It would be nice if they would publish the stats for their recruited athletes, I bet that would cause a lot of wailing and outcry over the unfairness of admissions to top schools. Of course that would never happen as it’s a no win situation for the school.
The key change that more than halved UChicago’s admissions rate was its acceptance of the common application. Same for many other schools.
There may also be another phenomenon going on here. When a Harvard or Stanford rejects an applicant, the applicant is more likely to just suck it up, but there is a lot of resentment generated when a school like Chicago or Duke or NU reject an applicant. There is a “How dare you reject mois” outrage that is generated. These schools apparently don’t have the permission to just reject 90%+ of their applicants. If they do, they must be doing something shady. Maybe it is yield protection, Maybe it is bait and switch. Maybe it is just “dirty application grubbing” etc etc.
There must be a conspiracy theory, because these Universities just don’t have the brand permission to be “Hoity toity” in the minds of most applicants 
Part of that is due to the length of time they have been rejecting applicants. People have gotten use to the HYPS schools having low acceptance rates. Really these rates are coming down for UChicago, Columbia, Brown, and a few others is because more students are applying to these schools plus the HYPS and MIT/Caltech. Albeit UChicago has seen this drop much more dramatically than any other institution.
@denydenzig ha ha ha on “How dare you reject mois”
Honestly, marketing is very important. My daughter is a super strong student (ACT=35; 12 AP’s with 5’s; and many awards), and she fell in love with UChicago after visiting and receiving all that information, people there (Jim Nondorf is amazing!) are incredible, enthusiastic, and “down to earth”. Stanford, for example, never got in touch with her (that was the only one that sent her the brochure without a letter!!!) and she did not want to apply there. Marketing is important. She was accepted in 6 top schools already (UChicago of course), and waiting for few more…tomorrow…
Got the T shirt today, and S1 thinks it looks fab. Eerie thing is that it fits perfectly. S1 is a bright kid, but with a 32 ACT and 3.6 GPA( albeit with a very demanding course load ) is unlikely to make it into U of C, unless their baseball team has some pull( VG HS player), which I have heard is uncommon.
Will S1 apply, even though he knows chances are somewhere between slim and none( even though uncle is a prof there and the baseball team could REALLY use some help)? You betcha!
Just keep sending T shirts for the rest of the fam. I’ll take an XL, wife an ES, please!
@“Cariño” my DD story is very similar, zero interest in anything west coast; UChicago went the extra mile and it paid off for them and her.
hey marketing works… and U of Chicago is the best in the business.
I’m sure they are doing advanced analytics on open rates, application rates etc. I suspect that their campaigns are very data driven and they wouldn’t be sending that many if it didn’t give them a positive ROI.
I give them props.
Wait, the university is actually mailing some HS Juniors Tshirts?
Normally rising seniors
Marketing is necessary when you have a nondescript geographical name like the University of Chicago and no high profile sports. There is nothing dishonest about getting on the radar of high school students in the same way that your rivals already are merely by virtue of things outside of academics.
If UChicago had been named Rockefeller University at the start and stayed in the Big Ten for football, it would be as well known among high schoolers as Stanford and Duke and it would send out less mailers. But it didn’t… There is nothing dishonest about getting on the radar of high school students in the same way that your rivals already are merely by virtue of things outside of academics. Any anyone who thinks it is immoral or deceitful because it pull in applications from less qualified students is full of crap, because Stanford and Duke get huge amounts of applications from less qualified students as well. It comes with the territory of being well-known and desirable.
Ask Princeton if they wish they were still called the “College of New Jersey” and what that might mean for their prestige and applicant pool.
@melvin123 it didn’t send us a t-shirt until my daughter was accepted to the College. None of her friends got one at all, even though many applied to the College (they didn’t get in).
I wonder if @57special got one because of baseball?
Just realized that S1, besides the baseball thing, went to U of C for a model UN conference, so they might have gotten his name from there. Most of the other team (as in model UN team)members have outstanding, U of C worthy academic stats, so he might’ve just got some fringe bennies.
oops, just checked with S1. None of the model UN’ers (they of the 36 ACT, 4.0 GPA ilk) got T-shirts. My boy is truly blessed, and he is … THE ONE!
@57special that makes sense. All we got from UChicago were a couple of mailings (and a lot less mail than many other schools sent).
So, the ACT is now up to 33, and besides the aforementioned T-shirt and numerous expensive, glossy flyers, S1 has now received the “little Red Book”. Again, very few, if any, of his high achieving friends(with better stats) have received anything from U of C. Kind of confusing who they pick to target. I don’t think baseball is a factor, or he would’ve had some preliminary contact from the coach, surely?
I really don’t like how colleges keep blasting me with spam, but at least I’m smart enough to realize that schools like UChicago just do it so they get more unqualified applicants, lowering their acceptance rate. Unfortunately, one of my mutual friends believes that just because selective universities sends them mail means they’re genuinely interested in them. I wonder how much it costs UChicago to do all this marketing.
Ok, it’s getting weird.
Mail has actually slowed down a bit, but U of C coach called S1 and invited him to a camp, asked for academic info, etc… He saw him at a Showcase, but WELL after the mailing blitz. There is slim to no chance that U of C admissions would be mailing things to us one year before he came on to the coach’s radar.
Who knows? Is this all some sort of elaborate plan to get S1 to apply to U of C, then reject him?
Is U of C admissions so good that they can actually see into the future with some experimental device cooked up in their renowned physics labs? If so, why the hell are they using it to help fill out their baseball team roster?
I had poured a lot of cold water on the idea of U of C, so as not to have S1 get his hopes up, then dashed, but it’s very odd how things have progressed with this school. There is actually a fit there, I think, as S1 is pretty passionate about Econ, and we have family both in Chicago and on the faculty, and he’s a damn good SS, but there is now way that U of C would’ve known that…unless they are really, really, good!
Watching all this with a protective, but somewhat bemused, eye.
@57special U of C carpetbombs a lot of people with a ton of mail. It’s probably just a coincidence that your son ended up on their mailing list and then attracted the coach’s interest later.
I think you’re right.
It is funny how it’s working out, though.