Can anyone explain this to me? All reports indicate that Chicago had about 28000 apps this year, and an 8% acceptance rate (~2200 accepts). That means, to get a class of about 1500, the yield will be about 69%.
Last year, the yield was 66%. Why all these shenanigans (ED, ED2) to boost yield a measly 3 points? All reports indicate that the incoming class is about as strong as past years - maybe a little stronger, but not some huge jump.
So what did this big change do? Maybe culturally there are some more students who had Chicago as their number one choice, but does this year’s process really merit all these changes, for such piddly improvement?
Cue7 You assume 1500, if its 1600 then its 73% , it may even be higher. So your assumption affects the bottom line and is a 6% increase in yield worth it, IMO, yes, ED/ED2 are good things as they let the college know who really wants to be there.
Why would they want the class size to be 1600? They didn’t have the infrastructure to support 1500 when they over enrolled a couple years back, and even with the new north dorm, you still have students in substandard dorms (like international house).
Going to 1600 would give Chicago their largest class ever, while the number of faculty, classrooms, etc have stayed pretty constant for the past several years.
Now, Chicago could stay with the same gee whiz approach and say, look at us, we’re so popular, but that seems disingenuous. When you have ED AND ED2, you can really control yield more carefully.
If Chicago was serious about not growing too much too fast, they’d accept even fewer students, and then use the waitlist even more judiciously. They don’t appear to take this approach with a 8% accept rate on 28k applications, and given their past yield results.
To me it is not a piddly improvement that more of the incoming class will have had Chicago as their first choice. We will see in due course just how great this increase actually is. However, the apparently significant increase in ED admittees must mean that the rate of increase of first-choice admittees must also be significant. If, as many on this board are predicting, the trend to ED continues, the rate of first-choice admittees will also inevitably increase.
One of the old raps against the College was that it was full of Harvard wannabes and rejects. Though I don’t entirely buy that criticism, I do believe it is nice to see it put it rest. It is bound to be a boost to the esprit de corps of the place that an ever-increasing percentage of its student body only ever wanted to attend it and must be pleased as punch that they are nowhere else than where they are.
The boosts in yield and in inherent quality of the incoming class, even if small (which remains to be seen), also have to be good in themselves. In any event, whatever the actual figures show, that the new system constitutes “shenanigans” is a judgment I don’t subscribe to. Indeed, it was often being alleged on this board that the new system was just one more attempt to game the rankings regime. Now that it appears that this will not be the result (due to the decline of RD applications) but rather that the result has been a decline in RD applications and potentially of rates of acceptance (the “beauty contest” as it has been elsewhere called) where are all those who vociferated on that subject?
Cue as an alumnus I’m surprised you refer to IHouse as a “substandard dorm”. It is not substandard in my experience. My experience is a student who lived there for two school years.
omg I-House is not a substandard dorm! I-House is great
Anyways they have more beds now. North had more beds than the satellites put together, South added a lot of beds, and I-House doesn’t have grad students anymore.
They have 3,300 beds and since only 53% of the student body stays in campus housing, they can go 1,700 maybe even 1,800 for the new class and not have any issues.
It will be interesting to see what class size they settle on
“All reports indicate that the incoming class is about as strong as past years - maybe a little stronger, but not some huge jump.”
We’ve heard a bit differently from someone who works at UChicago (on the academic side so they get the admissions reports). The class is notably stronger.
Honestly, given where UChicago’s stats have been, you can’t really say the next class is noticeably stronger unless/until you see them in the classroom. You can say the stats are higher, but that’s relatively meaningless because higher GPA doesn’t inherently = stronger student when school and coursework vary and because standardized tests aren’t designed to make fine distinctions among high-scorers (in part because they max out at a level way below what top HS kids can do).
I’m certainly willing to believe that UChicago admissions decided to raise those numbers this year (always an easily available option for top 20 schools – cf Wash U), but I think that part of the school’s success in putting together a great cohort has been that it has not been primarily stats-focused but has looked more closely at/relied more heavily on other indicators of academic prowess/promise (e.g. essays, recs). That strategy certainly didn’t hurt them wrt stats, but it created a space in which it would be possible to improve stats while ending up with a less impressive class. Not saying that happened – just saying that you don’t know til you work with them.
We know someone whose kid was not accepted at UChicago but is now graduating val. at a HYPS. We also know people who were denied tenure at one school only to be courted by same just a few years later. Hindsight is 100% accurate.
The story we heard was that the class of 2021 is “higher quality”. Have no idea how admissions is defining that and not sure they are saying the overall outcomes are necessarily going to be higher than, say, for last year’s incoming class. Obviously stuff like high stats is correlated with higher selectivity and prestige so that’s always good. Also, one difference this year is that they are more assured of enrolling the “higher quality” - however that is defined- due to ED and earl(ier) commitment of EA. Another factor could be that they are admitting a larger number of kids with the conventional great attributes who are more knowledgeable and informed about the place. There are many intangibles that would lead the AO to conclude higher quality.
Re the many intangibles that would lead the admissions folk to claim “higher quality.”
^Including self-interest, LOL! They just conducted this experiment that lead to a 2% RD rate and probably the highest differential between ED and RD out there. In the process, they lost enough applicants that improved yield didn’t “improve” their overall selectivity. They damn well better claim that the quality of the class improved. And higher test scores are an easy (and meaningless) claim, given that this is the first year of the new SAT. I plugged in sample scores of a previously-admitted student and they went up 40 points on the 1600 point scale in the conversion from old to new.
