i know it is need blind, but does the fact that you are not applying for financial aid at all give any boost to the application?
No. The aid office and admissions are in separate buildings, with separate staffs. The university freely admits it has a need-aware policy for international students, the admissions website says as much, and it’s hard to see why admissions would be honest about that but mislead domestic applicants.
The University also has a dozen subtler ways to make sure most students will be from the upper crust. Need blind means need blind.
@DunBoyer Quoted: “The University also has a dozen subtler ways to make sure most students will be from the upper crust.”
Do you think so? Occasionally when I go to Reg, I find most of the college kids pretty normal looking. There are a lot of Apple MacBooks for sure but still I don’t get the feeling that there are a lot of upper crust kids. They all seem pretty down to earth to me. Maybe sleep deprived, overwhelmed and miserable but that is par for the course for everyone at U of C by the 7th week ;).
@85bears46 Oh, yes. Your average student does not look or act like Richie Rich, and UChicago is still full of self-deprecating nerds, because the university has the luxury of choosing students from a large pool of “UChicago types” that spans the earnings spectrum. This minimizes the tradeoff between parental wealth and student fit - and the administration takes full advantage of that fact.
The fact is that Pell Grant recipients (who generally have parental incomes of $50,000 or less) made up 13% of the class of 2021 (https://www.chicagomaroon.com/article/2016/9/14/class-2020-survey/). That figure was 12% last year, which suggests the results of the Maroon’s Class of 2020 survey (which showed 13% of students had parental incomes below $60,000) are fairly reliable. And that survey makes it clear that most students come from the well-heeled professional/managerial class.
47% of the class of 2020 had parental incomes above $200,000 - putting them in the upper 5-6% of households nationwide. About 1 in 6 students came from a household whose yearly income was over half a million dollars. The share of mothers and fathers with a high school degree or less was 6% or 5%, respectively.
When you recruit heavily at prep schools, small private schools, and public schools in tony areas; implement options (ED) that hurt students who need to compare costs; give preference to “luxury” extracurriculars like lacrosse over a full-time job flipping burgers; etc, this can’t be that surprising.
The effect on campus culture is mixed. There are still lots of quirky nerds on campus, but other signs of upper-class values or snobbery do crop up. There’s the occasional complaint about needing to pay $95 to use the CTA when it’s easier to Uber everywhere. There are people who treat campus workers with a marked lack of respect. There are more students who rarely venture into the (poorer, largely nonwhite) neighborhoods around the university. And all this coexists with a strong leftist activist subculture - for now. Most students would be mortified at the thought of doing or saying such things - but exceptions aren’t uncommon.
Excellent post Dun…there is some real insight there.
Oops - posted the wrong link above. That link was to the Maroon’s Class of 2020 survey (a fascinating read for a number of reasons).
*This/I is the WashPost article that includes numbers on Pell Grant recipients for the classes of 2019-2021.
@DunBoyer Talking to my DD over the break she tell me she hasn’t met an unkind person at UChicago yet…however she doesn’t go to greek parties either.
Of course not applying for financial aid gives you a benefit. Anyone who claims otherwise is simply wrong.
That’s not what a need-blind admissions policy means. The decisions that give wealthy applicants a leg up are made long before financial aid enters the mix. There’s point in sacrificing the only upside of being eligible for financial aid.
https://collegeadmissions.uchicago.edu/apply/application/financialaidapplication
This is the kind of stuff all those alumni donations are there to fund.
They might be “need-blind” in that they don’t see your FAFSA, CSS or UChicago fin. aid. worksheeet. But they are NOT “need-unaware”. Admissions obviously knows who is willing to go full pay vs. not, as they offer to waive the application fee if you are applying for aid. What family of sufficient means is going to risk a potentially negative outcome just to save $75? While they probably also have more subtle ways of figuring out ability to pay, this one nails that question down definitively and with no effort on their part. Sure, they forego the revenue but that’s small potatoes and the College can always make it up elsewhere. Anyway, they wouldn’t offer this if the benefits didn’t outweigh the revenue dip. Like their super-scoring policy, the application fee waiver seems very civilized and supportive - and no doubt it is - but it also gives them some pretty crucial information about you.
@JBStillFlying I would be very surprised if admissions sees who’s waived applications fees. All other financial matters are handled by the Bursar or College Aid, so this would require that the College go out of its way to make that information available to Admissions. Which could work - until someone in the office writes a book or talks to the Maroon. And Admissions hires far too many students to ignore that possibility.
It may be, as Dun has argued, that the effect of EDs 1 and 2 is to create more applications from less need-sensitive students, but I highly doubt that the Admissions people as they assess the merits of actual applications will favor rich applicants. A really poor kid from a family without previous college graduates is surely likely to have an edge on a rich kid, all other things being equal. Of course its hard for all other things to be equal between kids of great social disparity. However, compelling stories come in many forms. One such compelling story could be that of a privileged kid who has done a multitude of marvellous things with the opportunities those privileges allowed. Chicago would be interested in such a kid. Another such story might be that of a kid from an impoverished family who has worked hard in school and out, without a big list of accomplishments but with an inner spark and a potential that Chicago wants to foster. Yet another kid may be middling in all departments except that theres something special in the way he or she thinks or writes. Everything I read about the process suggests that it is an eclectic one, very driven by the overriding idea of finding the kind of kids who are right for a Chicago education, whatever the social background.
@DunBoyer - you could well be correct. But it’s a checked box on the application supplement so someone would need to make sure that field wasn’t included in the applicant files. Have no insight into what an admissions officer sees or how obvious each data field is in terms of info. Obviously stuff like GPA, ACT/SAT scores or essays are easily recognizable, but this is just one more field with a “yes” or “no” type of response. What is it asking? I suppose the inquisitive admissions worker might look into it . . or not.
Also, this information isn’t exactly a bombshell or a major scoop. Certainly, it’s less subtle than profiling using other means but this is a difference in degree, not in kind. If they already know your high school, your home address, your parents’ employment and education level (not to mention what schools they attended), your high school EC’s and what you mention in your essays, then ticking the box doesn’t really add new info. to your profile - it merely confirms it very quickly, thus allowing Admissions to be able to move on to more substantive issues like your actual qualifications.
As for the Maroon staff, they are very likely a vast improvement over the days when they wrote the piece about winning “the Nobel Peace Prize for Literature” (yes, they did) but their investigative journalism skills in all things Nondorf seem to fall a bit short of the mark. They weren’t able to get any info. on ED or EA admit rates, for instance and apparently there was no story in why Admissions was stalling the release of data for the Class of 2021. Parents on CC seem to know more about this stuff than the Maroon LOL!
@DunBuyer if you look at the PDF that is created on CommonApp, which is what I understood is what Admissions sees, there is a question whether fee waiver was requested (with answer Yes or No). I do believe this could be in what Admissions sees. Still, I doubt they pay attention to that for admissions. They have so many other things to consider and will certainly end up with a mix of applicants who need financial aid and many who don’t without gaming the system.
@mclmom at #13 - In addition to the CA question (shows up on page one of last year’s PDF) there is also the question that shows up on Page 10 (which begins the “UChicago Member Page”). It’s possible to leave the first one blank as that applies to ALL your colleges listed on the common app and might(?) require GC signature as well. The second one is just if you are applying for aid at UChicago.
Merit is correlated to socioeconomic status. Obviously the richest kids have had time to accomplish great things in high school, while poorer ones had to take care of their siblings, work at McDonald’s, etc. Probably the least subtle evaluation. Need-blind doesn’t mean much…
On the Common Application, the school asks if the applicant is applying for financial aid. If the school was indeed “need blind,” why ask that question? The schools are, at best delivering incomplete information and, at worst, lying when they spout their “need blind” status.
As other posters above have noted, schools have many other ways of determining the financial resources of applicants: zip codes, school (private v. public), or the occupation of a parent.
Don’t believe me? Read this: https://www.■■■■■■■■■■■■/the-ivy-coach-blog/college-admissions/need-blind-admission-farce/
“It may be, as Dun has argued, that the effect of EDs 1 and 2 is to create more applications from less need-sensitive students, but I highly doubt that the Admissions people as they assess the merits of actual applications will favor rich applicants.”
As UChicago, like so many other elite schools, participates in Quest Bridge and similar programs, it’s really hard to argue that SES isn’t an unknown or even an important factor, at least to some extent. It’s tempting to think that by offering ED they are merely trying to offset that commitment to the low-income side of the talent pool - but then why meet demonstrated need at the same time?
ED is clearly NOT for the price-sensitive. But need-sensitive and price-sensitive are not exactly the same thing (although there will be overlap). UChicao’s number of apps declined last year and it’s very likely that a whole bunch of families could have looked at the introduction of ED and EDII and said “no thanks”. But families have all sorts of reasons for avoiding ED: lack of merit aid, lack of choices, lack of being able to change your mind and walk away . . . some of those are need-based reasons and some are the result of wanting to keep the bargaining power or not wanting to pay “too much” (whatever that amount might be). And most are combinations of all factors! Whether you can truly “afford” something tends to be a far more complicated equation than knowing whether you are willing to pay for it.
So does UChicago ED favor applicants who are rich or who are less price-sensitive about their college education? If they offered no discount for “demonstrated need” then the answer is probably a no-brainer: the former. But given that there is a whole spectrum of prices depending on family circumstances, I’m guessing that price-sensitivity plays a significant role in who applies ED, even among the rich.
Perhaps the expression need-blind is imprecise. The admissions people cant be unaware of the general level of need of any given applicant, given all the many indicators that will be present in the application. The policy that these words attempt to describe is this: the University does not take into account an applicants financial need in the decision to accept or reject the application, with the corollary that once admitted, every student will be given the amount of financial assistance necessary to attend. Perhaps need-indifferent would be a better term for this, but we are merely quibbling about semantics. The real question is whether the applications of the rich are being given favored treatment. Some on this board appear to be suggesting this. I myself do not believe it.
I do believe that there are those who will be deterred by ED if what theyre after is making the best deal possible. Im not very impressed by that sort of applicant.
Sometimes coming from a more affluent background can hurt. If someone came from a low income, poverty stricken area then getting a high sat score, managing to balance a job to support the family and ec’s that are somewhat weak can be looked better than the same applicant from a more affluent background. The more opportunity you were given as a kid, the more an admissions officer will expect out of you because it is assumed you have the means.