In 16-17: UChicago will Have EA, ED, EDII, and RD

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of Chicago ✅
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Well, rather than using “@” symbols (which seem to provoke the worst sort of righteous bloviation–as guilty as anyone, I suppose), a few thoughts.

-Appeals to the great Ted O’Neill are in accord with the “un-conserving conservatives” I learned about from the late Arthur Mann in the Social Science Research Building back in the day. Reminiscences about a false Chicago as it used to be seem unpersuasive. Chicago is one of the world’s great universities. But, for a number of reasons, the College was a less-valued part of the larger institution. That’s changed now, and it’s all to the good. Don Levine (sadly also no longer among us), then Dean of the College, once remarked (c. 1984) that Chicago was sort of singular in that people tended to claim a right to comment on what Chicago does or doesn’t do. Indeed, Dean Boyer’s Occasional Papers on Higher Education seem styled to tell the true history of Chicago as a counterargument to those who “remember” a Chicago that never was. My Chicago was wonderful. It was also small, musty, and had pretty awful services. I am jealous of today’s students. Look at videos of people dressed as french fries or wearing horse head masks to welcome new students, or walk the campus and note the number or undergraduates wearing cloaks and capes–“Chicago” is alive and well. That Nondorf’s regime doesn’t care about applicants or has somehow changed the essential character of Chicago are both unsupported by evidence. Chicago is, was, and will (hopefully) forever be defined by the culture of rigorous inquiry. That’s driven by the faculty, and students who choose Chicago for the wrong reasons (U.S. News) will (and should) have a miserable experience.

-I don’t think anyone has even tried to take on the essential points I tried to make. (1) ED brings in more good kids; (2) if more of those kids can pay, then it frees aid money for the College to pursue the very best candidates (e.g. big merit money for HYPS-level admits). For both those reasons, it’s good for the school. Better students drive the (stupid) rankings, which generate buzz, thus leading to even better students. The buzz factor also seems to be relevant to big money donations, which are (shocker!) the lifeblood of these institutions.

-Claims the ED makes boxes out candidates on financial grounds strikes me as a canard for several reasons. Most importantly, the College continues to guarantee that it will meet demonstrated need for admits. So, claims that ED is a financial deal-breaker means either: (1) Chicago (and every other top school) is lying; or, (2) folks may have a sense of entitlement such that they’d like their child to go to an expensive school without any sacrifice. Books or articles contending that ED favors higher socioeconomic status conflate correlation with causation in the same way that some claim that standardized tests are biased against people who don’t do well on standardized tests. More clued-in people apply ED, because the preference factor is higher (almost 3X for Dartmouth). Applicants who are more knowledgeable about the process tend to be ED applicants, who tend to be relatively wealthier–and “wealthy” in this sense here probably means you, gentle CC reader (though we’d prefer to cloak ourselves in virtuous “just folks” garb). If you’re a CCer with an opinion, then you’re “wealthy” for the purposes of the ED discussion–the beneficiaries and not the victims of ED’s supposed flaws. Further, one can still be a financial aid candidate and apply ED–it’s false to suggest otherwise, or to suggest that any school was (or is) totally “need blind.”

-A “need” to compare offers is itself specious. As stated, Chicago (and other top schools) meet demonstrated financial need. Another perspective is this: Assume that little darling was admitted to HYPS. You’d probably find a way to make it work, wouldn’t you?

-EA is still available–indeed, the College’s “Application Program Selector” tool suggests EA if it’s necessary to compare financial aid offers.

-In the overall scheme, roughly speaking, the candidate pool strata are: (1) admitted SCEA applicants to HYPS; (2) accepted ED candidates to non-HYP Ivies, plus Williams, Amherst, Pomona, etc.; (3) everybody else. In the prior system, Chicago’s legitimate enrollee candidates were in Cat (3–Cat 1 students were not realistic, because very few HYPS/Chicago overlaps would choose Chicago, and Cat 2 candidates were already spoken for. With ED, Chicago is at least honest enough to admit (for now) that it is not on the same plane as HYPS. By competing in Cat 2, Chicago should get better kids (and maybe more kids who can pay). Cat 2 access allows making a play for some Cat 1 candidates. The people paid to make decisions have made a decision, which seems perfectly sensible to improve the quality of the students in the College and the financial health of the institution. The changes may elevate Chicago to the top level, they may prove to be a disaster, or it they might have no major effect. It’s not wrong for Chicago to make decisions that improve the quality and reputation of the institution–f you’re old enough, you can remember a time when Stanford wasn’t “Stanford.” Bold management choices matter.

-If you’re really wealthy or really poor, then there’s no problem. But if you’re like most of us in the middle, if you’re admitted, then your child can go to a top school, including Chicago, provided you’re willing to forego the Tesla/beach house/Botox/personal trainer/daily soy latte. Colleges do not exist to provide transfer payments that subsidize lifestyle choices. If one is unwilling to sacrifice, then enjoy Emory, Carnegie Mellon, Wake Forest, Tufts, or some other school that will provide more merit aid. And there’s always State U. Any of those are great choices.

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The problem with ED is that it takes some savviness to use it. A student has to do quite a bit of research to decide where to use it. And have a knowledge of their parents financial situation. Unfortunately, I’ve seen parents be very weird with their finances with their kids. Some tell them to apply to their favorite college then back out once they see the true costs. They think that their kid will get a ton of merit or really want to do it but then can’t for whatever reason.

My D’s friend is a great example. Stellar student- parents allowed her to apply ED to her favorite school. She then waited for the ED acceptance to come in without applying anywhere else. She got accepted and everyone is happy. Later, gets her fin aid pkg and it’s not good at all. They are a doughnut hole family. They try to appeal. Wait some more. Appeal results are dismal. This kid is frantic now. Applying to reach schools that give great fin aid and don’t gap. Rejected. It’s safety schools now and the kid is desperate and applies to schools she had no intention of applying but no choices now. Accepted at the school that even wasn’t on her radar. The kid is now going to a school that she will probably be miserable at. Hopefully she’s resilient and will make the best of it. This family consisted of two very educated parents. But they were allowing her to come up with strategies on her own and giving her no guidance. They were kind of hands off and feeling really good that their kid was totally doing it on her own but then it kind of blew up.

Didn’t ask my help but I would have had her do it completely different. Yes, and I did offer guidance very diplomatically. Again, parents get really weird here with others offering guidance. They really think that they know how things will turn out but they really need an objective perspective.

I know you can’t extrapolate to everything from one kid’s story but if this kid who was high stats and had two highly educated parents did not know how to use ED to her advantage then I can’t hope for very much with a low income student with immigrant parents who never went to college in the US. If the college is going to put a lot of effort to find these kids and help them navigate the system to their advantage, good for them.

BTW, there is a program that UChicago helps support that helps low socioeconomic students apply to college. Sometimes they end up UChicago but sometimes at other peer colleges.

Ok, my rant on ED is over. And actually we used ED to my S’s advantage for his top school. You just have to be well informed of the possible consequences.

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@goingnutsmom, do you think it would have been any different if it had been EA vs ED for your D’s friend though? I’m not defending ED, just that it seems that she chose not to apply anywhere else and that may not have been any different if the school in question was an EA school. Sounds like a general lack of knowledge of the application process rather than an EA vs ED problem?

Around here, the vast majority of people, including the highly educated folks, have no idea of the difference between EA and ED. Most don’t even know such things exist and there is not much correlation with SES. Of course, most don’t know UChicago exists either :D. A bright kid with college educated parents told me he was thinking about attending a (paid) summer program at Princeton, because he was told by a friend (who had attended this program the year before) that it pretty much guaranteed you an admission to Princeton. And he thought Princeton would be an OK place to go to college.

So I agree with @ssn137 (I realize I may “provoke the worst sort of righteous bloviation”) that the “wealthy” who take advantage of ED are those in the know such as CC’ers or families with access to excellent college counseling. And yes, this may correlate with SES. They are the ones who apply ED, EA and to a state school simultaneously and play the cards to their advantage.

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In response to some of @ssn137 's points, I have a few of my own to offer. Maybe this is righteous bloviation - I’ll let him/her judge.

-Without being nostalgic for the “good old days” of Ted O’Neill, I feel we can disagree with some admissions practices. Sending junk mail to kids with a 0.1% chance of admission, as when several kids at my school (with SAT scores ranging from the 1600s to 2300s) started getting pamphlets in the mail, is a transparent effort to drum up applications for the rankings’ sake. I loved some of the postcards I got, but not the thought behind them.

-Under an ED system, students who choose Chicago “for the wrong reasons” will be locked into attending even if they find out more about the college and realize it may not be the best fit.

-If standards for ED are relaxed relative to the EA and RD pools, it will bring in more good students (through a lack of ED/Chicago EA cross-admits) but also more students who would not have been admitted as EA applicants.

-I was under the impression that Chicago was ranked 4th in the country. If the need to boost our ranking is so acute that it justifies transforming the student body into a group where many have Chicago as a second choice or worse (EDII applicants), I wonder what the 3,000+ schools ranked below Chicago will resort to next.

-Yes, EA is still available. Like RD applicants at other ED schools, EA candidates will be at a disadvantage relative to ED and EDII applicants.

These are all abstract points. Personally, I find the implication that anyone who can’t make Chicago’s financial aid package work should give up the Teslas/beach houses/Botox/personal trainers/etc. or go elsewhere simplistic and demeaning. My family found Chicago’s financial offer inadequate, and we have none of those things. I had to wait until Chicago offered merit aid and some outside scholarships were set in stone before committing, which won’t be an option for applicants in my situation under an ED regime. Which in turn prevents them from applying ED in the first place.

The major expenses we face are housing, health insurance, and an English-speaking school for my brothers. My parents (barred from putting money into a 401(k) or equivalent plan) have their pensions in bank accounts instead, which no doubt hurt our eligibility. Housing, health insurance, education, or pensions - which one is a frivolous expense that we can easily give up to “play our cards to our advantage?”

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In the end, I wonder how much of this is financially-driven rather than ratings-driven. If a University wants to do needs-blind admissions and doesn’t have a massive endowment, then it may need to look for ways to attract/admit more full-pay students. (SSN has already made this point). ED, especially ED II, scoops up some of these kids. Recruiting at private schools is probably another strategy. My DC said the Admissions person at the EA accepted students event for our Metro area indicated that that group was predominantly private school applicants. Waitlist admissions can be used in a similar fashion. ED may also help the school avoid allocating merit money to (some) kids who would enroll even without that inducement.

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I don’t think that EA candidates will be at a disadvantage to ED2 candidates. UChicago will have made its EA decisions before it sees the ED2 pool, which could end up being extremely strong given the possibility of thousands of Ivy SCEA/ED deferred or rejected students applying for ED2. If UChicago is not careful, ED2 applicants could be at a disadvantage relative to all other pools.

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@exacademic Bingo. My guess is that is exactly what is going on. They are trying to improve their operational expense situation without sacrificing reputation, selectivity or yield.

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Why do people persist in believing that applicants who have been deferred or rejected by Ivies during the SCEA/ED round constitute an exceptionally strong pool for admission to Chicago? Anyone can apply to an Ivy early and get rejected or deferred. It’s not a sign of merit. And the deferred applicants most likely to switch to ED II at Chicago under those circumstances are, presumably, the ones who assume they’ll ultimately be rejected RD by their early school (and who either aren’t interested in or competitive for admission to other Ivies). The kids who are competitive for RD at their early Ivy and whose #2 choice is Chicago could be admitted through RD at Chicago. They won’t be deciding until then anyway.

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Whatever we might think of Ed2 in terms of helping or hurting students, introducing Ed2 was a brilliant move from the University’s perspective.

In the prestige driven school application culture, this will net the university a good number of high stats high SES kids without sacrificing yield or selectivity.

I’m actually surprised that Duke, Penn, Dartmouth, Brown, Cornell, Columbia and a few others have not adopted it yet. Duke in particular is surely going to look at this move very closely.

To me that is the biggest danger here for students and applicants. Chicago may have opened Pandora’s box here.

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Great, so all U of C will be sacrificing is fit/institutional culture (and access for the lower upper middle class). 8-| In exchange, it gains more full-pay students earlier. Why not just auction off slots to kids whose grades/scores qualify them to bid? It’d be a more lucrative, efficient and honest approach.

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You are looking at it backwards.

There are thousands of highly talented students that get rejected by HYPS and UChicago peer schools (like UPenn, Duke, Columbia, Williams, Amherst, etc.) during SCEA/ED, and later get admitted at the same school or a peer school during the RD timeframe. These are the targets for the UChicago ED2 option, and if a good percentage of them apply to UChicago, this constitutes a very competitive group for the few hundred spots that I assume will be allocated to ED2.

It is irrelevant that there tens of thousands of students that applied to the SCEA/ED schools but were not high merit.

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Because very few kids without hooks in their right senses would apply SCEA unless they felt they had a very strong chance of getting in, given what they are giving up. Also getting admitted into HYPS and for that matter most of the uber selective schools is quite random, so there are going to be many many deserving students who don’t make it past the ad committees of those schools. Certain demographics in particular, if you get my drift.

Lets take an example. Harvard deferred more than 4,600 students to its regular round from its SCEA round this year.
Yale deferred almost 2,500. Princeton almost 3,400. Stanford and MIT probably deferred around 1,500. So we have a total pool of around 12,000 well qualified but deferred SCEA candidates". That pool is as large as the EA pool that applied to Chicago this year and most are probably very well qualified and took a huge gamble and came up short. So they are left with a really tough decision. Should they take another gamble with Regular decision or try their hand at ED2 at Chicago?

Chicago is gambling that a significant majority will choose ED2, and since the decision is binding… Chicago nets some very strong candidates, will have to spend very little money on them and will be able to boost its yield rates even higher.

Now you can argue that these applicants are not really “Chicago types”, but I don’t think Chicago really thinks that. These kids are not from Mars. They are kids like any other. Don’t forget that admitting high SES students is also good for the schools endowment in terms of donations. I know several parents who turned their backs on their alma mater when their alma mater rejected their kids and instead start donating to the kid’s alma mater!!

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You’re assuming that the most attractive of those students will be sufficiently desperate after a single SCEA deferral to jump to Chicago because it offers ED2. I’m not. I’m also questioning the wisdom of relying on panic as a recruitment device. Perhaps this is because I whole-heartedly believe that for very intelligent and academically-inclined kids, Chicago is competitive with any US college on the merits. It’s a peer institution to HYPSM and should act like one.

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The last time I checked over 200 schools offer ED. ED by its very definition relies on the panic mentality of applicants and it is booming right now. If applicants did not panic, ED would have failed as a strategy for Universities long time back.
For a small but significant pool of applicants, getting into college is a high stakes reputation driven, prestige game now. Otherwise you would not be seeing the mushrooming of college consultants dedicated to getting applicants into prestigious schools.
Is all of this sad? Yes. But it is what it is.

I agree that educational quality wise it is a peer. Having said that, I think the school tried this approach for several decades. And the consequences are there for everybody to see. Its endowment is significantly smaller than HYPSM and in a ranking driven culture, it was really hurting. Schools that were not even close to being Chicago’s peers were eating its lunch in the applicant recruiting game and rankings. That really hurts the school in terms of financial stability in the long run. So they decided to get in the game and play it super aggressively in a “take no prisoners” way. Is there a happy middle ground here? I don’t know. Only time will tell. I think only two highly reputable schools are left that are kind of playing a different game, Caltech and MIT. We will see, how long they stick with their playbook.

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I think that MIT can and will continue with EA, since it already has a 73% yield rate, much higher than its only direct competitor, CalTech.

The HYPS schools that are its academic peers all use SCEA/REA. Therefore MIT doesn’t face the same pressure as UChicago, which loses students to ED programs by UPenn, Columbia, etc.

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Wow, ssn137 is super sensitive about any criticisms toward UChicago. You and your kid drank the Kool Aid big time. Well, I guess it’s a good thing if UChicago inspires such loyalty from its past/current students.

UChicago can do what it wants. It already has. But to say that ED does not favor savvy wealthy families is wrong. Their strategy is all about increasing yield and increasing wealthier students. To present it as a win-win situation is disingenuous.

Show me the stats on the socioeconomic status of those that apply ED. Show me the stats on the socioeconomic status of the accepted ED students.

UChicago knows exactly what it’s doing. I just thought they were really refreshing with their straight forward approach of EA and RD. Like they said, not the jealous type. Well, I think they reversed themselves there.

Well, my kid is in and I’m grateful that UChicago was an option for her under EA. She didn’t apply ED anywhere as she needed to look at all her options.

But I’ve gotta run now because I have to jump into my Tesla and run over to my Botox treatment appointment then pick up the keys from my personal trainer since we let him use our vacation home over the holiday and I hope that I have time to pick up my daily soy latte on the way there.

POP. Oh, I was daydreaming. But I do have to run- gotta work every day to pay those tuition bills.

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It’s time to remove colleges’ tax exempt status. The reasoning behind the exemption was that they provided a public service. Now they are businesses that seek to maximize revenue by admitting full pay domestic and foreign students, while admitting a few “lottery” financial aid students. Donut Hole parents (the bulk of the income tax payers) now find these schools out of reach. It’s ridiculous. This is no longer a public service. Tax the endowment income. These places are businesses.

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@goingnutsmom

Just make sure you don’t let the car drive itself :))

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ED doesn’t assume panic – it appeals either to people who are sure about what they want, can afford to pay for it, and want to get the process over with ASAP or to people who need or want an edge when applying to a school that’s a stretch. ED II, adopted to appeal to applicants who didn’t succeed in the SCEA or ED round, does look like it is exploiting fear. I get it when LACs do it – kids who want LACs may find them a hard sell when dealing with brand-name obsessed parents. Parents demand Ivy SCEA and when that doesn’t work out, the kid finally gets to take a shot at his/her own dream school. ED II is win-win for kid and LAC in that scenario.

Whom do you believe has been eating Chicago’s lunch in the recruiting/rankings game? And according to what measure? The prestige gap between HYPSM and Chicago isn’t going to be narrowed by this dibs-on-your-leftovers move. From a stats perspective, UofC’s matriculants are already comparably or better qualified. And the Duke, Williams, Amherst, and Cornell kids are generally not a match for Chicago. There’s some Brown (quirky, love of learning), Penn (Ec), and Columbia (sci + hum, big city) overlap wrt preferences and demographics but that’s a job for targeted outreach. Again, status-obsessed risk-averse applicants are not a good demographic to be courting if Chicago wants to preserve what’s special about its culture.

I liked the CalTech, MIT, Chicago grouping and respected their position on this issue. Basically, each says we’re a unique institution with a distinctive point of view on what a college education should be. If you share our vision and are up for the challenge, come join us. As I’ve indicated previously, I never saw Chicago’s anhedonia as essential to its identity. So improvements in things like dorms, food, and access to the city didn’t strike me as problematic. But to move from being an island of sanity to being on the cutting edge of dysfunction strikes me as a step in the wrong direction. And to do so at a moment when the island-of-sanity approach seemed to really be paying off just seems bizarre. (Which is part of why I circled back to finances.)

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http://web.archive.org/web/20070906232737/http://chronicle.com/stats/usnews/index.php?category=Universities&orgs=&sort=2006

Now lets not get into the debate of whether or not USnews rank is a good measure :slight_smile: We all know the out sized influence those rankings play in student’s choice of where to apply.

I wish we lived in this world. I really do, but the sad truth is we live in a world where money talks and talks big an status-obsessed risk averse “excellent sheep” are the types of alums that contribute to a large endowment. If you want a large endowment and want to be a rich university with a global brand, you have to recruit a sizeable number of students who will go on to have successful careers in business, law and medicine. This kind of money also allows you to recruit super star faculty away from competitors. If you only attract special quirky snowflakes who are primarily academically oriented and “love learning for learning sake”, then your endowment is going to be stunted. That is not to say that the latter kind is not important, we need them as well, but lets not disparage the former kind. Where do you think Chicago is getting its million dollar donations from?

This is the kind of change that impacts a University in 30 to 40 years. You don’t see it immediately, but over a few decades, when these students climb the success ladder, it will start showing in the alum giving rates and mega donations. Chicago desperately needs that to stay in the game with HYPSM caliber institutions. This is an arms race. Either you participate aggressively or get out of the game and return to the bucolic hinterlands.