Early Applications to UChicago

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of Chicago ✅
41

@nrtlax33 I’m not sure what you mean. Let’s take your original question

6,286 kids in Autumn 2017, reduced to 6138 in Winter 2018. Reduction is 148. Did you try and check how many degrees were awarded in Winter as folks had suggested? 115 degrees were awarded, which accounts for most of the difference

Again 5,917 students in Fall 2016 reduced to 5,838 in Winter 2017. Reduction is 133. 97 kids graduated in Winter 2017 and so on. I didn’t check all the numbers.

Also I am not sure 1,397 is accurate for the total degrees awarded in 2017. There were 58 degrees in Fall, 97 in Winter and 1397 in spring. So maybe your numbers are not yearly number?

Btw, why are you spending so much time on this? Are you spot checking all the elite schools’ enrollment numbers or is it just Chicago? Do you think the administration is deliberately concealing something sinister or lying about retention? Have a good day friend.

42

@surelyhuman : Can you share the source of your data? Thanks.

43

@surelyhuman :

https://registrar.uchicago.edu/data-reporting/degrees-awarded/
It clearly says the degrees awarded by the University of Chicago in 2017 are as follows:

Undergraduates 1397
Graduates 1819
Business 1279
Law 293
Medicine 89

The total is 4877. So ONLY 28.6% OF DEGREES AWARDED TO UNDERGRADUATES.

Who is confused? or you caught UChicago lying.

I have always recommended students not go to a school full of graduate students unless they know what they are doing. You might not have watched this – https://www.today.com/video/mental-health-policies-at-universities-draw-increasing-concern-708889155922

UChicago is a top feeder school for mental hospital. Read my old posts to find out my estimate of how many students are in the mental hospital.

44

I looked through the enrollment reports at the total number of students who enrolled for the first time as first-years (four autumns before) or transfer students (three autumns before) for the putative graduating classes of 2016, 2017, and 2018, and compared them to the number of discrete individuals awarded bachelors degrees in all quarters of calendar years 2016-2018.

So . . .

Entering students:

Class of 2016 – 1527 + 18 transfers
Class of 2017 – 1426 + 21 transfers
Class of 2018 – 1442 + 29 transfers
Total: 4463

Persons awarded bachelors degrees:
Class of 2016 – 1484 (1369 in spring)
Class of 2017 – 1577 (1396 in spring)
Class of 2018 – 1430 (1216 in spring)
Total: 4491

It’s not precise. One of the summer reports was missing, so I used the halfway point between the number of summer graduates the year before (30) and the year after (26). More importantly, some of the degrees awarded during those years were doubtless awarded to people who first enrolled prior to September 2012, and some of the people who enrolled during those years will get their degrees in 2019 or later. The fact that 28 more degrees were awarded in those classes than students enrolled is probably attributable to the fact that there was a huge jump in the entering first year class in 2015 (putative graduating class of 2019), which was 90 people larger than the previous year’s entering class, and some of them may well have graduated early. (If I hadn’t interpolated a number of summer degree recipients for the one missing report, the number of students enrolling and the number receiving degrees would have been exactly the same.)

But it’s pretty clear that there is no significant number of students “vanishing.”

45

@nrtlax33 I recognize the 1,397 number. I am suggesting that it may indicate only Spring numbers. I am not sure, because if you add up the Autumn, Winter and Spring graduating headcount numbers (they are listed in the same reports, if you look carefully), the count comes to 1,551. I don’t know why. Maybe somebody made a mistake and pulled the wrong number?

BTW, please change the way you express your opinions. You come off as very insulting and offensive. “UChicago being the top feeder school for mental hospital” is a ridiculous statement. First of all, it is very clear now that you really dislike UChicago, which is fine, but I would think that you would then just spend your time elsewhere. Secondly, characterizing students who are struggling with mental health issues and colleges that are trying to help them in the way you just did is very condescending. It also looks like you wrote that to just get a reaction out of folks on this forum.

Don’t kid yourself that Brown is very different. Here is just a sample.

  • Mireya Gonzalez ’20, an American studies concentrator with a focus on medicine and disability studies, took a year off for medical leave and has experienced both voluntary and involuntary hospitalization. Matthew Flathers ’19 has received both voluntary and involuntary treatments, while Charlie Steinman ’20 was forced to talk with a dean after having two encounters with Emergency Medical Services in one weekend.

“I definitely didn’t want to go on leave” when police officers and EMS presented that as an option, Steinman said. “Having to prove over and over again that you’re okay when you’re not” in order to avoid forced leave or forced treatment “is just really exhausting,” he added. “There needs to be a way to be honest about your condition” without being threatened with leave or being forced to change academic plans, Steinman said*.

Given that the report says that “1 in four college students” have mental health issues, simple logic states that Chicago can’t be the only place this is happening, since Chicago has less than 7,000 college students out of a total of 16 million college students in the US? So if the report is right (I am not sure it is, I am very skeptical of these alarmist reports), 4 million have mental issues. Even if you assume all 7,000 kids in Chicago have mental health issues, that is still 0.1% of the folks? Clearly Brown has its healthy doze of kids with mental health issues along with most other colleges then. Even the report says it found 22 schools?

Finally, you still have not answered my question. Why this focus on one school? Do you pour through enrollment reports of other schools too and try to reconcile all the data? And do you try and see which other schools including Brown may be “top feeders to mental hospitals” (whatever that means). Change your ways friend. Forsake jealousy, anger and spite. It is only bad for you. Please be kind and civil.

46

Too many have some pocket of time we choose to spend on CC. A number seem to have no other satisfying outlet for our analytical tendencies. (I get it. But it helps to remember an anon forum isn’t real life.)

So, do we really care to find students missing on college numbers? Enough to argue? It that the “it” we need? Do we really need to fault the colleges, assume plots, point fingers? Or is it some age old, time proven need to demonize something in order to feel ourselves better?

It isn’t even the point of this thread. But it goes on in so many threads, when someone wants to link to something, as if the weight of some numbers (including CDS) is so definitive.

As for mental health, don’t assume stats on health visits or behaviors define some surge in “mental illness” in the population, among the age group, or at one specific college. More people have access to counseling, more use it to gain perspective on issues that went untended in prior times. More colleges report drunken incidents and more. Find the perspective. Don’t assume.

47

There will always be more degrees awarded than actual students b/c people double (or triple) majoring get multiple degrees which are counted separately.

I think withdrawals or leaves probably does explain another few of these - but these are not always for mental health reasons. I.e. a wave of mono went through last quarter and put some people out for months. They were encouraged to take leaves since they could barely get out of bed.

48

@JHS I have added the number of students graduated in each quarter to demonstrate that students graduated can’t account for the number of students who disappeared:

2014 Autumn 5724              (38 B.A. + 4 B.S. total 42 graduated)
2015 Winter 5591  ==>  reduce by 133  (27 B.A. + 8 B.S. total 35 graduated) ==> **133-42=91 disappeared**
2015 Spring 5395 ==> reduce by 196 (1079 B.A. + 149 B.S. total 1228 graduated)  **196-35=161 disappeared**
                 ==> for the year 1228+35+42=1305 which is not far from 1326 reported on                  https://registrar.uchicago.edu/data-reporting/degrees-awarded/

2015 Autumn 5860 ----> New students come  
2016 Winter 5757 ==> reduce by 103
2016 Spring 5539 ==> reduce by another 218
2016 Autumn 5971 ----> New students come
2017 Winter 5838 ==> reduce by 133
2017 Spring 5588 ==> reduce by another 250
2017 Autumn 6286 ----> New students come
2018 Winter 6138 ==> reduce by 148
2018 Spring 5919 ==> reduce by 219
2018 Autumn 6595 > New students come

@surelyhuman : My calculation is different from yours. Please confirm. Thank you.

49

I still don’t get why you think this is unusual. Take winter 2018 to spring 2018 (I don’t have as much time on my hands as you so forgive me for not doing this for every quarter).

115 college degrees were conferred. From gendered breakdowns we can see that this corresponds to at least 100 people graduating. A few students probably transferred. And then the remainder, at most ~120 students (across the whole school, for a million different reasons ranging from physical to mental to financial) took leaves and withdrew, with the vast majority probably on leave.

That sounds…perfectly normal? 1% of the school having to go on leave every quarter sounds about “right” to me, considering all the things that could precipitate disenrolling. Hard to compare to other schools since I can’t find anyone else that publishes quarterly (or semesterly) statistics.

Edit: and this is assuming the statistics are perfectly accurate, which they probably aren’t. But degrees conferred almost certainly is.

50

@surelyhuman : I forgot to answer your question of “Why this focus on one school?”

In the original article posed by OP, UChicago’s number is “estimate” (in fact, almost everything related to UChicago is “estimate”). So I would like to do some estimate. Almost all other schools provide real number; there is no need to do estimate for those schools.

51

@nrtlax33 what other schools provide quarter-to-quarter (or semester-to-semester) enrollment reports that allow for this kind of intrayear enrollment analysis? Genuinely curious. The schools I looked at only had year-to-year enrollments so losses throughout the year were hidden by freshmen.

52

@nrtlax33 If there is in fact a nefarious reason for the estimate, Chicago (or any other school) can easily fudge the reported “official” numbers regarding enrollment and we would have no way of knowing it. Besides, you don’t seem to believe those official numbers, either, so I am not sure how you would be convinced. It is also true that a lot of other schools do not provide enrollment numbers from term to term as Chicago does, a point already brought up by @HydeSnark . If they were trying to hide something, wouldn’t you expect them to provide less detail, not more?

53

Maybe it is best to have a UChicago representative enlighten us on the reasons behind the differences of enrollment numbers from quarter to quarter. Is there a way to invite one?

54

^ He or she probably has more important things to do than settle a trivial squabble on some college forum. Anyway, you think that would satisfy @nrtlax33?

Those (one or very few) who are curious or interested in this topic should just contact the UChicago Registrar directly.

55

I don’t know. It may be in their interest to set this straight, too. A lot of aplicants read these threads.

56

Respectfully - it’s a silly conversation and I’d block it if I could figure out how! Anyone?

57

At the End of Fall of 2017, the College had 6,286 Students

  • 58 Students Graduated in Fall of 2017
  • 115 Students Graduated in Winter of 2018
  • 1216 Students Graduated in Spring of 2018
  • 34 Students Graduated in Summer of 2018
  • 1,823 New Students Arrived in Fall of 2018

The College should have had 6,686 Students at the end of Fall 2018. Instead it had 6,595 Students. So 91 Students appear to be unaccounted for if my Math is correct, but then the College also lists that 143 Students were not enrolled at the end of Fall, so those 91 could easily be in the 143 number.

If we do that for one additional year (that’s all I have the patience for)

At the End of Fall of 2016, the College had 5,971 Students

  • 57 Students Graduated in Fall of 2016
  • 97 Students Graduated in Winter of 2017
  • 1396 Students Graduated in Spring of 2017
  • 26 Students Graduated in Summer of 2017
  • 1,767 New Students Arrived in Fall of 2017

The College should have had 6,162 Students at the end of Fall 2017. Instead it had 6,286 Students!! In other words 124 Students seem to have magically appeared :slight_smile: Maybe the aliens returned them. or maybe these 124 were returning from various Leaves of absence. After all the number of un-enrolled students went down from 259 in Spring of 2017 to 104 in the coming Fall of 2017.

This appears a big fat “nothing burger”. I don’t see any issues as @HydeSnark and others have already noted.

Besides, the Govt requires the Colleges to report Retention and Graduation rates and I don’t think colleges will deliberately lie or mislead when they do this to the Govt. Any insinuation to the contrary is not logically tenable.

58

Some of you here are blatantly off topic and not taking the hint.

How about you pm each other and data spin in private? TOS also asks not to derail and not to debate.

59

MODERATOR’S NOTE:
Most of the users on this thread have been around long enough to know the rules. There is a negative ROI on my time cleaning up the pointless debate, so I’m closing.