Oy gevalt
@HydeSnark So, NU ? Happy Passover.
One important thing for people on CC to understand is that at least from my understanding, the vast majority of people reading these threads are high schoolers (like myself) and their parents. People just tend to prefer to focus on the positives rather than the negatives (and let’s be real there are tons and tons of positives about the school). Being critical of the school is important and parents and prospective students should by all means be exposed to criticisms. I just kind of think it’s important though for all of you alums and current students and other posters to not get too caught up in squabbling about people’s opinions contrary to your own. The school has an exciting present and future and there’s ample evidence of that.
In summary agree to disagree. People reading CC don’t really want to read fights and mockery. Let’s go more for spirited debate !
I am still a little perplexed with the 8% admit rate. The admission office can easily make it roughly 7.5% by accepting, say, 125 fewer applicants, if they choose to, and still manage to increase the yield in a large margin because of ED1 and ED2. I am just not clear why the admission office did not choose to do so. Maintaining approximately the same admit rate of last year despite the drop in RD applications and increasing the yield to the 72% range would be a Goldilocks achievement.
When I tried to break down the numbers, the arithmetic is off because something is missing. Can someone please enlighten me on this?
Let’s see 125 x $70,551. I can think of almost 9 million reasons.
I’m pretty sure they have a number for each year that they want to enroll. How they get there is up to admissions which of course includes yield and acceptance rates that they want to hit.
8 percent or 7.5 makes no,difference in comparative selectivity. Yield is up and that matters.
From that 1998 NYT article:
“One of the most worrisome statistics, he and others say, is the low number of alumni children who choose Chicago. At 5 percent, it is well below the 10 percent to 20 percent at the top Ivy League colleges. Surveys show that alumni view their college career here as having been so intensely academic that they are uncertain if their children would be happy here.”
I wonder what the % is now?
Regarding critical discussions - aren’t those a lot more interesting discussion topics? UChicago has always valued good honest debate so why should the students and interested families who love the school be any different? @Cue7 is doing everyone a favor by second guessing nearly everything about the college because you have a chance to turn the thought over in your mind and agree, refute, or whatever. It seems there is typically someone to pick up the thread and respond, which means it was probably worth discussing.
I’m not so sure admissions is as cold and calculated as many people think. From what I’ve heard from admissions officers is that it’s a very human process with counselors toward the end fighting for certain kids that they believe in to get admitted. Stats aren’t everything.
@JBStillFlying 1998 ? Twenty years ago. That was prehistory. This is a different UChicago and a different era.
@ThankYouforHelp said: " I get tired of seeing the same old “sky is falling” narrative applied to every action, inaction, news or non-news, good or bad, about the University. It sucks the air out of the room."
@ThankYouforHelp - First, my apologies - my intention was never to stifle speech.
Second, a question: when did you graduate from Chicago? I graduated in the 90s, at the height of the Chicago President Hugo Sonnenschein controversy. Complaints and critiques about the University abounded then - and you could hear a dozen complaints in one day. (Such critiques even led, some say, to Sonnenschein’s resignation: http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1999-06-04/news/9906040113_1_resignation-great-books-policies)
My college years, then, informed how I talk about the University. I actually agreed with much of what Sonnenschein wanted to do. There was, though, something refreshing - invigorating, even - about the impassioned debate surrounding the “soul” of the University.
Now, instead of laying out the plan clearly - as Sonnenschein did - the current administration plays hide the ball. They don’t announce the target size for the College. They don’t announce the target size for on-campus living. They make unexpected admissions decisions that would make even Sonnenschein cringe.
Amidst this backdrop, this discussion board has become more of an echo chamber. Throughout this process, it feels like ownership of the University has been taken from faculty and students, and vested in the admins. As long as the ranking stays up and the fundraising goes (reasonably) well, there’s no one left to ask hard questions.
If that is indeed the will of the posters here, I’ll willingly cede posting and let the positivity flow unabated.
(But, as a final plea, could someone please tell me what the plan is? Sonnenschein had a plan - 4500 undergrads, more gym/library space, a little less core. Boyer had a plan too - 5000 undergrads and 70% in dorms. What’s the new plan?)
My sense is that lots of what you’re hearing here has no connection with what goes on at UChicago. It’s parents whose kids just got admitted doing the happy dance. Faculty and students are doing what they’ve generally done. Administrators have different agendas (from each other, from faculty, from students) and, at times, it seems as if the admissions juggernaut swamps everything else. But UChicago has reached the end of that ride – in the sense that, at this point, the numbers are very good and “improving” them further is just a matter of gamesmanship rather than publicizing what’s great and improving what isn’t. Finances will probably drive the next stage of UChicago’s development and, for now, perhaps, admissions retains a certain amount of control/centrality by claiming that it has (or can forge) the key to unlock a treasure chest, but, realistically, to the extent that that’s true, it’s relatively far off and highly speculative.
Zimmer seems to be edging toward retirement, so much depends on what kind of person is chosen to replace him. If I were Nondorf (and I assure you I am not!), I’d be looking for some new place to work my magic because there will inevitably be declining marginal returns (and the risk of undermining his own, very real, achievements) at this point if he stays on. Basically he can’t top what he’s already done at UChicago, but he could potentially achieve similarly impressive results elsewhere.
The endgame is to for UChicago to be commonly recognized as an HYPS peer by people who aren’t particularly interested in academics. But this goal puts those who espouse it at the mercy of all sorts of forces that have nothing to do with rational planning, much less with providing the type of intensely intellectual education UChicago has been known for. So we have a variety of experiments in progress simultaneously with no one waiting around to assess the results or analyzing whether to stay or how to adjust the course. And the whole drama is playing out against a background of an unsustainable college admissions system, insane tuition costs, increasing economic inequality and insecurity, and a culture that’s profoundly divided over whether facts and logic even matter. So the stakes feel high for people with lots of different interests and values/attitudes.
Its hyperbole. A class is declared stronger because there are wya more applicants. And the next year, a class is stronger despite the fact that there were less applicants. And the next year… ad nauseam
Most posters - including me - have a number of preferences and aversions that don’t entirely cohere (unless cue or ex or jbs or deny or almost anyone here puts it all together in a treatise: call it the Summa Maroonologica). As for me, I see through a glass darkly, but I cannot accept that the endgame should be (whatever it actually is) is to add C to HYPS. If that’s it, then the University is indeed at the mercy of marketing forces and will indeed lose its soul. Fie on it! The University has to always and forever be about providing a Chicago-style education to those (in some eras a select few, in others, more than a few, but always select) who want such an education. With that objectve always in mind, all decisions as to class size, improved facilities, admission policies and every other instrumental policy must be judged. I myself don’t require quite as tightly articulated a plan as cue argues for. As Aristotle would have said, not every kind of knowledge admits of the same degree of clarity or rigor as do the sciences. Nor is it desirable for the University in its unique mission of providing a Chicago education to dissipate its energies and lose its focus in attempting to ameliorate all our society’s social ills. Whatever the administration is up to (and probably it includes many things I would not approve) I will judge the success of it by the product - the thoughtful considering cultivated adults that a true Chicago education makes of kids who would otherwise be merely smart. This in my mind is only tangentially connected with such things as the trappings of ivy status or recognition by the lay public. On this ground I stake my thesis.
@Chrchill it is wise not to forget your history. Read the article that @Cue7 posted for you. Here it is again.
http://www.nytimes.com/1998/12/28/us/winds-of-academic-change-rustle-university-of-chicago.html
1998 is a great year to know in the history of the College because things started changing right after that. Sonnenschein might have stepped down the following year but he definitely helped put the wheels in motion for major change - or, really, major restoration to much earlier numbers. Also, he provides what has to be the earliest public acknowledgment - from an administration, at any rate! - that colleges and universities follow a consumer model of tuition procurement. While this is like “Well Duh!” to all of us today, it was simply not discussed in polite company in those days.
An eye-opening article. I only read it to find out which prof. said it was a dirty grubby place but there is a lot more there. Thanks, @Cue7. You provide a great historical perspective and provide an interesting contrast to all the Rah-Rah’s who are posting here (including me 
). Helps to keep us sober.
@ThankYouforHelp - these threads should not be “safe spaces” to protect everyone from critical thoughts - even if those thoughts are criticisms that you find to be irrelevant or unpleasant.
Apropos of the article. Things – UChicago, other universities, preferences – may have changed enough that there’s now an abundance of demand for an “intellectually serious” college education. (Still a niche market, but increasingly underserved). I think UChicago is uniquely situated to provide that right now, so it’s shocking and depressing to see the cheerleaders call for filling the university with more “normal” and wealthier kids, steering the lefties elsewhere, and making grading easier.
You can get a sense of what capacity should be just by looking up acreage and student populations of other top uni’s on Wikipedia (this is a guideline, not a rule or goal). In UChicago’s case, major space opened up on the south-east part of the quad when Booth and Econ. moved to their own dedicated spaces a bit further east. It’s that kind of repurposing of space (not to mention bringing in the donations to make that move even feasible!) that allowed the College to expand to its current size.
My guess is that if you ask any faculty member, they’ll be happy to share with you what the university’s long-run plan is for growth, with the caveat that inputs can change and cause that number to revise every few years. The undergraduate program is in a state of motion and has been for a number of years. But that’s appropriate because the academy in general is in a state of motion and flux that has increasingly opened up an opportunity for continued growth for the college, as long as resources allow. If the overall rigor of the College - in the eyes of the students, the families, employers and the academy - is compromised, then it has grown too quickly and too much. If not . . . then what SHOULD the number be, exactly? Who knows, and it’ll change in five years anyway so who cares? Although @Cue7 might be on to something . . … Some of us have been assuming a class size of 1,600 for this fall, but do we actually KNOW that this is the goal? What if yield is more like 75%? Perhaps they are mum because that’s actually shocking and a bit unbelievable that they can pull it off. UChicago seems to relish in the unconventional and the shocking so now I’m wondering what WILL that number be? Just signed up to get the Maroon in my inbox!
@JBStillFlying "From that 1998 NYT article:
“One of the most worrisome statistics, he and others say, is the low number of alumni children who choose Chicago. At 5 percent, it is well below the 10 percent to 20 percent at the top Ivy League colleges. Surveys show that alumni view their college career here as having been so intensely academic that they are uncertain if their children would be happy here.”
I wonder what the % is now?"
Anecdote here. If the U of C were the same place it was when I went there in the 1980s, I would have had VERY serious reservations about my kids going there. Not because of the academic intensity - that is what I want for them. Because of the miserable social life, non-existent academic and career counseling, and overall lack of institutional support for the College that I experienced back then. 17-18 year old freshmen away from home for the first time are not the same as 26 year olds pursuing their PhD. They should not be treated as though they are, left to sink or swim, required to create their own emotional, academic and social support out of whole cloth. They aren’t ready for that. Back then, the University quite literally did not give a damn about the students in the College. This is why I entered with a class of over 800 and graduated with only 500. Some flunked out academically, others transferred away, but the largest part just flat out gave up due to depression and alienation.
Three decades later, the College has changed dramatically, and to me, 99 percent of the changes are phenomenal and positive. My daughter just accepted an offer to enter the College next year, and I could not be happier about it. It’s going to be a great experience for her, with the powerful academic quality of UChicago combined with the social life and institutional support of a normal college (albeit a particularly nerdy “normal” college, but the point still holds).
It was interesting to me that the prof in the 1998 NYTimes piece who called the University “a dirty, intense place in a grubby city” was by no means denigrating it by that description. He went on to say that though the University could use some junior league types (not exactly an un-ironic description) it also needs those who “don’t shave, have bloodshot eyes and read Kierkegaard at 3 in the morning” (said admiringly). What many who weren’t there in olden times do not perhaps appreciate is the sense in which Chicago students (not all, but those who thrived) felt a real esprit coming out of a sense of undergoing together real hardships and deprivations for the sake of “the life of the mind”. Perhaps the feeling was not unlike what kids at the service academies feel. It was a boot camp for would-be intellectuals. That a percentage of kids couldn’t take it and washed out was not seen in those days as a critique of a Chicago education but a validation of it. Naturally the ivy league colleges had higher retention rates - they were easier! Chicago was for a select few.
Now I say this in a not altogether unwhimsical spirit and not to advocate strenuously for this bad old Chicago. However, I do seriously want to make the point that that Chicago was not as it is often portrayed as being - a spiritless place comprised of drudges longing to get the hell out. I believe some of the old spirit lingers still. I certainly hope so.