Hi!!
I heard that those who apply to early action to uchicago might be disadvantaged because the school will most likely favour the early decision applicants more – just wondering how much truth there is to that statement?
Also does anyone have the stats for uchicago’s early admission acceptance rates (early action AND early decision), will greatly appreciate it thanks!
There aren’t any stats for Chicago’s early decision acceptance rate, because this is the very first year Chicago will be offering early decision. I’m sure everyone is curious to see what that rate is. And, by the same token, no one expects Chicago’s EA admission rate to be similar at all to the past this year, because of the ED option.
I don’t believe Chicago ever publicized its EA admission rate for the classes of 2019 or 2020; before that, it was around 12%, but had been dropping rapidly year to year. The number of EA applications had been increasing at a huge rate (which slowed somewhat the past couple of years), and at the same time the college was admitting a higher percentage of its total admits from the EA pool (over half, the past few years), but the increase in EA acceptances wasn’t keeping up at all with the increase in EA applications. The EA admission rate the past couple of years was probably in the 10-11% range.
It’s hard to believe Chicago will actually take a bigger percentage of its total class from the early application pool this year, since it is clearly well over 50%, and most other colleges seem to want to hold it down to 30-40%. The actual number of early admission acceptances will probably be comparable to the past few years, since Chicago’s yield on its EA pool included lots of kids for whom Chicago was a clear first choice, and who would have applied ED if that option had been available. The big questions are (a) how many people will apply ED, (b) how will the ED option affect the number of people who apply EA (will it be a 1-for-1 tradeoff, will total early applications keep increasing, or will people be less willing to apply EA because of the fear of being shunted aside for the ED people), and © how will the early admits be hacked up between ED and EA?
FWIW, here’s my guesses (which are just guesses, albeit informed by some years of following admission trends): About 2,500-3,000 ED applications. About 400 ED acceptances (13-16% acceptance rate). About 9,000 EA applications (i.e., slight decline overall in early applications, but I could be super-wrong about that), with about 900 early acceptances (10%).
Here are my hopefully educated guesses 
ED1 Applications: Around 3,500. Some pull from the Chicago EA pool, Some pull from students who have been applying ED to other schools, but now apply ED to Chicago in the hope of getting into a higher ranked school and the fact that Chicago is drawing more and more prep school kids
ED1 Acceptances: around 20% (This will generally be a strong pool, given Chicago’s ranking and reputation now)
EA applications: Around 9,000 (Those who still apply to ED schools, but want to hedge their bet)
EA Acceptances: around 5% to 6%
In my calculation, applying EA now is not a good strategy. I expect the admit rate to drop at least 4 to 5 percentage points form previous years. Only extremely talented, first generation, URM’s etc will stand a fighting chance.
Based on the class of 2020 survey, it looks like over 70% of students who applied early to UChicago and got in early had UChicago as their top choice school. I understand that around 12,000 applied early, and about 10% were given admission during early action. so of the roughly 1,200 students who applied early and got in early, roughly 800 could have applied ED if that option was available to them.
Assuming around 80% was deferred (so around 9,500) 75% of those who eventually got in, indicated that UChicago was their top choice. So I would assume that a good percentage of these kids could have also applied ED if they had a choice. Hard to factor how many got deferred and then accepted, but including those for whom UChicago was the top choice, who applied EA, were deferred then denied or got in on the wait list, that would be as high as 5,000 kids.
So a potential pool of roughly 6,000 kids among the 12,000 or so who applied EA considered UChicago their top choice. Even if you factor that 50% of those kids would not apply ED because of financial reasons, I think you can probably expect around 3,000 to 3,500 kids to apply ED to UChicago in 2021. Then there are the kids who may apply ED to UChicago now instead of applying to ED to other schools.
This tells me why the college is moving to ED. They must know that roughly 50% of EA applicants are in fact not just hedging their bets with a UChicago EA application, but for them, it is their first choice.
As far as I know, there are only two colleges that ever get more than 3,500 ED applications – Penn and Cornell, both significantly larger and broader in their appeal than Chicago, with many more total applications – and none that gets anywhere near 6,000 ED applications. At least ED I.
In any event, there are real barriers to applying someplace ED, and a huge percentage of applicants just won’t do it, first choice or not. Brown and Columbia both get somewhat more total applications than Chicago, and they the first choice of plenty of kids, but neither gets as much as 10% of its applications ED. Penn is the only peer college I know that gets a higher percentage of ED applications than that. Every college with an EA program gets significantly more early applications than colleges with ED programs.
ED II is a huge, weird wildcard here, because no peer college offers it. Chicago could pull in a ton of ED II applications from very strong candidates who applied to Ivies or Stanford SCEA or ED and were deferred. I wonder if that possibility will put a damper on ED I admissions – the staff may want to see what the ED II pool looks like before it takes any risks with ED I candidates.
Here are the # of ED applications for the Ivy league for the class of 2020
Brown: 3,030(9.3% of total pool)
Columbia: 3,520 (13% of total pool)
Cornell: 4,882 (10.85% of total pool)
Dartmouth: 1,927 (9.32% of total pool)
Harvard: 6,173 (15.8% of total pool)
Penn: 5,762 (14.8% of total pool)
Princeton: 4,229 (14.4% of total pool)
Yale: 4,662 (14.8% of total pool)
Overall Ivy: 34,185 ED/SCEA apps (12.5% of total pool)
If you remove the SCEA schools, the total ED apps for Ivies was 19,121 (11% of their total pool).
Average early admit rate for Entire Ivy pool was 20%. If you remove the SCEA schools, the average admit rate for ED was around 23%
UChicago got 31,411 apps for the class of 2020. So if it mirrors Brown or Dartmouth it will get around 2,900 ED apps. If it mirrors Cornell, it could get around 3,100 apps. If it mirrors Columbia or Penn it could get 3,800 ED apps.
applying EA for Chicago, just isn’t looking like a good strategy, based on the limited information we have right now.
The numbers look interesting if you try to estimate the yield, based on some assumptions.
Assumptions
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ED1 Apps: 3,500
ED 1 Admit rate: 23%
ED 1 Yield: 95%
ED 2 Apps: 2,500. This is the hard one to estimate. of around 34,100 students applying ED/SCEA to the Ivies, 80% were either denied or deferred. That is around 27,000 applicants in limbo who were ready to take a leap on ED. I am assuming that less than 10% will now apply ED2 to UChicago.
ED 2 Admit rate: 15% ( I am assuming a smaller admit rate, because I think this pool will be very strong)
ED 2 Yield: 95%
EA Apps: 8,500
EA Rate: 6%
EA Yield: 70% (Assuming, that the RD yield is rather poor at around 45%, Chicago’s EA yield to fill the 1600+ seat for the class of 2020 must have been pretty high, to give an overall yield as officially stated of 66%. I am taking a conservative number of 70%)
*
That means UChicago will already have firm enrollment of 1,100 from these ED1 and ED 2 pools alone.
Given a total class strength of around 1,600 or so, there is not much more room left for either the EA pool or RD pool. If they get around 350 “confirmed” from the EA pool, that would bring the total enrollment to 1,450. That leaves next to no room for the RD pool. I expect the admit rate to be dismal for this pool. I mean it could be in the 1%-3% range
That gives an incredibly high yield for Chicago. Over 80% easily. If things go crazy in the ED2 pool, it could be as high as 90% overall!!
I think with the ED1/ED2 strategy, UChicago is trying to mimic the yield and admit rates of Stanford and Harvard. Remains to be seen if they will succeed.
Maybe. But if they take 70% of their class ED, they will come under enormous censure from the mandarins whose party they want to crash. And they will tank applications for following years. That’s why I said 400 ED acceptances. Maybe 500 with ED II, but not more than that. They will defer the rest.
I don’t understand why you think there will be a higher admit rate ED I than ED II if the ED II pool is stronger. I think the tendency will be to defer ED I applications until they have a sense of what the ED II pool will look like. Maybe they will have that before they make the ED I decisions. If someone is applying SCEA to Harvard, nothing stops her from filing her ED II application at Chicago in November, given that she can always withdraw it or convert it to RD before February. They won’t have all the ED II applications by the beginning of December, but they may have enough to know what the pool will look like.
I am not sure the Common App will allow you to do this. In any case, when you file for ED, I think your school counselor is informed so they know that you are applying ED. SCEA prevents you from applying to any other private school, so I expect the app to enforce this restriction as it does when you try and pick two ED schools. I know our school counselor did not allow some kids to file the NYU ED 2, while their ED1 was still outstanding. Also ED 2 apps are not due till January, so I don’t think Chicago will have a good view of the ED 2 pipeline before they have made their ED1 decision
Fair point, but this logic cuts both ways. If they have a very low blended admit rate for ED1 and ED2, which would be lower than Stanford’s SCEA rate going by your numbers, they would also send a very negative message to the kids who are really interested in Chicago and have indicated it is their first choice. Their blended ED rate can’t be lower than their current EA rate, which was roughly 10% this year. It has to be a at least a few points higher, no?
Either way, something has to give here. there are only so many levers you can pull before you hurt some constituency.
They are aggressively marketing to drive up total Apps.
They are ranked high enough now that many more kids are also applying
Their yield is already quite high and admit rates are already pretty low
They have now introduced ED1 and ED2 which can only serve to drive down the admit rates and drive up yields even more
They have promised to be need blind and meet all financial need.
They say they want diverse even quirky students who want to live the life of the mind.
Not sure how they can balance some of these conflicting objectives.
ED II exploits and/or resolves the insecurity of SCEA kids who were not among The Chosen.
Using phrases like The Chosen likely perpetuates those insecurities.
More like chosen to suffer #lifeofthegrind
I thought that The Chosen in the post referred to the SCEA Ivy rejected/deferred.
Oh lol you’re right, I missed that. Guess that’s why I wasn’t Chosen.
however, considering its uchicago’s first year doing ED, i dont think the ED application pool will be huge. A lot of people dont even seem to know about the new ED choice (i only just found out yesterday) but this gives advantage to the ED applicants this year because i believe the majority is still applying EA. Comparing an ED and EA student, the university would obviously go with ED applicant if the two students are on a similar level. I’m not sure how true my speculation about the ED pool is though. As an international applicant, i know that not many people in my area know about chicago’s ED choice, but could anyone clarify how it is domestically? are people aware of the new ED choice?