 science)</p>
<p>What do you guys think?</p>
<p>There is no correlation whatsoever. Many who were accepted to NU were rejected from UChicago, and vice-versa. Unfortunately, all you can do is wait. ;)</p>
<p>For what it’s worth, I got into UChicago EA but was denied at Northwestern ED. 2300 SAT, top 5%, the whole shebang. I’m applying to Duke, Stanford, Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Penn RD and hope to get into one of those. Fingers crossed…</p>
<p>Both schools are very different- adcoms at different schools look for something different, and admissions officers within the adcom may look at things differently. I do not believe that your chances at Northwestern are any worse (or better) depending on what happened somewhere else.</p>
<p>They’re very different schools, and each looks for a specific candidate who will fit in with not only the academic environment, but also the overall campus environment.</p>
<p>I was deferred by both, but it means different things because they’re different schools. Don’t worry about it. Just apply! Your chances of getting in are significantly better than if you don’t apply at all.</p>
<p>I’d like to echo what others said here. I was deferred from UChicago but accepted to Northwestern RD. They are pretty different schools and look for different things in potential students. Don’t worry too much about what this “means” for future acceptances – just consider each school individually. Best of luck!</p>
<p>Thanks for your input everyone, it helped a ton!</p>
<p>Don’t know if this helps but shows how students choose schools… [Parchment</a> Student Choice College Rankings 2013 | Parchment - College admissions predictions.](<a href=“http://www.parchment.com/c/college/college-rankings.php?thisYear=2012&thisCategory=National]Parchment”>Parchment Student Choice College Rankings 2013 | Parchment - College admissions predictions.)</p>
<p>@classclown - am I correctly remembering that you were rejected from NU but wound up at Tufts? </p>
<p>The problem with the link you posted is that it is irrelevant to most students and has virtually nothing to do with how they choose schools, since depending on the student and their planned major most students applying to NU never apply to many of the other schools listed. For example, neither our S or D even considered applying to UChicago as it is not strong in their areas of study and did not appeal to them on other levels.</p>
<p>… Also - unless I’m mistaken, this thread is discussing how ADMISSIONS chooses students, not how students choose schools. ;)</p>
<p>Ironically, it’s the number for Tufts that makes Parchment lose virtually all credibility. Tufts’ yield is only 35% but according to Parchment, its preference rank is #23. Dartmouth’s yield is almost 50% yet its preference rank is somehow lower than Tufts at #24. Northwestern’s preference rank is even lower despite the fact that it also has higher yield than Tufts.</p>
<p>I know someone rejected by NU, but half assed an application on December 31st, and was accepted to UChicago.</p>
<p>You guys are mean…I was accepted to NU and chose Tufts. Maybe it’s the cutthroat attitude that makes people choose Tufts over NU…You should check out the research in that regard and where students are happier. Didn’t mean to illicit such hatred. Sorry.</p>
<p>It is kind of silly to provide a preference ranking based on hodge podge of data put in by users. </p>
<p>Must be whole new way of prediction. Do they also use psychics?</p>
<p>@texaspg
Are you referring to the parchment ranking?
If so, then I disagree with you because:
<p>But I do agree that yield is probably a better metric. We’ll have to wait a bit for that though…</p>
<p>@classclown,
Nothing against NU (love the school; one of my top 5 choices) but it seems you made the right choice, considering the response you are getting on this forum 
Congrats on getting into Tufts! Its a wonderful school!</p>
<p>Guys, he posted a link, he was trying to help. In fact he started of by saying:
He didn’t make any categorical remarks about Tufts vs NU… </p>
<p>@Sam Lee
While I can’t vouch for the credibility of the data (but still refer you to the top part of my post) the dartmouth/tufts dichotomy isn’t necessarily a failure of the ranking. Consider it this way:
A person who gets only into one college (eg. Dartmouth or Tufts) will positively influence the yield, should he decide to attend, whereas according to the Parchment methodology, no school would get any points in such a situation (as only if an applicant gets into two or more schools can one school be used as a reference point for scores to be added). Candidates who apply early, would fit this bill to a tea. </p>
<p>Dartmouth usually takes in more early applicants. (despite having a DROP of 12.60 % applicants year-over-year this time round) Several other factors such as self-selectivity of pools etc. could result in the discrepancy, which, I reiterate, is just a manifestation of differing methodologies.</p>
<p>Also, the yield rates you are citing are for 2012. Look at the Parchment 2012 rankings… Dartmouth is at 9, while Tufts is at 23, which falls in line PERFECTLY with the yield. The 2013 yield rates may change yet… (Dartmouth ED has fallen, and I’ve heard that its got some bad press recently; can anyone confirm this?)</p>
<p>On another note, does the parchment icon (the inverted triangle “play” icon that shows up on the tab) look a LOT like the Google Play logo? Just noticed…</p>
<p>@MomCares
Hahaha, you’re absolutely correct, but classclowns data does seem rather helpful. Assuming that a students ends up attending the (objectively) best college he gets into, (not subject to fit etc) which is not a bad assumption, the ranking does show how many students got into better schools than any particular school, by showing (relatively) how many students chose to sacrifice they’re admission to one college, say Northwestern, to another… Yield rates work similarly…
The ensuing argument that has broken out is rather OT… (posts #9, #11, #12, #14)</p>
<p>The 2013 Parchment Student Choice Rankings were based on a sampling of more than 200,000 college acceptances from 2009 to 2012 with data from all 50 states, an increase of 67 percent in the data set since the 2012 rankings. Unlike rankings based on subjective judgments like reputation, or factors subject to “gaming,” such as how many applicants a college rejects, Parchment ranks colleges and universities based solely on the decisions of hundreds of thousands of students who were admitted to multiple colleges and ultimately chose one to attend.</p>
<p>When a student is admitted to several colleges, he or she must decide which school to attend. This decision reveals a preference for the chosen school compared to the other schools the student could have attended. After observing enough of these decisions, Parchment ranks the colleges based on the students’ revealed preferences. This method for ranking colleges is derived from physicist Arpad Elo’s rating system for chess players, which was later studied by Harvard University professors Caroline Hoxby and Mark Glickman. This results in the colleges ranked not from “best” to “worst,” but instead from “most likely to be chosen” to “least likely to be chosen.” Schools can only move up in the rankings by making their programs more appealing to prospective students. The rankings system aligns the interests of colleges and students to support better match-ups.</p>
<p>A unique result of this methodology is that all colleges can be ranked in a single list unlike the multiple lists often published by other ranking systems separating colleges arbitrarily into “National,” “Liberal Arts” or “Regional.” To compare the Student Choice Rankings of any two schools, try the College Matchup app at Parchment.com.</p>
<p>“Colleges can game other rankings systems – boosting their position by taking certain steps to appear more selective or have higher student test scores,” said Parchment.com General Manager Brent Pirruccello. “Parchment’s rankings provide the only list that is student-centric and equitable in that student decisions are the sole criteria used in comparing a broad-base of higher education institutions, putting them all on a level playing field.”</p>
<p>The rankings are based on student enrollment decision data from Parchment.com, a free service students use to research colleges and discover their chances of admission, see how they compare with peers, get college recommendations, and send official transcripts when they are ready to apply. Students using Parchment.com can opt-in to make their enrollment decision data available for the Student Choice College Rankings</p>
<p>The ranking of schools - I would not go to Parchment.</p>
<p>Preference of schools is what we are discussing. We know yield for schools and some even publish cross admit preference whereas this site will have information only for what the user input.</p>
<p>As Sam Lee mentions, if reality does not line up with the output for preference, is it a valid output from a website?</p>
<p>200,000 acceptances can sound like a lot but it is not. Most kids or parents who are savvy enough to use websites get accepted to 5 or more colleges even if they get turned down by their reaches. A school with about 800 kids might average 8000 of them and there may be only 20,000 out of a million students or more who graduated high school.</p>
<p>2-5% of students participating sounds like Harvard admit rate.</p>
<p>Understand that classclown has a history on the NU board, and I only offered that he is affiliated with Tufts (a fine school) to provide context for newer folks. </p>
<p>Ok… back to the thread discussion of how ADMISSIONS at NU versus UChicago compare. As I said, I’m guessing there’s limited overlap in students who apply to both schools as in many subjects they are not comparable schools. I also assume that admissions folks look for rather different qualities in students, having seen the student bodies of both fine schools.</p>
<p>@texaspg
It lines up almost perfectly with the output for preference. The yield statistics Sam Lee used were for 2012. He said
</p>
<p>To which I replied </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Please read my entire comment once again…</p>
<p>I didn’t understand the rest of your comment, but once again I’ll say this. The data Parchment took into account, for Harvard represents more than 70% of the people who got in early, which is phenomenal. There is no argument for bad sample size here.</p>
<p>@MomCares,
Before we get back I’d still like to point out that classclown is not some anti-NU ■■■■■.</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/northwestern-university/1403313-northwestern-vs-vandy-post15014061.html#post15014061[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/northwestern-university/1403313-northwestern-vs-vandy-post15014061.html#post15014061</a>
</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/northwestern-university/1397405-northwestern-vs-ivy-schools-post15014063.html#post15014063[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/northwestern-university/1397405-northwestern-vs-ivy-schools-post15014063.html#post15014063</a>
</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/northwestern-university/1329502-cmu-vs-uc-berkeley-vs-northwestern-vs-washu.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/northwestern-university/1329502-cmu-vs-uc-berkeley-vs-northwestern-vs-washu.html</a>
(vs CMU, Berkeley, WashU)
</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/tufts-university/1330345-tufts-vs-northwestern-vs-haverford-post14281032.html#post14281032[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/tufts-university/1330345-tufts-vs-northwestern-vs-haverford-post14281032.html#post14281032</a>
</p>
<p>All these comments are either downright pro-NU or at least reasonable. I think you’re over-reacting…</p>
<p>
That’s probably why you like it so much. I understand you are so proud of UChiago’s record 46.7% yield in 2012 that you can’t help to start putting the school in the same sentence with HYPMS. But 46.7% still doesn’t really belong. Also, the year before, the yield was only 40%. One year doesn’t make a trend.</p>
<p>Although I notice that every once in a while, some UChicago student/alum would post on NU forum, I don’t recall any of them being “friendly” to NU. I also don’t see any NU student/alum would do the same thing on UChicago forum. It seems like some people in the South Side just take us more seriously as their rivals and I’d take that as a compliment. :)</p>
<p>By the way, like MomCares, I vaguely remember classcrown was rejected ED. But I could be wrong.</p>