Georgetown Admissions Dean on UChicago Admissions' Practices

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of Chicago ✅
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<p>This is a fascinating interview with Georgetown's Dean of Admissions, Charles Deacon, who has held this post for decades:</p>

<p>Admissions</a> Dean Talks Staying Competitive - News - The Hoya</p>

<p>On pages 2-3, Deacon says the following about UChicago, as a counterexample to Georgetown:</p>

<p>"I’ll give you a great example: it’s the University of Chicago right now. They had a new president who came in and said, “You know, Chicago’s got this quirky admissions situation where they’re getting the ideal college students going through the process. But Chicago is as good as Columbia, and we only get 10,000 applications and they get 30,000, so we need 30,000 applications.” So they changed everything. Chicago was driven by trying to compare itself to Columbia, and they made that a big part of their application. And now, Johns Hopkins is being driven by having compare itself to Chicago.</p>

<p>We don’t have any particular school to compare ourselves to that causes us to have to act. If our pull is 10,000, that’d be one thing, but Georgetown has a great brand, great popularity and a very strong position. There has been no zealousness to just simply drive the numbers up for the sake of appearance, which we could easily do. Right now, we take a very responsible approach to who we even invite – we only write to about 40,000 people. Whereas obviously, Chicago is writing to much, much more than that. If we went to the common application, my guess is we’d add 10,000 people, because they would be people who’d say, “Oh, Georgetown? Yeah, it’s a high profile institution. I’ll check the box.” We’d only be adding people who otherwise wouldn’t have gone to the effort. They would look really good because their other options are Harvard, Princeton and Yale, but somebody who might have gone through the effort might end on our waiting list. How does that help anybody?"</p>

<p>My issues with Deacon's analysis though, is it doesn't account for the positional differences between UChicago and Georgetown 6-7 years ago. For decades, Georgetown was carefully building its college brand, establishing an allure, and nurturing its base. So, without needing to market heavily, it maintained striking distance in terms of selectivity vis a vis most ivy league schools. UChicago, on the other hand, treated its college like an afterthought for a good portion of the 20th century. </p>

<p>So, UChicago, under the directive of President Zimmer, needed to play catch up fast. I don't think anyone anticipated the new approach being as successful as it has been, but it was a necessary step because the university had lagged on this front for so, so long. </p>

<p>On a related note, Deacon presents a nice student-centric view about admissions, but he's certainly in the minority here. Most schools would like to drive up application numbers. </p>

<p>The key next steps for UChicago's College to, as Georgetown, etc. have done, really burnish the brand of the College and make it as good as possible. I think there are several administrative barriers in place to this (namely, an administration that does not inspire confidence and still features many who remember the days of the College as an afterthought), but that's really the next important step. The market has responded strongly to UChicago's advertising, but it only takes a few missteps to turn marketing materials into a bunch of false promises.</p>

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<p>There’s some hogwash there (not Cue7 but the GTown admissions dean), as we say in the South.</p>

<p>What’s wrong with contacting a lot of people? You’re going to inevitably reach a number of talented, well suited (i.e. suited to the UChicago distinctive and rigorous intellectual environment and Hyde Park / urban ambience) who wouldn’t have otherwise thought about the University. </p>

<p>How does it benefit students to not know about your institution? Which is the greater evil: discarding UChicago emails / postal mail or perhaps having a number of students missing out on what could be, for them, the ideal university?</p>

<p>This is a real world question with my son is an example. He would not have considered UChicago without the publicity. He got the mail (the maps, the pennant, the great pictures) became intrigued, did research, talked to his GC, applied, was accepted, and is now a freshman* at the University truly loving it.</p>

<p>My main point is that so many of the postings focus on the people who get the mail and are irritated by it. What about the people are truly grateful the mail came? </p>

<p>As Sgt. Hulka would say: “Lighten up!”</p>

<p>*Excuse me–“First Year”</p>

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<p>By the way, former U.S. President and Rhodes Scholar Bill Clinton would be surprised to hear that he went to a University that “barely stood out in Washington”.</p>

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<p>I agree with Kaukauna-my second year S was introduced to a school that never would have been on his radar in a part of the country he never imagined he would be living in now. The unusual brochures piqued his interest and he discovered a school that really seemed perfect for him. Luckily, UChicago thought he was a good fit for them.</p>

<p>Plenty of other schools certainly emailed and sent brochures, packages and other various literature that equaled UChicago’s mailings.</p>

<p>Now we are going through the college process again with S2 (hs 2015). He also enjoys the emails and literature from the many schools who send information to him. Who knows what will discover this time around.</p>

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<p>Hm. <em>strokes chin</em></p>

<p>I have a hard time thinking about the question of whether Chicago does too much marketing without diving into my own background. Relevant information:</p>

<p>-- All four of my grandparents have college degrees. One of my grandparents has a graduate degree from an Ivy. My grandmother’s sister was one of the first women ever to graduate from a tip-top law school with a JD. Three out of four of my grandparents majored in the liberal arts.
– My parents share three Ivy League degrees. My parents had the same (fluffy) major in undergrad. Neither of them have a professional (JD, MD, MBA) degree
– My parents shipped my older brother off to yet another Ivy before I was old enough to start looking at colleges</p>

<p>I mention all of this information because it implies a lot about my college search, my college knowledge, and the assumptions that my parents and I made, including:
– that top colleges were not all alike, but rather were distinctive from each other
– that having a liberal arts degree would increase quality of life, no matter what the degree was in
– that the college experience was worth paying for, for what it signified to employers as much as what I might or might not learn
– that as long as money is money and hard work is hard work, I should find the school I want to attend rather than the school that’s hot at the moment</p>

<p>All of these factors helped point me in the direction of Chicago once upon a time. And my parents were more than happy that I was thinking about a school like Chicago, even though it was a) cold, b) far from home, and c) in another time zone. We knew people who knew people there, we had been to campus before. And, in fact, I don’t remember getting any mail or postcards from Chicago – I don’t think my PSATs were high enough for me to be interesting to them. </p>

<p>I mention all of this because I imagine that many CC posters and the ones that are most liable to complain about the abundance of college mail come into the college process with this kind of savvy. Had Chicago bombarded me with college mail, I would have though it to be a little too heavy-handed. But had I not had the kind of background I did, would I need a little more of a push to consider the school? Absolutely. </p>

<p>So in one sense it’s kind of elitist to say that a college’s marketing work is done, that enough applications are enough. Because there are always kids who don’t have the knowledge that they could, and that’s the role of a marketer, after all, to educate prospects on what they might not know. And provided that there are more kids every year who don’t have this information, I don’t have a problem with it.</p>

<p>Now, if only there were a way to predict information saturation and spread outreach efforts to where they’d be used best…</p>

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<p>It is indeed hilarious to see the way UChicago’s rise in popularity drives the bitter alums and students and administrators at other universities crazy.</p>

<p>And now the reality of what high school students at the top schools are saying. Two articles from Harvard-Westlake on UChicago’s rise in popularity:</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.hwchronicle.com/news/93-percent-of-seniors-apply-early-to-college/[/url]”>http://www.hwchronicle.com/news/93-percent-of-seniors-apply-early-to-college/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p><a href=“http://www.hwchronicle.com/opinion/choosing-between-my-education-and-my-education/[/url]”>http://www.hwchronicle.com/opinion/choosing-between-my-education-and-my-education/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>@alicejohnson cautious–your jealousy is showing; you do look a bit green. do go ■■■■■ somewhere else.</p>