Hand-wringing and complaining about UChicago's admit strategies

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of Chicago ✅
1

I have noticed that parents and students on this forum section seem to complain a lot about UChicago’s admit strategies. There is an interesting discussion on this thread for example

http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/university-chicago/1901459-in-16-17-uchicago-will-have-ea-ed-edii-and-rd-p1.html

I don’t see that kind of complaining in other forum sections. I don’t believe that Chicago is doing anything that much radically different from other schools, but somehow it is always held up to a different and much higher standard by its alums, parents of students studying there now, current students and prospects.

I don’t necessarily think this is bad, but I am just curious whether the stakeholders here are different from ones that participate and post regularly in other sections on CC.

Any thoughts on this?

Do people participating in on the UChicago CC forums complain more about the school than people participating in other sections?
Is Chicago being held to a different standard?
Does UChicago generally attract folks who always see the cup as half empty rather than half full?
Does this kind of self criticism indicate a kind of intellectual vigor that should be present in all the college sections?
Does the Chicago forum section see a lot less self congratulatory posts than other forum sections? If so, why?

2

On other forums most complaints come from rejected students and their parents.

3

The particular example you gave is a departure from how all other top schools do it. UC departed previously, but in a good (simple) way. Now they have made it much more complicated. Hence at least some of the discussion.

4

Because all forums are, to some extent, an extension of the school. This is straight out of the culture of UChicago.

5

It may be because Chicago has long been well-regarded by those in the know, but relatively unknown to Mr. and Ms. Average American, so few alums chose the University for prestige. Now, Chicago is playing the prestige game. On the balance, that’s probably a good thing, and some changes are relatively uncontroversial (new facilities, getting more upperclassmen into dorms, mitigating the “grade deflation” of the past). At times, though, changes are introduced seem designed to produce more applications, a higher yield, and a more affluent student body, for all the wrong reasons - with the result that kids whose rationale for applying is “But it’s (H/Y/P/S/M)” have been joined by a growing “But it’s Chicago” contingent, including many who’d be better off elsewhere.

Many alums on these boards, because prestige was never their #1 priority, frown on Chicago’s decision to encourage this. This freshman frowns on it as well.

6

My guess is that for a majority of students, they would like for a University to be easy for them to get into, but once they make it in, they would like it to become crazy hard to get into, because that would seem to increase the value and prestige of their degree. It’s human nature to want something that is rare, or something that is very difficult to obtain or something that others crave but cannot have. That is why gold is gold and diamonds are so valued. I guess Chicago students are different :-))

Maybe the University is trying to make the majority of the full pay parents and students who are forking out mega bucks for their Chicago degree, feel good that they have obtained a precious and rare thing. Otherwise paying $300,000 for an undergraduate degree does seem excessive even to experience the “Life of the mind” for four years.

7

Hoo boy! You are new to the UChicago community if you think all of those things are uncontroversial. They have all been bitterly debated! (Well, not so much mitigating grade deflation, although it’s pretty clear that there was at least as much folklore as reality in the whole story of grade deflation at Chicago.)

8

For those of you that are still hanging on to this discussion (admittedly, I’m getting weary of it too):

From Katherine Cohen in her book The Truth About Getting In-

"In an article in The Atlantic Monthly devoted to college admissions, James Fallows has attacked the early decision program, arguing that although there are many incentives for a student to apply early, there are even more incentives for colleges to encourage early applicants:

  1. Colleges want enthusiastic students who identify them as their number-one choice- it boosts campus morale and gives schools a much better indication of a students likelihood of accepting their admissions offer.
  2. Early decision facilitates the college's enrollment planning, so that the college does not overshoot or undershoot it's incoming class.
  3. Early decision improves the college's selectivity and yield , raising the college's US News and World Report ranking.
  4. Early decision knocks out the competition for applicants who might otherwise be applying to other selective schools.
  5. Early decision reduces the financial aid burdens of the college, because the college can lock a student into a certain package before the student has a chance to compare it to packages offered by other schools"

She continues… “Not only does this foster a competitive environment among college’s- as a loss in rank can easily translate into a loss of alumni donations- but, according to Fallows, ED programs are also by nature elitist. They tend to favor legacy applicants, wealthy candidates who can afford not to wait for offers of financial aid from other institutions, and students whose high schools are already well staffed and connected enough to encourage students to apply early in the first place. In addition, besides favoring well-heeled students with established connections to the corridors of power, binding ED programs encourage competition among students, further alienating them from the underlying goal of their adolescent years: education, both academic and emotional. Finally, ED programs contribute to the myth that only a small number of highly selective colleges in America are capable of providing an excellent undergraduate education…”

9

@goingnutsmom: “…binding ED programs encourage competition among students, further alienating them from the underlying goal of their adolescent years: education, both academic and emotional.”

This statement seems thrown into the argument, a disjointed point added to help a list grow longer, rather than to buttress what seems rather quantifiable trends in Fallows’ argument.

I have not found the search for ED admission to foster “competition among students,” though I have heard many argue such. There is no sense in that argument for me. The kids are seeking admission to schools to which they would submit an application at some point in time anyway, it just moves forward the submission and notification dates. The ‘competition’ was built into the system of college admissions: not everyone will get in, ever.

As for the underlying goals of the adolescent years…I think finding community, their ‘peeps’, is a huge part of the adolescent’s goal. Seeking that place among others, at least some of whom can be assumed to share some of the same interests and focus, is going to happen for everyone, whether that be in college or not.

10

The reason people are complaining is because this just seems to be a ploy to increase yield. Chicago is doing perfectly well with EA/RD with a 7.6% admit rate and 66% yield. What does ED offer that EA/RD doesn’t other than a minor improvement of statistics?

I’ve been very supportive of Chicago’s admission strategies to this point, and I’ve been very happy to see that Chicago is competing head-to-head with HYPSM and winning a lot of cross-admits with those schools in the process. But this seems to be a step too far, and very likely a mistake. I suppose Chicago has really joined the admissions arms race now.

11

Greetings from UChicago,

Hope this message finds you enjoying summer! I am writing today to share several enhancements to UChicago admissions and aid policies and programs for the coming year:

Earlier Financial Aid Awards
Enhanced Policy for Sending Test Scores
Expanded Application Options for Students
Increased Flexibility in Application Requirements
Early FAFSA and Financial Aid Awards

With the FAFSA available on October 1 this fall, and FAFSA applicants using prior-prior year tax data, UChicago will be able to offer final financial aid awards at the same time as admissions decisions to admitted students who apply for need-based aid.

UChicago’s financial aid deadline for early applicants is November 15. Applying by the appropriate deadline means that students will receive a need-based aid award with their offer of admission. Please check out No Barriers for information on our recently enhanced financial aid policies for students and families.

Domestic applicants may apply for aid at UChicago at any time, and we meet 100% of demonstrated need for all admitted students. For more information about applying for financial aid at UChicago, please visit collegeadmissions.uchicago.edu/costs/apply-for-aid.

Self-Reported Test Scores

Starting this year, UChicago will review the applications of students who attend U.S. high schools using self-reported SAT or ACT scores. Students will not be required to submit official score reports unless they are admitted and choose to enroll. We hope this will lower one more financial burden for students who aspire to a UChicago education.

As always, scores will be considered official if they are sent directly from the testing agency, if they appear on an official high school transcript, or if they are verified by the school counselor.

This change impacts only students who will graduate from U.S. high schools. Students who will graduate from a high school overseas will be required to submit an official score report at the time of application.

Expanded Application Options

Starting this fall, UChicago will add binding Early Decision I and Early Decision II options to our existing non-binding Early Action and Regular Decision rounds. We want to provide applicants the opportunity to choose the application plan that best fits their needs, and for years have heard from some of our Early Action applicants (and their counselors) that they would have applied Early Decision if it were offered. Now all options are available to students. Learn more about all four application plans.

Students who intend to compare multiple offers of admission and financial aid may choose to apply through the open, non-binding Early Action or Regular Decision rounds. Students who, after thorough research into a number of college options, are absolutely certain that they wish to enroll at UChicago if admitted—and wish to signal this intention in their application—may choose to apply through one of the Early Decision rounds.

UChicago remains committed to helping students make the right college match and to bringing the brightest minds to campus, regardless of family financial circumstances. We understand that there are many factors at play in the choice of application plan, and we will continue to consider every application, regardless of the application plan selected, through the lens of fit between the applicant’s goals and interests and UChicago’s educational offerings.

UChicago Application Options

During the 2016-2017 application cycle, UChicago will offer students a choice of the Coalition, Common, or Universal Applications. Our unique essay questions can be found on the UChicago Supplement, a required component of our application, regardless of which application form students choose to utilize.

Students using the Coalition Application will also have the opportunity to respond to the “Personal Statement” prompt through the medium of their choice. The instructions for this section will be:

Please respond to one Coalition prompt of your choice below. You are welcome to craft an original response, to share work from your Locker, or to submit anything else you have written or created in the past four years that you believe addresses one of the prompts. We recommend written responses of 650 words or fewer and video or audio responses of 5 minutes or shorter. You may submit a longer graded paper if you feel it represents your best work.

-Tell a story from your life, describing an experience that either demonstrates your character or helped to shape it.

-Describe a time when you made a meaningful contribution to others in which the greater good was your focus. Discuss the challenges and rewards of making your contribution.

-Has there been a time when you’ve had a long-cherished or accepted belief challenged? How did you respond? How did the challenge affect your beliefs?

-What is the hardest part of being a teenager now? What’s the best part? What advice would you give a younger sibling or friend (assuming they would listen to you)?

-Submit an essay on a topic of your choice or a graded course paper from the 11th or 12th grade including instructor comments.

12

@ssn137 Are you communicating the above in some official capacity with the University or is a cut and paste from some communication from the University?

13

its a cut and paste.
VLP- NO TIPPY-TOP college offers BOTH ED I AND EDII , AS WELL AS EA early application options! That is the reason for the current spate of criticism by many here on CC.
It looks to many of us like the UC admissions office just couldnt make up their mind… which is not the kind of thoughtful decision making we are used to seeing come from what is know to be an otherwise excellent college.

14

@menloparkmom

Hmm. I don’t think I buy that. One can criticize the school for the decision to go with ED and ED 2, but to allege that they couldn’t make up their mind is a big stretch.

My feeling is they are trying to transition, and are leaving the old options in instead of suddenly dropping EA, because they want to study the application patterns for a year or two before abandoning EA altogether. If they get 3500+ applications in ED1, they will eventually do away with EA and maybe even ED2. If however the ED 1 number is quite low, lets say less than 2,000 then they will retain the ED2 option. I suspect, they have thought thru this in great detail.

Either way I think the EA option will be sunset in a few years time. It offers very little benefit to the school

15

From a prior poster: “VLP- NO TIPPY-TOP college offers BOTH ED I AND EDII , AS WELL AS EA early application options!”

Hmm. I have a problem with this line of thinking mainly because this assumes that in order for UChicago to be right, it must copy something that the “tippy top” already does. That’s like extalling kids these days to succumb to peer pressure and not think for themselves “because everyone else is doing it”.

So far, the admissions office has proven that it gives a lot of thought to all of the changes that it introduced - and all of them have positive or net-neutral impact, despite the storm in a teacup controversies it generated in talkinghead forums like CC. So even though no other tippy top universities is providing UChicago with much needed validation, I think I would give the admissions office guys some props and consider that they do know what they are doing over there because they have, so far, have a good track record.

16

FStratford,

Ted O’Neill would disagree vehemently about the admissions office’s recent track record. I’d think he knows something about admissions, and his decision to resign soon after the decision to use the common app speaks volumes.

Things have gone pretty much how he expected, and he’s probably very happy to be done with it.

17

As Menlo Park Mom (hello to the my old home in the 94025) points out, I did a cut and paste of a segment from a university communication. I would encourage reading it before criticizing Chicago. I don’t know how the school could do more to reach students with financial hardships. Chicago will review your file with self-reported standardized test scores and will provide a financial aid offer with the offer of admission. How many other schools at the tippy-top level are doing that?

As for the proposition that “NO TIPPY-TOP college offers BOTH ED I AND EDII , AS WELL AS EA early application options!”–it turns out that there’s at least one, and it’s located in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago.

I’m reminded of when the Common Core was changed in the late 1990s. Many criticized it as the end of the U of C, or that it showed that Chicago was selling its soul to appeal to a wider span of candidates. Yet, here we are, nearly 20 years later, and Chicago is still Chicago–or was, I guess, until it was just ruined by changing the admissions process. The Core debate is particularly useful as a comparison. The fiercest critics regarded the Core as an immutable program that had existed forever. False. The original “New Plan” of the 1930s was, in fact, controversial because it allowed for (yikes!) electives. Robert Hutchins, along with Mortimer Adler (among others) tried without success to implement a more rigid curriculum in the 1940s. General education was passed for a time to the individual Divisions, and was not brought under uniform College control again until 1984. What was sacrosanct and timeless in 1999 had actually been around in its current form for 15 years. Change considered between one day and the next seems radical, but consideration of a fuller scope demonstrates that the “bedrock” had always been changing.

So, too, admissions policies can change. No top college’s admissions rate has changed as dramatically in the past decade or so. A Chicago advocate would say that reflects the efforts begun from the early 1990s to make the College larger, and more attractive to students. The result is that there is parity between regard for the College and regard for the University. The rankings and admissions rates of changes have leveled out, so it seems entirely appropriate for Chicago to rethink its approach.

Criticism that Chicago has done something weak, or something that’s more like other schools is mystifying. Until two weeks ago, Chicago was like only two schools (CalTech and MIT) among what are generally considered the top-tier universities. Now it is like exactly zero. Chicago is now like Penn or Columbia? Wrong. Early Action is still available at Chicago (not that there’s anything inappropriate about the manner in which Penn or Columbia attempt to meet their institutional priorities). Chicago’s changes disadvantage poor students? Wrong again. Chicago meets demonstrated need for all admitted students, regardless of admission round.

Assume that Chicago acts rationally to (1) enroll the best student cohort possible and (2) do it in a financially prudent manner. Note: Props to FStratford for taking the bold position that smart people actually think about these decisions. Assume that in the current environment, Chicago loses nearly all cross-admit battles with HYPS (or SHYP, as they might say in Menlo Park), and that Chicago is competitive with all other schools. If Chicago wishes to improve its students (to perhaps break into the HYPS realm, or to separate itself from the non-HYPS pack), it seems that adding ED1 and ED2 is a pretty sensible way forward (and that non-restrictive EA would be a pretty dumb method). ED1 permits direct competition for (excellent) candidates with Columbia, Penn, etc., and ED2 permits a (nearly competition-free) opportunity to have access to candidates who weren’t selected in the SCEA/HYPS round. Non-restrictive EA can work for CalTech and MIT, because those schools generally are attractive to more narrowly-focused students. But it was sort of dopey for Chicago to continue as a non-restrictive EA school. The very best candidates either wouldn’t apply early (because they will apply restrictive EA to HYPS), or they will have to pull their Chicago applications when they are accepted ED at Columbia et al. On top of that, Chicago probably had to be overly generous with aid. HYPS can be stingier, and fund at the demonstrated need level (their only real cross-admit competition is each other), but Chicago would get played against other schools for “merit” aid. Chicago lacked HYPS market prestige and lacked having locked-in candidates who really wanted to come to Chicago above all other places. Sort of the worst of both worlds. In cases where Chicago didn’t meet a hostage taker’s demands, the student became a loss, and Chicago would be forced to its waiting list in the summer for maybe 100 students–who were less desirable candidates.

At some level, perhaps this recent change represents a sign that Chicago is feeling confident. They perhaps believe they can compete with top non-HYPS schools in ED1, and that Chicago will be attractive to strong SCEA non-admits in the ED2 round. The only constituency that might be harmed by Chicago’s move is the group of folks who lost in the HYPS sweepstakes, and came to expect that Chicago would be there with merit aid above demonstrated need for their (almost) perfect little snowflake. That game is up, because Chicago is done being your tramp. If you are admitted (congratulations) and want what Chicago uniquely offers, then you’re going to have to pay your fair share–i.e. exactly what you would have paid HYPS in the event that your child was admitted to HYPS.

Finally, the legend of Ted O’Neill has been tossed into the fray yet again. I was a student in the College even before Ted was Dean of Admissions. We can all have opinions, and here are a few of mine: 1. I loved my time in the College, and thought I got the best education one could receive. 2. It is incorrect that Chicago is less rigorous or unique as a result of its work to expand its appeal among a broader segment of the population. I recently spoke with two women who graduated in the 2010s, and when the topic of school came up, we were goofing about Kant, Weber, and Durkheim almost immediately, and we were all able to share how a professor crushed us in a Core class paper. Chicago is still providing a Chicago education. 3. The College is better now than at any point in the 30-plus years its been since I went to school. One of my children is a current student, and getting an education that is every bit as good as mine. Who knew that the Marx-Engels Reader would provide a common bond? And my child’s classmates overall are more interesting than mine were. In my day, students were attracted to Chicago by a dog whistle that could only be perceived by a narrow range of beasts (children of academics; brilliant malcontents; 12-year olds who could do Lebesgue integrations, and a few people from Orland Park carrying slide rules). These types are still there (where else on earth would they go?). But, by getting the word out, Chicago has brought in other amazing students, who are a joy to spend time with.

18

@ssn137 I think almost everybody acknowledges that this move is beneficial for the school. The question is which group of students is it not so good for?

The folks who are the most unhappy are parents and students who got merit aid at UChicago or who got “the best need based aid” at UChicago, because they were able to shop around. UChicago was one of a handful of tippy top schools that gave out this kind of aid and also had a non-binding early action program. Now UChicago is off that list because with ED 1 and ED2, the EA option will become almost as tough as the RD option in terms of chances of getting admitted. And you first have to get admitted to qualify for aid. For these parents, the options are getting slimmer by the year and so I can see why they are annoyed.

I think full pay parents will in general be quite happy with the changes, because it means less competition for their kids and increases their chances of getting in.

So it all depends on how you are individually affected.

19

I think it’s bad for the school. And my kid’s full pay. So no, it’s not all demographics (much less how it directly affects the poster – most people involved in this discussion are post-admissions anyway).

And can we stop using the phrase “tippy top” schools? It not only sounds childish, it’s imprecise and opts into a vision of college admissions that, in contexts like this, should probably be explicitly articulated and argued for rather than assumed. Part of the difference in opinions expressed on this thread is attributable to a split between people who think that what’s beneficial for U of C is whatever raises its ranking or perceived desirability vis a vis a handful of (mostly Ivy League) schools vs people who think that what’s most beneficial for U of C is to preserve its distinctive culture and to find/attract the kids who will flourish in that environment.

20

Is it though? History seems to suggest that what is most beneficial for a university( not students, mind you, but the university) is to be an awfully rich university with a huge endowment with a global brand that is admired throughout the world. Think Cooper Union vs Stanford or Harvard. Think about the problems Cooper Union is facing today because of the financial bind it finds itself in. It’s Distinctive culture and values will do little to pull it out of the financial mess it voluntarily put itself into.

Some students may cherish a distinctive culture but as far as the university is concerned this kind of culture does little to extend its global brand value.

I think @exacademic is right though. I think the big difference is between folks who are advocating for a strong wealthy global brand vs folks who are advocating for a unique distinctive culture. With each passing year, I think UChicago is sliding towards the former and away from the latter. Personally I’m conflicted about this. I’m not sure. I definitely don’t want Chicago to be like Yale or Harvard, but I see how being an extremely rich and prosperous university has a lot of advantages in today’s world.