^Northeastern also
The problem with ED is that a student cannot compare financial aid packages. UChicago may very well meet the need of a low income student who applies ED, but not a high middle income student whose family still cannot afford the $70,000+ COA. So ED tends to favor high needs (who will get their need met) students and very high income students. There is a doughnut hole income category and those students will not apply ED because they will need to compare the fin aid packages/merit offers. And those may very well include kids who want to attend and would have UChicago as their first choice. It does look like its keeping EA for now, but I wonder how long this will last.
I hope UChicago is reading some of these reactions from parents/students.
Tulane and Northeastern as well. But neither has ED II.
The University is trying to squeeze $30 Million in operational expense savings by reducing headcount and such. If they can reduce financial aid expenses to 2014 levels, that will yield them another $20 Million or so. If they can do that without the bad publicity of abandoning need blind admissions even better. If they can achieve that ** and increase their yield** that is icing on the cake. That is what they are probably trying to do with this move by forcing students to reveal their preferences and ability to pay early in the process
So yeah, they are not going to care about the reactions from parents and students. This is about financial survival for them without abandoning all the gains they have made in name recognition and prestige the last decade.
When my D and I went to an info session in our city that UChicago had invited students to, the admissions rep said that UChicago had two options- EA and RD because they weren’t the jealous type to force kids to choose with SCEA or ED. I guess they are the jealous type now…
Yes, I’m sure that you are right and no one from UChicago cares enough to read these posts.
I think I should keep my mind open to see what will happen in a few years from now.
Definitely a game changer. Makes it very hard for the majority who need FA though I guess they can save the merit money they won’t need to entice high income ED kids. I’m wondering if my younger child will get a lesser FA pkg if she applies ED than her sibling has? She wasn’t planning to apply ED anywhere because of the FA being needed.
Interesting question. My guess is that given that your other kid attended UChicago, they probably know that your younger kid will be likely to attend as well, if admitted. So there is very little additional signalling that she can give by applying ED. so why do it and risk a lower award?
What they will assume is that by picking EA, you value FA and you want to keep your options open because of finances, even though Chicago is high on your list. So if they like your kid, they will admit him/her and offer competitive financial aid. Since they are a need blind school, they would not deny based on financial need alone if you choose EA
My point is there are other ways to signal interest besides applying ED, specially in your case. so why over signal and narrow your options?
I expect they will also take the UPenn attitude that if you want a legacy boost, you will need to apply ED.
We militantly discouraged DD from falling in love with any one school given dismal acceptance rates so ED was not on our menu. This despite the fact that I’m pretty sure she could have gotten into two of her top 3 choices with ED.
As stated above, glad to be done with this process. Made it just before the bell… I don’t think they’ll get all that many ED/ED2 though. 'Course, I didn’t think they’d get that high a yield either.
The financial aid package for ED based only on financial need won’t change (unless UChicago does ED like Carnegie Mellon) but it’s the merit scholarships for ED and EA that really may change.
ED signals that’s it’s your first choice, no matter what. If you have the money to cover COA without need, great.
If you are high need but high stats and UChicago gives you a great fin aid package through No Barriers, great.
If your family is in the doughnut hole, and UChicago is your first choice but need to compare fin aid/merit (especially merit), then what is the best strategy?
You apply EA, reducing your odds of getting in and making the admit pool wealthier in general. The Econ department writes papers arguing that you should pull yourself up by your bootstraps until you can afford $70,000 a year. Dean Nondorf looks at the revised financial aid budget and chuckles.
In a few years’ time, if interest rates stay low, a commercial/arts area is created on/South of the Midway. Newly hired Yale professors begin to end up in Chicago by accident, because they can’t tell the difference until Snowmageddon 2.0 arrives. Nondorf gets a bonus and buys a $2.5 million house across the street from President Zimmer’s.
Oh, did you mean the best strategy for applicants? How quaint.
More seriously, you’d probably have to apply EA. Glad my brother is looking elsewhere anyway, because I don’t imagine applying to Chicago will be a very pleasant exercise next year (except maybe the essay-writing).
^ Actuallly it’s a 3.25 million condo so he couldn’t buy anything across the street. I guess maybe a floor below?
My D applied last year and will be at UChicago this coming fall. It would have been a nightmare trying to figure out what would have been the best strategy with the new system.
I guess not, because ED would not have been considered. Especially if merit would no longer be a strategy for them to attract students already applying ED anyway. Maybe she would have ended up at Grinnell with merit and that would have been great too. She has grad school/law school in mind so the merit for undergrad was important to the decision.
My daughter acted like an ED kid – plunked down a deposit and withdrew/decided not to submit other apps within 2 days of receiving an EA acceptance. But I’m pretty sure she would not have applied ED had that been an option --her head (and our heads) weren’t in that place by Nov 1st. Don’t know whether she still would have applied EA to U of C or whether the multiple early options at Chicago would have alienated her sufficiently that she would have SCEA’d one of her legacy schools. I think that too many options might be a bad thing – makes it all seem like a problem in game theory – whereas EA alone made Chicago seem refreshing and self-confident, like MIT.
^ Very well put - about the game theory and the EA being refreshing and self confident.
Yes, my D acted like a ED applicant as well. Finished 8 applications by the EA deadline and took a short break to see what came in with the rolling admissions and EA schools. After UChicago came in with merit, the other applications and scholarship applications were essentially off the table. But if the merit had not come in she would have continued with 5 more applications. I guess that’s what concerns me- if UChicago decides to bank on ED without offering any merit then these kids are not going to apply early necessarily. They may apply EA and either get the merit early along with the acceptance or UChicago may decide to hold out until later notification for merit. IDK.
@jarrett211 As an incoming student I have to respectfully disagree with the notion that a more enthusiastic/spirited student body is correlated with a more selective admissions process. Chicago was a top-choice for me (I applied there, MIT, Northeastern, and Georgetown as EA schools) and I loved everything about the school. But I knew it would be a strain on my single-parent to afford it if I didn’t get some financial aid, so when I received my acceptance in December, I still decided to wait until the spring to finalize my decision.
UChicago gave me the best financial aid offer after Davidson, and I am incredibly enthusiastic to be going there. But as much as I love the college, I would not have applied Early if I was aware that I would be competing with ED/EDII students. I think the idea that there are discouraged/resentful “HYP” kids in our class is untrue from what I have seen–the students I have met are just as excited to be attending as anyone else, and many did not necessarily bleed UChicago from the start.
In my opinion, it makes Chicago more like Northwestern in terms of the admissions process. And NU is already very difficult for lower/middle income students who aren’t on Questbridge to attend. I hope that Chicago will switch back to just EA/RD in the future–it’s a significant help to middle income students’ families in the U.S. I do suspect on the positive side of this–international students with means will have a better chance at Chicago.
Having spoken to some people working in admissions (not the ones making any of these decisions, but in the room for the discussions), a key rationale was that Chicago is losing too many kids to ED schools (mostly Penn and Columbia).
My first thought was, why not REA? That would solve the problem without all the collateral damage of ED.
@Foolsgold345 I understand where you are coming from, and really I should clarify it’s a small minority, but I’ve definitely seen it (perhaps it’s just the people I’ve talked to/been around). I was not actually thinking it would become more selective, but simply that people who apply ED (cost aside) are often more enthusiastic about a school than people who apply RD.
I guess after hearing the pros and cons, @NotVerySmart is probably right about which way it should go. SCEA seems to avoid all the major problems.
Schools use multiple ways to recruit low/middle income students. Just because a school uses ED doesn’t automatically translates to lower fraction of low/middle income students. It’s also false to assume ED is a contract that you can’t get out without penalty. NU allows students to get out for financial reasons without penalty.
The pell-grant recipients will make up 17% of the incoming freshmen class at NU. I don’t think that’s at the low end among the peers.
http://dailynorthwestern.com/2016/05/11/campus/pell-grant-recipients-increase-for-the-class-of-2020/