“ED vs EA question came up in a Q&A. Colleges love ED and generally can’t afford unrestricted EA.”
UChicago offered unrestricted EA historically and only changed last year for the Class of 2021. Wouldn’t say it could no longer “afford” EA as much as it probably recognized it’s time to move the process to a more restricted admission option, albeit one with a twist. Keep in mind that while offering unrestricted EA the College has been seeing its admit rate drop significantly over the past 10 years. It was only 17 years ago that Dean Boyer rejoiced in the just-under 50% accept rate!
“Chicago is one of the few that offer both. It offers EA in order to attract large number of applicants (that helps with acceptance rate) and ED to lock in the applicants (that helps with yield).”
Hmmm. If those are the REASONS for, as opposed to the CONSEQUENCES of, of offering both types of early admission, then how come other schools don’t do the same thing? Also, as you are pointing out, that makes the school look pretty slimy. How come UChicago isn’t worried about bad PR?
“This policy is designed to help the college, not the applicants.”
Agree on this one and I’ve argued the point on these threads. Admissions offices aren’t there to “help the applicants” - their goal is to procure the best quality class they can get their hands on and specific admission plans are put in place to support that goal. Obviously ED lowers yield but it can also lower selectivity so it’s not for every institution.
UChicago has pushed the envelope by offering a portfolio of admission options and also admitting a majority of the class ED/EDII. This seems unprecedented for an elite institution - at least in recent years. Sure, it could be for all the simple and cynical reasons you have proposed. If you are right, then Nondorf should have been smacking his head (or perhaps Zimmerman should have fired him LOL) for being so obtuse. There’s something else going on, most likely. Perhaps, as @Marlowe1 is suggesting, UChicago has tailored its admission plans to ensure it continues to get the kind of enrollee it really desires. And why? Perhaps because there’s something about the distinctive culture of the place that - in the eyes of the administration - is critical not only to preserve but to support and strengthen over the longer term. Now THAT narrative is far more consistent with the character of the place than yours, @1NJParent.
“Now, granted, CC data are incomplete and only UChicago has the complete data. Why doesn’t Chicago release them? Why doesn’t it release even the basic CDS data, as other colleges do (Columbia is the only other college among the elites that doesn’t release CDS data)? I know you’re a fan of Chicago and you bought its story lock, stock and barrel, but let other people ask some critical questions.”
Actually, that question has been asked many times here already and that’s just in the year or so that I’ve been reading it. You are late to the game, @1NJParent but welcome anyway! One can be a fan and still critique the College or see it in a negative light for not releasing data.
Many theories have been advanced as to the secrecy, but I’m a bit confused about yours and I’m guessing it’s because you don’t have the historical knowledge of admission practices at the university. UChicago hasn’t released official admit data for years, even when EA had a HIGHER rate than overall admission.
@JBStillFlying
“Keep in mind that while offering unrestricted EA the College has been seeing its admit rate drop significantly over the past 10 years”
This is obvious. By offering unrestricted EA, admit rate would drop precipitously because the number of applicants would multiply manyfold. Chicago doesn’t release its data, but take a look at CWRU, another school that offer both EA and ED. Its early round applicants have increased dramatically (mostly EA) and you can watch its admit rate drop. Chicago has a top business school and an economics department and it knows how to run its business.
“This is obvious. By offering unrestricted EA, admit rate would drop precipitously because the number of applicants would multiply manyfold.”
The admit rate ALWAYS drops precipitously if the number of the applicants multiplies manyfold. Let’s go beyond the tautologies. WHY does EA cause the the number of applicants to increase manyfold?
Chicago had a top Econ. and B-School back in the days when the College had a greater than 50% admit rate. Not sure when it began to offer EA exactly but the long-term increase in selectivity has more to do with other things than that.
“WHY does EA cause the the number of applicants to increase manyfold?”
Simple, because more applicants would apply if there’s no restriction. In the case of UChicago, application is even fee-free if you also apply for FA. BTW, CWRU uses the same strategy and its application is also fee-free.
But @1NJParent, why not just offer RD? Why offer EA as well?
Also, you seem to be saying that because they offered EDI/EDII last year, that’s what caused total number of applications to fall? Will they fall again this year? Not disagreeing with you there. But UChicago offered EA for years before switching to binding admission and during that time they steadily saw admit rates decline. Wouldn’t offering EA see a one-time effect over the prior year, not a long-term trend?
Another thing to point out:
The number of EA applicants to both UChicago and CWRU has reached well over 10K (even approaching 20K in the case of UChicago by some estimate). The college only has a month or so to review all its early applications and make decisions by mid December. Does anyone think the college can review all the applications properly and holistically?
@JBStillFlying
I think colleges should just offer RD for fairness, but that’s a different topic.
If Chicago were to drop EA next year (but keep ED), its admit rate would increase significantly.
Admit rates decline for practically all elite colleges because of the USNW effect and the Common App. More people are applying to the top-ranked colleges and they apply to MORE colleges.
“The number of EA applicants to both UChicago and CWRU has reached well over 10K (even approaching 20K in the case of UChicago by some estimate).”
Last year, early applications was around 13,000 total (including both EA and ED). Not 20,000. It was around 12,000 the prior year IIRC. 20,000 would be a major change so highly unlikely that’s an accurate #.
“The college only has a month or so to review all its early applications and make decisions by mid December. Does anyone think the college can review all the applications properly and holistically?”
That’s a function of the number of admissions officers. UChicago has laid out the process so that would actually be a big lie if they didn’t follow it. And despite my criticisms of the Maroon, that one would be too obvious a scoop to overlook. I believe they read them. How much they agonize over every application, however, is a different matter. We know from last year that ED was a significant factor in the decision process. That, more than amount of time spent on the application, seemed to determine whether you were accepted (assuming your credentials were within their norms). Anecdotally, this year they seemed to have accepted more EA’s - we won’t know for sure till the admitted student events start happening and parents start reporting the numbers.
With post #66 you’re on to something, @1NJParent . If the ED regime has the effect of discouraging unserious applicants and lowering overall numbers, that’s a good if perhaps unintended consequence. However, the College is hot right now, and that’s what the numerousness is telling us. I feel sorry for the many very well-qualified kids who have their hearts broken in the process every year. However young hearts heal quickly, and there’s a college for everyone out there. Giving adequate consideration to the many applicants may be a hard task, but it is so vitally important to the future of the University of Chicago that I have to believe adequate resources have been allocated to do the job.
“I think colleges should just offer RD for fairness, but that’s a different topic”.
Yes - and not the topic I was referring to when I asked the question so I’ll repeat: why offer EA at all?
“Admit rates decline for practically all elite colleges because of the USNW effect and the Common App. More people are applying to the top-ranked colleges and they apply to MORE colleges.”
Those have an impact but USNews rankings have been around for 30+ years. Do you know UChicago’s history there? Sure, more kids apply to more colleges and being on the CA helps. But what prompted UChicago’s climb in the rankings by 10 points in 10 years? And what caused its decline before that? Hint: Saying colleges go up and down in the rankings is not a real answer 
I took the following statistics on early applications for the current year from the admission statistics thread on CC:
MIT EA 664 out of 9,557 (6.9%) (65.0% deferred, 26.1% denied, 1.9% withdrawn)
Georgetown EA 1,002 out of 8,383 (12.0%)
Harvard SCEA 964 out of 6,630 (14.5%)
Princeton SCEA 799 out of 5,402 (14.7%)
Yale SCEA 842 out of 5733 (14.7%) (55% deferred, 29% denied, 2% withdrawn/incomplete)
Penn ED 1,312 out of 7,074 (18.5%)
Rice ED 371 out of 1,916 (19.4%) (includes 51 matched QuestBridge)
Brown ED 738 out of 3,502 (21.1%)
Duke ED 875 out of 4,090 (21.4%)
U.S. Coast Guard Academy EA 189 out of 834 (22.7%)
Cornell ED 1,533 out of 6,319 (24.3%)
Notre Dame REA 1,636 out of 6,598 (24.8%)
Dartmouth ED 565 out of 2,270 (24.9%) (includes 26 matched QuestBridge)
Emory (Oxford) ED1 223 out of ~892 (25%)
Northwestern ED 1,072 out of 4,049 (26.5%)
Johns Hopkins ED 610 out of 2,037 (29.9%)
Emory (Emory) ED1 503 out of ~1,623 (31%)
Wesleyan ED1 279 out of 718 (38.9%)
Emory (Emory and/or Oxford) ED1 726 out of > 1,700 (< 42.7%) (includes 30 matched QuestBridge)
Middlebury ED1 326 out of 650 (50.2%) (6% deferred, 43.8% denied)
Georgia EA > 8,000 out of nearly 15,000 (> 53.3%)
Chicago is not there because it doesn’t release official data. Casual observation suggests Chicago has 2-to-3 times the number of early applicants as Harvard. Does it have 2-to-3 times the resource?
“But what increased UChicago’s climb in the rankings by 10 points in 10 years?”
Part of it is UChicago played its ranking game better in recent years. That in itself is not necessarily a negative.
@1JNParent at #71: Why couldn’t it? Someone a few years ago said that it had a marketing budget that was 4X the size of Dartmouth’s.
We know families whose kids have worked in Admissions and the entire process seems pretty straightforward. Again, given that they now offer ED, it’s quite easy to fill up your class with that in the early round and defer a whole lot of the rest. Last year the signal was that unless you had a significant hook of some kind you were likely not going to be admitted EA. They were pretty clear in that signal. Admissions is also up front about wanting to fill the class with ED candidates. We’ll see what happens this year - the new policy has really been in effect now for only two admission cycles.
“Part of it is UChicago played its ranking game better in recent years. That in itself is not necessarily a negative.”
That’s true. What’s the other part?
@JBStillFlying So here’s my question: Why the charade of offering EA if ED candidates are what fill the class?
The answer is pretty clear to me, at least:
It lowers UChicago admit rate significantly and improves its ranking.
All this talk of rankings is interesting to think about, but it’s probably not super easy to rise up in any ranking.
Here’s an older discussion of UChicago rankings on cc:
http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/university-chicago/1668233-uchicago-seems-to-be-always-in-the-top-10-of-any-university-ranking-systems-in-the-world-p1.html
Also an interesting read on gaming a list:
http://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/article/2014/08/26/how-northeastern-gamed-the-college-rankings/
And after all of Northeastern’s years of efforts, they were able to game 1 list. (did a great job.)
Imagine the powerhouse that a university would have to be to be on top of so many lists, a powerhouse like UChicago.
All the rankings use admit rates and yield to some degree. So the “game” is played for all the rankings, not just a particular one. I wouldn’t argue that UChicago or the quality of its admittees hasn’t improved in recent years. You play the game, improve your ranking, and higher quality applicants would follow. What’s wrong with it, one may ask? What’s wrong is that you’re not being straight with your applicants, and your ranking is misleading.
“So here’s my question: Why the charade of offering EA if ED candidates are what fill the class?”
“The answer is pretty clear to me, at least: It lowers UChicago admit rate significantly and improves its ranking.”
We’ll see. UChicago is currently at #3 - and was when it introduced ED. What ranking do you think it’ll get to? Agree that there is room for the admit rate to go down. It actually increased slightly this past year with the new plans. Yield, however, jumped six points (from 66% to 72%) and it’s reasonable to speculate that they were after increased yield even at the expense of a slightly higher admit rate. The question is, really, why are they about increasing the yield? After all, they are already at #3 on USNews. Perhaps it’s about being #1 but you don’t leap over Harvard by yield alone and it’s very hard to match 80%. Something else is going on.
My guess? It’s that there are recognized long term benefits to increasing yield and so Nondorf has been tasked with the goal to get that yield up. Prospective benefits include a larger alumnae network which works to influence industry, gov’t and academia and continues to support the university and College with its financial and networking resources. Interestingly, Nondorf runs the Career Placement office so he sees 'em coming and going. It was a deliberate step to put him in charge of both ends.
And then, the answer to your question from above: UChicago is aggressively and deliberately segmenting its pool of applicants. It obviously gets a critical mass of talented and smart kids who are very much qualified to attend and do well. It puts the responsibility of signalling commitment on THEM. Thus, ED and no merit aid. The rest who apply EA are deferred unless there’s something about your application that really stands out (a major talent or a hook they are looking for). Obviously, virtuosos, academic prodigies and talented kids from the under-represented groups don’t need to apply ED and their GC’s are not advising them to. Those are the kids, among others, that UChicago wants to attract with merit aid. The rest get deferred. Over the past couple of years they have significantly shifted dollars away from merit to need-based and ramped up their “no loans” commitment to those applying with demonstrated need. Interestingly, there are several stories from last year (including my own kid) about being deferred EA, switching to EDII, getting accepted, and then getting decent need-based aid. Therefore, ED is used to weed out the price-sensitive kids, otherwise known as those who don’t consider UChicago as their first choice and wouldn’t necessarily attend if accepted. And when you look at the application choices that’s pretty much how UChicago delineates ED vs. EA.
So where is the misrepresentation?