<p>I tend to agree that financial aid is a big consideration, UChicago gives a few merit scholarships, but its need based aid is not all that generous. A look at the charts for award by income level shows that most of the Ivies tend to be more generous. For example, a family income of $40,000 per year will get about $31,000 at Chicago and about $42,000 at Yale. As for the SAT comparisons, those numbers are for the 50th percentile for precisely the reasons described, the range is 25th to 75th for purposes of a more accurate comparison. Brown is the Yin to Chicago's Yang, few requirements, a liberal passfail policy. Brown gets nearly twice as many applicants as Chicago as a result. It is going to attract quite a different, but stats wise, not better student.</p>
<p>you're probably right about the financial aid, most students chose yale over uchi because yale offered more money.</p>
<p>It does happen, I know one who did, and felt miserable doing so.</p>
<p>did that kids parents feel like failures because they couldn't scrape up enough money to send their kid to uchi? they all must have been devastated to have had to attend yale. it's so sad. do you think that kid actually recalls it like that or might it go something like this in the retelling: "can you believe? not only did i get to go to yale over uchi, i got more money from yale!"</p>
<p>pileway,
just to mention something...although i know rankings dont mean one schools better than the next, but if u look at us weekly, it'll tell u that rice is actually ranked below uchi. there must've been some reason for that. and their acceptance rate is high because they have really great applicants, not because they just randomly accept crappy people who apply</p>
<p>I'm sorry to break this to you nanaijuh but us weekly rankings are a joke. When I asked my guidance counselor about rankings for history departments in the United States she just laughed. She than told me that every single group that does college rankings is doing it under a different criteria and some have undisclosed agendas. Basically don't trust the majority of the rankings out there. I mean I could find just as many groups that rank Rice above University of Chicago. I must admit that I am sick to death of the defensive people on this forum that are unable to get over the fact that University of Chicago is not considered the greatest school in the world. Yes it is really good and yes it is a top school in the United states. But no you just can't compare it to the ivies and the schools that are under the ivies such as Georgetown and Rice. I would put it in a third category directly under the likes of Georgetown. To everyone that has actually answered questions and provided useful advice thank you. To everyone else that just argues nonstop about how unfair it is that University of Chicago will never get ivy status GET OVER IT....</p>
<p>Quote
"although i know rankings dont mean one schools better than the next"</p>
<p>sheesh man, calm down. all im saying is that its possible uchi is not as easy to get into as u thought</p>
<p>I'm sorry. I just exploded because I have tons of homework due tomorrow and a massive scholarship essay that I have not yet started that is due tomorrow as well. Anyway I have pretty much decided that University of Chicago is not the school for me. It would be a perfect fit other than the fact that I could never afford the tuition and I doubt that I will get enough financial aid.</p>
<p>im sorry...im sure we didnt mean to discourage u from applying. now i feel bad. lol</p>
<p>pilebay,
as far as the finaid goes, my son is receiving what the calculators suggested that he would. If that is not enough for your family to manage, some schools with more broadly distributed merit aid should be in the mix.</p>
<p>As far as history departments are concerned, you might want to do a bit of research into what individual professors are concentrating on. If a school does not have enough depth in your areas of interest, it may not be the best fit for you, regardless of ranking.</p>
<p>although rankings are sometimes subjective, the criteria by which they rank schools do sometimes mean one school is better than another. the rankings are very important to the schools. a big jump up will translate into more applications which means 1) more qualified applicants and 2) lower acceptance rates. lower acceptance rates usually contribute to the strange idea that the school is 'hot'. with regards to pilebay, i agree that a lot of uchi people really have a chip on their shoulders about uchi not being as desirable to most college seniors as the ivys and some others. yet, that is what makes this forum so much fun. i think it is hilarious to watch how they twist and turn to try and paint ichi with an ivy brush. i even have to qualify most of my postings with the usual "uchi is a great place, uchi students achieve just as much as an ivy student, uchi has just as many award winning professors as an ivy, uchi's weather is as nice as stanfords, uchi is just as close to the charles river as harvard" just to get my point across that most high school seniors with ivy credentials view uchi as a safer bet (see, i'm even afraid to say "safety" now), but seriously, i don't think uchi is on a level below georgetown and rice, maybe the same level and below a aws.</p>
<p>nana, uchi may not be as easy to get into as you thought, but for a student with ivy credentials, it's still pretty easy. uchi takes people with lower gpa's and 1300's and they take 40% of their applicants anyway. that is one of the highest of the elite schools.</p>
<p>You should definitely apply to some schools that will give you good financial aid if that's what you need, but don't rule out UChicago. I don't know much about their financial aid other than they generally don't give a lot, but that doesn't mean you don't have a chance. </p>
<p>A friend of mine's first choice school had a financial aid policy similar to UChicago's. She was accepted and given what the calculator suggested she should get, but it wasn't enough for her family. She told her what another school (not quite as good as her first choice) was giving and her top school matched it. Long story short, she's now very happy at her first choice school, which is paying 50% of the tuition.</p>
<p>Make sure you can afford to go to some of the schools you're applying, whether it's directly or because of expected financial aid. Other than that, apply wherever you want and worry about financial aid after you're accepted. If you really love UChicago but you don't apply (for whatever reason) I'm sure you'll regret it.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, Chicago does not have a good track record of matching higher aid offers. It does provide 100% of what IT calculates is the need of the student. </p>
<p>Though Chicago does take kids in the 1300's, it's non-emphases on test scores and focus on essays, recs, etc. still yields higher student numbers (as do Rice, WUstl, and many others) than many of the Ivy's (all are probably statistically insignificant in any predictive sense). That its higher acceptance rate, and lower yield produce these outcomes suggests something about the self-selecting qualities of this smaller applicant pool. The unpredictableness (if that is a word) of the Chicago process and the overall quality of the student pool make going by the numbers at Chicago risky. A study was done back in 1986 on how selective, selective colleges really were. The authors recalculated on the basis of the number of applicants that were in the range of typical admits (as opposed to all applicants) and found that selectivity decreased dramatically for some of the heretofore thought-to-be very selective, and increased dramatically for other so-called less selective schools. Since the data are old, they aren't worth citing except to say that more factors go into understanding these phenomena than are typically considered, and most conventional wisdom is often of little help. </p>
<p>Here are the SAT 25th to 75th percentile range for 2005 (which factors out many of the athletes and some legacy's (Harvard's legacy admit rate is 40%, Brown's 56%). </p>
<p>V 700-800 H
M 700-790</p>
<p>V 690-790 Y
M 690-790</p>
<p>V 690-790 P
M 690-790</p>
<p>V 670-770 D
M 690-780</p>
<p>V 670-770 Ch
M 660-760</p>
<p>V 660-760 Col
M 660-760</p>
<p>V 650-760 B
M 660-760</p>
<p>V 650-740 Penn
M 680-760</p>
<p>V 630-730 Cor
M 660-760</p>
<p>i have never been able to understand how the concept of a lower applicant pool affects a higher acceptance rate or a lower yield. i do understand that with a lower yield a school must have a higher acceptance rate to fill its class. uchi accepts such a high percentage of their applications because they know that statistically, to accept any less, they would not be able to fill out their class. i do understand that if uchi has double the applications they get, then they would be at an admit rate similar to wustl, but that is not possible simply because, uchi is not as popular a final destination as some other schools. maybe if uchi did go to ed they would be able to manipulate their acceptance numbers to a level that is commensurate with their status, but until they do that, almost everyone that can get into an ivy will throw in an application into uchi knowing that a good 40-45 % get in. in essence, a safety school.</p>
<p>** Idad - ** </p>
<p>At the risk of going slightly astray....</p>
<p>I had not realized that the US News scores factored out many scores for athletes and legacies. Or did I read your post incorrectly?</p>
<p>Also, I am curious where you came across the legacy figures for Brown. We've been doing a lot of digging on this. The "best" that we came up with for legacy admit (at least from the applicant's viewpoint) was 42%. That was for students who could "pay their own way". If you factor in those students who are asking for financial aid, the figure is considerable lower than that. </p>
<hr>
<p>I do think we come to a point where debating these rankings is basically flogging a dead horse. So much depends on the perspective from which you approach this question. If I were to ask academic colleagues in certain fields whether Chicago or a particular member of HYPS carries greater clout and scholarship, many professors would say Chicago. Others would pick the Ivy, depending what discipline they are in. If I look at the US News ranking that approaches things from yet another angle, I see something else again. </p>
<p>To be frank, the US News rankings often make me uncomfortable. There's just too much possibility for playing with the numbers. If Chicago were to adopt some of Wash U's policies, it would be very easy to inflate its ranking. Just use the common app, institute binding ED I and II, put more emphasis on scores, and send out a flood of campaign brochures. (I could paper the walls of our house with the stuff we've gotten from Wash U.) You would get many more applicants, a better yield and higher test scores. Presto! Chicago's ranking would go up. Would it be a better school? I don't think so. It would be the same fine school it is now. </p>
<p>The blunt fact is that when we are talking about the top 25 or so schools, these kind of differentials in ranking are almost meaningless. ** Pilebay ** - I can't agree with you about the "superiority" of Duke or Georgetown over Chicago. Even US News is split on this one: Duke is ranked 5th and Georgetown 23rd. So one is technically higher than Chicago and the other lower. The real truth is that each of these schools is looking for different strength in the kids it enrolls. (Just compare the Georgetown and Chicago admits on the board last year. I was struck by how important SAT scores were for G'town and how many high scorerers were rejected by Chicago.) </p>
<p>In any case, if you have an interest in Chicago, I would urge you to apply despite your financial uncertainty. You'll never know till you try and I do know some families where the student has gotten a package that meets his need. Laying all this ratings garbage aside, my son absolutely loved the campus and the city when he went there last summer. And yes, the work was heavy. He is applying to both Ivies and Chicago plus some true safeties. (No one will convince me that Chicago is a safety even if one had straight 800's!) We'll see where he ends up....</p>
<p>cami, with all due respect to idad, i have always had a problem with his statistics. they seem to be a moving target depending on what point he is trying to prove. i also do not believe that idad or us news was excluding the scores of athletes and urms from their statistical database, although i have heard that some schools do before submitting their info and stats to us news. i believe idad was saying that by going with the 25th through 75th percentile, you end up leaving the jocks in the bottom percentile, but that may not be what he was saying. if that is what he was saying then using the 25-75 percentile to judge schools with athletes against uchi would also be improper. if you were to remove those traditionally lower scoring groups, you would raise the level of the 25th percentile and thus also raise the 75th percentile. the problem with this is that it may make uchi appear less favorable compared to a school like brown, which would be completely inappropriate and unacceptable in this forum.</p>
<p>I did not say athletes were removed, only that the the lower 25th percentile was removed (as well as the top 25th percentile). This is the standard used nationally for comparison, and that the definition of a safety school is one in which one's scores fall above the 75th percentile, and the school has over a 60% admit rate. For those with upper 25% scores, given Chicago's admit rate it would be considered a match. If one's scores fall in the mid 50th percentile it would be a reach, many of the scores (as the admit SAT statistics indicate) of those applying to many other fine schools, Ivies included, make Chicago a reach.</p>
<p>I am only concerned that students have good advice and apply to true safeties that they really like to avoid being very disappointed. </p>
<p>Chicago uses its own challenging application processes, and has a certain reputation as perhaps one of (if not the) most difficult schools in the country, these elements combine to keep the casual applicants at bay (which is a big reason for its lower application pool). As a result, to offset the fact that 6 in 10 do not get admitted, one must spend considerable time and effort on that application. Sending in an application that is not very well done and that does not show one is willing to embrace the challenge, will significantly reduce ones chances of admission, as is evidenced by a quick perusal of the accepted students thread where many 1500 plus SAT's with high GPA's were rejected or wait-listed. </p>
<p>If simple acceptance rate is the guiding factor, Cornell's ED acceptance rate is about 60%, one would think it would be swamped with applicants. It is not swamped because Cornell has qualities that attract some students and not others, as is true of all schools, and especially true of Chicago.</p>
<p>this is why i love this particular forum. facts don't matter. just make stuff up regardless of how outrageous it may be. where in the world does one get the statistic that cornell accepts 60% of their ed candidates? if we're going to make stuff up, i can do that too. how about this one. i hear uchi accepts over 40 percent of their applicants and only has a 30% yield...oh wait, that one is embarrassingly true. well anyway, the sixty percent cornell ed is insane. also, there is no criteria that says that a safety school has to be one that accepts over sixty percent (there's that magic number again) to be considered a safety school. uchi is a safety school to ivy caliber students because it accepts forty percent. tufts is a safety school for the ivys also and they accept around thirty percent. can we just have people without waning credibility post on this forum please?</p>
<p>i can't let this one go. it is just irresponsible to blatantly post erroneous statistics on this site. i have seen idad do this over and over and over. a lot of students come on this forum and rely on this board for insight. there is a responsibility of those who try to project an air of knowledge to not have to resort to trickery to support an insupportable position. a student should not be misled to believe that their chances at a cornell or wash u in st loo or swarthmore is better than they actually are. cornell does not have a 60% ed rate, nor does swarthmore have a 22% yield. wash u has an acceptance rate of around 20%, not that highly inflated number i took you to task on in that other thread. i know that there are many who don't like my style on this board (and like i really care) but at least i don't deliberately try to deceive. sure, i don't hide behind the veneer of authority, but what i say, people can rely upon as an expression of my true opinion. idad's misrepresentations hidden within his pitiful attempts to appear as an authority are a major disservice to those that seek true answers on this board.</p>
<p>The Cornell ED rate came from an analysis that included those who applied ED, were deferred, and later accepted. The ED alone rate is 41.7%, about the same as Chicago's EA rate. As far as the numbers for yield etc. they all come from published sources cited at the time of their original posting. I have not posted without citation. </p>
<p>For example, from the Princeton Review:
Swarthmore Freshman Admission Statistics
Total applicants who are accepted: 38%
Total of accepted students who enroll: 26%
<a href="http://www.princetonreview.com/college/research/profiles/admissions.asp?listing=1024057<ID=1&intbucketid=%5B/url%5D">http://www.princetonreview.com/college/research/profiles/admissions.asp?listing=1024057<ID=1&intbucketid=</a></p>
<p>Which, by the way, matches this publication from none other than the Swarthmore College website: <a href="http://www.swarthmore.edu/Admin/institutional_research/AdmitYieldRatesChart.pdf%5B/url%5D">http://www.swarthmore.edu/Admin/institutional_research/AdmitYieldRatesChart.pdf</a></p>
<p>As for WUStl, the only mention of the school was in reference to their fine SAT scores, nothing about admit rates. It seems that unsubstantiated rants are just that...</p>