Any thoughts on whether ED2 applicants in aggregate would be more competitive than the ED1 applicants at UChicago? At most other schools with ED2, I’ve always thought that the ED2 applicants are less competitive than the ED2 applicants.
@arsenalozil For UChicago I think the ED 2 Pool will be crazy competitive. Most of these kids willing be high SES kids who thought they had very good chances at HYPSM and maybe one of the Ivies, applied, but didn’t get in. So most of them will have excellent stats and will be willing to commit to their second choice
@VeryLuckyParent Thanks for response. I think I agree with you on this. ED2 at Chicago will be crazy competitive. This kind of upends the traditional notion of ED1 and ED2 at most other schools.
ED2 is very much a game theory situation.
A natural impulse of excellent candidates that were rejected/deferred at the SCEA schools (HYPS), or competitive ED schools (Columbia and Penn), would be to apply to Chicago at ED2 with the assumption that it had some advantage.
So what @VeryLuckyParent says is absolutely true. ED2 will likely be brutally competitive. If Chicago is sloppy and tends towards just admitting a certain percentage of ED2 candidates, it will be the most competitive group for admission. But I would hope they have more care than that in that they review the ED2 candidates and at the same time review some of the RD candidates to make sure that they don’t punish the ED2 candidates relative to the RD pool.
In summary, my prediction is that for a given candidate, ED1 will have the highest chance of admission, followed by EA, and with ED2 and RD being roughly tied for the lowest chance of admission.
Or they will just play the deferral game - admit a small amount of students in EDII (the ones they really want to fill institutional goals) and defer the rest to RD to compete with the normal pool of RD students.
Per U Chicago’s website, defer is not an option for ED2:
Why no positive comments? Seems that this is more honest than the prior Chicago game, which was to defer everyone, and then boost yield through summer offers. Yield boost now comes on the front end, which seems highly likely to result in better candidates by comparison to choosing from the summer deferral pool.
Also strikes me that there appears to be a whiff of hypocrisy in the air–wafting from those who lose in the HYPS sweepstakes, and then expect Chicago to be there with HYPS-level dollars for their (almost) special snowflakes,
By locking in more talented kids (former ED losses to Columbia/Penn, etc.) who can pay up front, the school opens up opportunities to throw better money at really talented kids (HYPS admits) who can’t. Factors combine to result in better students overall. Retort to critics is to get more money (or countersign for some loans), get more talent, or look elsewhere. It’s a very real conversation in my house. Talented kid may end up at State U, and that’s just fine by me.
Chicago is arguably a peer of HYPS as an overall university. However, Chicago is a step down from HYPS in the current undergraduate preference market. Chicago’s plan seems like a well-considered way to close the perception gap by drawing in better students in a financially-prudent way. Nondorf is kind of a mad genius of admissions, IMHO.
Do you guys think that EA will still have a higher admission rate than say EDII or RD? Why or Why not?
ssn137, you asked why there aren’t more positive comments about this:
Seriously? There is a big difference between playing a game where choice is left in the hands of the participants (the applicants) and playing a game where such choice is taken away.
If Chicago had EA and then EA2, it’d be weird, but who cares? Instead, the school choose to start ED - when so much has been written on how damaging ED Is for applicants - and that is damaging enough. On top of that, Chicago now has TWO rounds of ED.
What is positive about that? Whatever games Chicago played before, it didn’t really have much cost to the applicants. Now, there’s a big cost to the applicants, and great confusion raised about this process.
In some ways, it feels like this move is Chicago’s final push to cement what it really is: a place where all consuming self service to the university’s brand and standing is all that matters.
In the far past, under Ted O’Neill, Chicago cared about its applicants - not just its accepts. In the more recent past, Chicago at least didn’t lock any applicants into binding agreements.
Now, all that is out the window, to the detriment of applicants and possibly the very culture of the school, all to get a few more applicants from Columbia or Duke, and to maybe drop the accept rate another half point.
As a famous attorney once said, and the quote applies to Chicago’s top brass:
“Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?”
ED I: I’m really wealthy and can afford $70,000+ and visited your school and think it’s so cool; also my family totally “gets” UChicago and isn’t pressuring me to apply to Ivies. ( Less likely: I’m a high stats low socio economic student and bought into the No Barrires thing and love, love UChicago so I’m going to risk not comparing fin aid- I really hope I don’t regret it).
ED II: Man, I messed up applying to that Ivy early (or MIT or Stanford) now I’m rejected and I have to get into a really selective school because I’m prestige conscious and will never live it down if I don’t get in somewhere I can brag about plus I’m loaded so I don’t need to worry about fin aid.
EA: I really want to go to UChicago but I need to compare fin aid or merit offers. Please, please take me. ( Maybe too: Well, I really like it but still going after my first choice- and I’ve got my act together enough to do EA here and EA somewhere else or maybe ED to my first choice)
RD: Man, I’m hot stuff and can wait it out. I know that I’ll have choices. I have nerves of steel. ( Maybe too: I’m totally clueless and just applied everywhere in the top 10 to see what would happen.)
@Cue7: Genuinely don’t understand how Chicago’s program results in a “big cost to the applicants.” There are now more choices, something that is helpful for candidates to develop a strategy. How more choice is somehow bad is a mystery. Chicago is committed to meeting demonstrated financial need, so that shouldn’t be a factor for anyone who really wants to go. If new program does in fact generate higher quality admits and more competition for merit money, then that’s good from the university’s perspective. Only “losers” are those who might have gotten merit money previously, but who will be required to pay a bit more now because the overall competition is a bit better. That’s a big cost for a few people, but a net gain for the school overall.
@GNM: Believe you’ve got it just about right, although I think it’s not quite fair to Chicago (or Columbia, UPenn, Dartmouth, Brown, Cornell, Pomona, Williams et al.) to say ED is just for rich people (or donut-holers who are willing to set aside their righteous indignation, forego deluxe cable, and squeeze a few more years out of the old car in service of getting their kid through an elite. All these schools meet demonstrated need, which some people apparently equate with the notion that they can send a child to a top school without making any sacrifice.
ssn137:
Let me put it this way: I’m assessing this from the applicants perspective, not the school’s. If a school with a 7.9% accept rate and 66% yield has the gall to try to finesse accept statistics even more, I couldn’t care less about the institution.
Chicago has created two new admissions strategies (ed and ed2) that are harmful to most applicants. Why is the introduction of bad choices of any benefit to applicants?
Google ed articles - the wash past had one recently, and there some great ones in the Atlantic etc a little while back. ED is a fundamentally institution-centric move. It’s just not a good idea to give young people six months less to make a major decision. Or to create a binding agreement for them at an early stage.
Not only that, Chicago now has TWO rounds of ed.
My quote about having no decency stands.
The issue is how many slots are left for people who require need based aid after two ED rounds. If UChicago admits let’s say 50% to 70% of their class in Ed rounds, then very few slots are left for folks who did not apply in those rounds
Before this the admission committee did not know which students need aid at the time of making their admission decision. Now they will know that a majority of those students will be in the EA/RD round because such families have to compare aid packages and most cannot afford to sign a binding commitment up front
This is similar to airlines asking if you intend to stay over on a Saturday. If you are unwilling to do that, you are probably a business traveler and they can charge you more for that same seat without being openly discriminatory. They also ask for 21 day advance purchase. If you don’t then you have an emergency or are a business traveler, so they can charge you more.
The point is, UChicago is forcing you to reveal your preference early and what you pick, reveals something about you without their having to ask you about it. Now they can act on it. Previously you were able to conceal your preferences.
This move is very beneficial for domestic and international students willing to pay full price and willing to advertise that. I believe there are enough of those kids to fill Chicago’s class several times over without sacrificing stats. Chicago just became a distant dream for folks who need merit or need based aid. Chicago can now dial up or dial down the money it doles out in financial aid without ever admitting that they are doing it. I think this is being done because they want to save money on financial aid as this will flow directly to their bottom line.
I would love to see the socioeconomic stats on who applies ED to schools. Every book or article that I have read agrees that ED favors higher socioeconomic students. It just makes sense. Think about it. These students and their parents are savvy about the college admit process. They don’t need to have any financial aid or merit because they can cover the costs. They don’t need to compare packages. ED appeals to families that can write that tuition check without batting an eye because they are incredibly wealthy or have been making sacrifices from day one and have the savings to do it.
Yes, ED can also favor a really high stats/outstanding low socio economic student but that student would have to have some strong advising as to where their application could lead them to an acceptance. And go through the complexity of an ED app. They would have to be OK with not comparing packages. That takes choices away. I think a lot of lower socioeconomic students would not feel comfortable with that. They’d have to back out if they couldn’t afford the offer.
Yes, a doughnut hole family will have to make some tough choices. Your assumption that these families have to put aside their “righteous indignation” is disrespectful to them. These are families whose circumstances you know nothing about.
BTW, we really, really like UChicago. My D will be headed there in the fall. I’m hoping that it will be a great experience for her. She researched it and visited and said it was her kind of school.
I just thought that UChicago had a class act with the EA and RD option. And that they weren’t the “jealous type” like they said in their information session.
Now having said all that about the process, I for one think the school is well within its rights to follow any strategy that is beneficial to its long term financial health.
The school followed five strategies over the last decade or so to compete with the best schools for the most desirable students
Massive debt spending to make up for years of under investing in undergraduate education
Generous financial aid for needy and tippy top applicants
More applicant friendly choices and outreach to encourage them to apply
Retained small class sizes and controlled enrollment growth to give a personal feel for admitted students
Continued to pay top dollars to attract super stars to the faculty ranks
These five strategies are not mutually compatible and sustainable in the long run unless you have a very large endowment and are willing to use it for operational expenses generously.
So, they have jettisoned two and parts of three. Can’t blame them. If I were forced to pick out of these five, can’t say I would pick differently. Every other pick would hurt the school even more.
You’ve got at least two games being played here. One is students playing the get into college game. Another is colleges playing the improve my ranking/financial situation/student body game. (I think those last three could be conflicting imperatives (or different games) for some players). The reason you’re not seeing positive comments here is that most of us are primarily concerned about the first game and resent the ways in which the second game makes the first more brutal.
One already-annoying aspect of the get into college game is that a number of the “best” schools ask you to declare one of them your favorite in exchange for a larger (but still unlikely) chance at having your love reciprocated. The EA decision for my DC (even without financial constraints in the mix) was fraught. And it struck me as a really effed-up system in which the message should be “lots of great colleges – don’t fixate on The One,” and yet the first move is “designate The One” (or disadvantage yourself wrt the entire process). Because UofC was the only private school in DC’s top 3 that wasn’t SCEA, we didn’t blame UofC for this situation. It was the other two that forced a potentially determinative choice by November 1. The advice we (parents and school counselor) gave DC was to apply (SC)EA to the school whose absence from the final range of choices she would regret most. She chose UofC. But she really agonized and the process for making that decision went down to the wire.
What happened after both her (OOS public and private) EA apps were in was interesting. Maybe it was just confirmation bias (or a deep-seated desire to be done with the whole game or a crucial moment wrt identity formation, LOL!), but her initially shaky conviction that UofC was The One grew over the next 6 weeks, so much so that she did not send out any of the other apps she had completed. She was already in love with her public choice, but concerned about politics and budget cuts. By the time she got the good news from UofC in December, she was ready to forsake all others. Most of her friends did not fare so well in the early round and were really despondent. Neither mindset seemed desirable to me. So I ended up disliking the whole EA/ED process even more than I did at the outset – especially when the friends who got deferred EA/ED got into the same schools RD. It just seemed like EA/ED either produced months of gratuitous and personalized suffering or short-circuited informed choice among actually available alternatives.
I miss the days when everybody heard from every school pretty much simultaneously. For each kid, the rejections were softened by the acceptances and everyone could celebrate together. So when I see a move to proliferate early options, I’m really skeptical that it will make the college application process more humane for HS students.
I respected the fact that UofC seemed to be competing by stressing its unique strengths/distinctive intellectual culture. I think it’s just madness to be casting UofC as a safety net for kids who freak out after not getting accepted somewhere SCEA or who don’t think they can get into HYPS but would settle for Columbia or Penn – rather than actually courting the kinds of kids who would prefer Chicago to all of the above if they knew more about the school and what it had to offer. To my mind, this shift in emphasis seems likely to change the student body for the worse and to devalue the UofC brand in a variety of ways.
^ Wow, well put.
My gut feeling is that this is a data gathering trial balloon that will only last a year, maybe two at most. The options will be trimmed quickly once they have that info. I do hope they keep EA but am not optimistic.
I expect achieving the current level of acceptance and yield is highly labor (and funds) intensive, something they don’t want to have to sustain.
I can understand UChicago’s need to change its EA process because it was losing candidates to Columbia and UPenn ED process. I consider them direct peers, and my D is interested in all three. Her thought was to ED to either Columbia or UPenn, and EA UChicago.
What I would have liked UChicago to do rather than this ED/ED2 process is modify its EA process so that you could apply to other non-restrictive EA programs, but not any ED programs. So if a student was so inclined, they could apply EA at the same time to UChicago, MIT, Notre Dame, etc., but in doing so, have to give up ED to UPenn, Columbia, etc.
@hebegebe I think Georgetown does it this way, but I think Chicago is also trying to solve for one other situation. Push their yield even higher through definite commitment while lowering the amount of aid dollars they have to dole out. REA would not address that goal