I’m starting a new thread since the previous one was closed. I’m a newly admitted student and recently attended an Accepted Students Reception. Here is a summary of what Dean Nondorf had to say:
32,000+ applications total this cycle
13,000+ applications in the early round
A little over 1,100 were accepted in the early round
I also joined the accepted students facebook page for the class of 2022. The page has 855 members (9 of which are admissions staff). A total of 245 students posted info about themselves on the FB group. From this, 26% (63) were accepted EA, 53% were accepted ED (131), 14% (34) didn’t state whether it was EA or ED. An additional 17 (14%) were added to the class of 2022 FB page as gap year students.
If assuming a yield of 33% from the EA group and 98% from ED, this means that about 840 spots are filled from the class. Assuming another 400 spots are filled in ED2, this doesn’t leave a lot of room for the RD people.
I attended the NYC accepted students’ reception this weekend and Dean Nondorf stated there were 32,000 applications, 13,000 early applications, and 1,300 accepted early.
@Booklady, Dean Nondorf didn’t specify if the number of early admits also included ED2. Another fun fact he publicly shared was that 346 students from Stuyvesant High School applied which equaled more received applications than 9 states combined. (He didn’t name the states.)
Yes, Dean Nondorf was funny. After going through the numbers, he said something like, “can we talk about the State of Stuyvesant,” and then proceeded to tell us that UChicago go 346 applications from Stuy.
Doesn’t he have personal responsibility for Stuy? It’s his territory to cover, or was the last time I looked. He’s a pretty good salesman.
Edit: Yup. It’s still there. New York is divided into six territories: Upstate, Westchester/Rockland, Long Island, Bronx/Brooklyn/Queens/Staten Island, Manhattan, and Stuyvesant High School. The admissions rep with primary responsibility for Stuyvesant is none other than James Nondorf.
Yes, he’s responsible for Stuy, Horace Mann and Bronx Science. His product is relatively easy to sell, thank goodness. Also, Stuy kids know a good institution when they see one. I’ve grown up around them (all my friends went to Stuy, except me the dodo head) and all went to ivies a million years ago. UChicago is now one of the most coveted institutions at Stuy now.
@booklady123 - agreed. He probably also knows the RD number. But he was speaking to the families of accepted students from that first-deadline application pool - the “early pool” - so he’d be using numbers from just that pool. EDII/RD is actually a different pool of applicants (and includes deferreds ).
The best way to think about is is that EA/EDI used to be the old EA pool (and the application numbers are consistent with that history) and the EDII/RD pool used to be the old RD pool (again, consistent numbers). UChicago has forced segmentation of both pools into two groups: 1) those who have a clear first preference and/or value the school using factors other than price (conditioned on ability to pay), and 2) those who have a clear first choice elsewhere and/or want to use price as a consideration for making a decision. UChicago figured that there were a whole lotta qualified kids in that first pool, which would explain the significant proportion of EDI/EDII selected last year. We’ll see if the same happens again but Nondorf seems either to be saving the Big Reveal for the April Admit Days or is keeping it all a deep dark secret. Maybe he’s onto us
^^ sorry: “there were a whole lotta qualified kids in that first GROUP” (not pool). Pools are Early (EDI/EA) vs. Regular (EDII/RD). Groups are Non-Sensitive (EDI/EDII) vs. Sensitive (EA/RD). Someone remembered their marketing class and threw all those segments into a 2x2 matrix to figure out how to maximize yield subject to available funds.
Makes sense - I just wasn’t making the connection that the event was specifically for December admits…thanks @JBStillFlying
Also, I think ED2 is a curious thing, and a different beast altogether than ED1 and EA, despite it being binding. I mean, it’s very clearly a strategy designed to bat cleanup and attract students who were rejected from their ED1 choices. And the fact that some schools offer it and some don’t reveals something of their strategies (which can be, and has been, examined ad nauseum – here on CC and elsewhere).
I speculate about what it says about the ED2 pool. I’m sure this means different things at different schools, but I wonder whether it would make the ED2 pool more qualified (as in “highly qualified candidates who saw themselves as candidates to top tier schools but didn’t quite make the cut, but are still more qualified than the average RD applicant”) OR less qualified (as in “didn’t get into their ED1 school for a reason, don’t know their competitiveness, or are just blindly hoping for an ED statistical edge”).
I have heard both college counselors and various admissions officers describe ED2 in both ways. We have a friend who is the head of admissions at a pretty solidly second-tier school, who jokes that ED2 is their chance to “swoop in and steal all the best candidates leftover from ED1,” before they have more options/choices in RD with a list of schools.
The question is, for UChicago and every other school that offers ED2, do they “care” that they are second choice, or does it not matter since the round is binding and all they care about with ED2 goals is helping yield?
And to add a bit of context: my son was ED1 at another school (where he was deferred). However, up until the days before November 1st he went back and forth between that school and Chicago a thousand times. Really loves them both. In the end, the fact that Chicago offers a second ED round and the other school does not is the ONLY reason he decided on which to apply to first, because he still had ED2 to follow up with at Chicago. Then, even before his deferral decision (like starting over Thanksgiving, IIRC), he was sort of regretting it and leaning back toward Chicago as his #1. So I am REALLY hoping he didn’t shoot himself in the foot by not going ED1 to Chicago. :-SS
Yes, ED2 attracts a number of applicants that have UChicago at #1 (but have another university about equal to it so they want to maximize there chances into getting it to one of them by going ED/SCEA then ED2, whether that is a smart option is debatable) and those who have UChicago as a close #2 but are deferred from there #1 choice and feel comfortable committing to UChicago in ED2.
My D didn’t apply ED/EDI/SCEA anywhere - just EA to UChicago. Perhaps that gave her additional cred. when she explained the situation to her AO as she switched to EDII, but in all honesty UChicago probably looks at each pool as distinct from the others (and probably as distinct from those at other schools). If you are an EDII candidate, then you are saying that UChicago is now your clear first choice and would enroll if admitted. How - or when - you got to that point is probably less important. There are many paths to that decision. Had my D not been qualified, her explanation wouldn’t have helped her. Had she been super qualified, she would have been admitted EA. She was probably in the right place at the right time with EDII - which just goes to show how much uncertainty there is in this whole process!
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