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

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of Chicago ✅
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@NotVerySmart: Thanks. I take your point, but note that without real data it’s impossible to know how to compare Chicago EA v. Chicago regular. Given generic preferences, a student interested in HYPS is likely also interested in Chicago. That those students apply to HYPS removes them from the Chicago pool, so we know the available pool is weakened by that amount (sum of HYPS apps is about 15K). I wonder if Chicago dialed back early offers to strong candidates based on guesses about whether students would be ED losses. One doesn’t reveal what other schools one is applying to, but one also enters parents’ education data. So if Chicago sees that a candidate is a Columbia legacy, Chicago may defer, just to see how things turn out.

@JHS: I was hoping you’d join the fray at some point. Would offer that while Virginia and Michigan have ED competitors, it is probably an attenuated (or at least different) sort of competition. Both schools are inexpensive in-state and expensive for out-of-state students. Neither will be generous with financial aid for out-of-state candidates. So, the most direct ED competition they face would seem to be for in-state candidates or for out-of-state candidates who are fairly well off (can pay roughly private-level out-of-state bill without expectation of aid). Among the ostensible Top 30 group, it would seem that USC (offers no early program) and now Chicago (offers ED1, ED2, and non-restrictive EA) are the outliers.

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I suspect that HYPS do more athletic recruiting and have more legacy applicants than Chicago does and I know that both groups are disproportionately represented in their SCEA pools. The factors that make those candidates particularly attractive to their SCEA school (legacy, most obviously) don’t necessarily make them the strongest candidates for other schools.

Chicago, like MIT, gets two waves of especially strong candidates. The first wave are kids who prefer Chicago to HYPS despite the fact that they would have an excellent shot at admission to one or more of those schools. Such kids do already forego something (the benefit of SCEA at their second choice/harder to get into school) in order to apply EA to Chicago.

The second group is kids for whom Chicago was a genuine second choice and who were not successful in the SCEA or ED round. The strongest of these applicants will probably have been deferred to RD rather than rejected outright by their first choice school, so there’s no reason to assume they’ll choose EDII. Most are likely to remain RD candidates for Chicago.

Maybe it’s just my particular vantage point (former professor, kid in East Coast private school, alumn of 2 HYPS schools, interviewer for one of them), but the assumption that many posters seem to be making that the kids who apply EA to Chicago are generally weaker than the kids in the SCEA pools strikes me as just plain wrong. So many kids see HYPS as lottery schools (and golden tickets) and think that their odds of getting in are much higher if they apply SCEA. So these schools get applications from folks who don’t have a chance in hell of getting in. They’re not unqualified, but there’s nothing that makes them stand out in any way from thousands of other applicants.

By contrast, Chicago is known as a school that’s really demanding. The Uncommon Essays immediately reinforce that impression. You can’t count on random strangers (or your parents’ friends) to be wildly impressed if you get in. And EA at Chicago doesn’t appear to offer the same kind of boost that ED or SCEA elsewhere does. So, basically, almost the only reason to apply EA to Chicago is that you really want to go to Chicago. (The other reason may be to give you a second shot at a high-ranking school if the ED bet you’ve placed elsewhere doesn’t work out. As I said before, if I were going to tweak the current system, I’d shut that option down.) The Chicago EA kids from my daughter’s school were a smaller group than the SCEA kids and they would have been among the top SCEA candidates had they chosen that route. Like MIT, there’s some serious self-selection going on among kids/families in the know. In the environments I’m in, almost everybody wants HYPS. But only very smart kids who love to read/think/talk/experiment, who want to be challenged and who expect College to involve hard work start out wanting to go to Chicago or MIT.

I recognize that I’m coming from a particular class/occupational/geographical fragment and that it shapes my perception. But since we are talking full pay, the demographic I’m referring to is highly relevant. In general, I think that in recent years U of C has been quite successful at (and should continue) getting the word out about what kind of place the university is and the distinctive culture it has to offer. As someone who went to college at a university that was considered grad school-focussed (and then to grad school at a university that was considered undergrad-focussed) and then taught at a university whose history is quite similar to Chicago’s (the college was something of an afterthought ), I’ve seen, from a variety of perspectives, that there are kids out there (from every demographic) who are looking for and would thrive in a college environment where the academics are central and where cutting edge research is being done. I also know that these kids aren’t the norm – even at prestigious universities with highly selective undergraduate admissions. The focus should be on finding such students and convincing them that Chicago is the place they want to be.

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Michigan surely has ED competitors. It is very interested both in attracting top students from out of state and sealing the deal with top Michiganders, and at Michigan’s quality level the students it wants most are surely thinking about ED at another top university or LAC if not SCEA at HYPS. Virginia is in the same boat, but because it doesn’t release “early” decisions until the end of January, it won’t lose any of its EA acceptees to ED elsewhere. All (or close enough to all to disregard the difference) of those applications will have been withdrawn before the decision become final.

I didn’t realize that USC – like the UCs – offers no early option at all. I was focusing on the bravery (or whatever) that Chicago formerly had, in letting students apply EA while they were also applying elsewhere ED. Besides Michigan, MIT and Caltech were the only other top-tier universities that did that, but I don’t think they face the same degree of competition from Columbia, Penn, Brown, or top LACs that Chicago and Michigan do. (Especially not Caltech, which is in UC-land where early is not the norm.)

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@JHS USC has an early application deadline (usually Dec 1) and a regular deadline (usually Jan 1). But the Dec 1 deadline is not true EA, in that it is a deadline if you wish to be considered for merit or other special scholarships. In the past, they have estimated that about 15% of the students who apply by Dec 1 will be offered scholarships. And, most seem to hear about the scholarship awards in Feb or early March, as I recall. Women Engineering applicants, talented under-represented minorities, tippy-top students, and recruited athletes are the ones I know who have received major half or full tuition scholarships. A number of these people did apply for fin aid. I don’t know if kids in that 15% are ever offered less than half-tuition or not. I would think so. While both of my kids applied by Dec 1, neither received a major USC scholarship, so they had to wait until April 1 for their acceptances.

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Hmm. Maybe the people who are concerned about the culture change have a point. The culture seems to be changing, with the University admitting some real morons

http://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/university-of-chicago-student-sues-fraternity-over-hazing-387045121.html

This is what you would expect at some of the East coast schools. Disturbing. I wonder how the University will act.

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I assume you are talking about the frat members, not the pledge?

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@hebegebe Yes. It is disturbing that some kids enjoy torturing other kids this way. Also sad that pledges actually put up with this kind of nonsense, just to belong to a group. I would have thought, this kind of behavior is not typical either in pledges or members of frats at UChicago, but looks like the University is admitting a different type of student now.

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@VeryLuckyParent Maybe it is not typical. One incident does not dictate a trend. Also, I don’t see how the pledge "put up " with the behavior. The article seems to indicate otherwise.

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Anyone who goes here could tell you the University has admitted some real morons. Every school has, and Chicago doing it isn’t new (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopold_and_Loeb). Phi Delt’s reputation among students is not fantastic, to say the least, along with DU and Psi U. But the toxic frats (and frats in general) are outnumbered like 4 to 1 by students who have an overwhelmingly negative perception of them.

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On the UPenn thread, someone posted a link saying UPenn no longer allows applying EA elsewhere if applying ED to Penn. This will affect the UChicago EA applications as well.

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That’s really interesting, and a little hard to explain. Brown used to be the only college that did that, as far as I was aware, and it abandoned that rule 6-7 years ago.

Penn’s rule may affect Chicago EA applications some, but it will likely affect Penn ED applications more, in a negative way. I wonder why Penn made that change. It doesn’t make any sense to me – the rule was always that an ED acceptance trumped EA no matter what. And Penn allows simultaneous rolling admissions applications to public universities, which is especially important because three major in-state alternatives for its core markets, Pitt,Temple, and Rutgers, all have rolling admissions. So a candidate turning down a Penn ED acceptance on financial grounds can have a definite alternative to compare with Penn’s offer. Avoiding that is pretty much the only argument in favor of Penn’s new rule.

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Rutgers got rid of rolling last year and changed to Early Action. That will be a problem with Penn’s new rule. But at least Chicago will know that their Early Action applicants didn’t apply to Penn. They typically get many Penn ED Chicago EA apps. They will be happy.

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I can think of one scenario that is prompting Penn do to this

Consider a ** prestige conscious** student who really thinks they have a shot at HYPS but is unwilling to take the chance with SCEA. This kind of student applies ED to Penn and to Chicago. On Dec15th they get a favorable admit decision from both Penn and Chicago. They immediately turn around and decline Penn, either because their aid package is not as good as Uchicago, or more likely, because now they have an alternative high prestige school in their hand to aim higher. This student then applies RD to HYPS and some other schools like Duke or Vanderbilt that are known to give out merit aid. If this student gets in, they take that offer and decline UChicago also. If they don’t they still have a pretty solid school to go to or maybe a little more merit money from a non-Ivy school. All in all a fairly good outcome, without violating the ** letter of the ED contract** and without taking too much risk. Of course, such a student cares very little about “Fit” and is more driven by getting into the highest ranked USnews school.

Maybe Penn admissions is seeing this kind of applicant in their ED pool (specially well to do international applicants from some countries, for whom prestige is the only thing that matters) and wants to eliminate them.

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I read what the Rutgers site said, and as far as I can tell it still ought to qualify as rolling admissions. That’s certainly the position I would take with Penn, if the issue came up (which I would try to avoid, if possible). Rutgers says that it will review all applications as soon as they are complete and notify students as soon as a final decision has been made . . . usually four to six weeks after all elements of the application are complete." Early Action applicants are guaranteed an answer by January 30, but can be admitted long before that, as can RD applicants.

It’s hard for me to believe that Penn has lost a meaningful number of ED acceptees to Chicago, MIT, Caltech, or any other university at which this ciould possibly be aimed.

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@VeryLuckyParent How is this possible? If you get into Penn ED and the aid is at least as much as you have indicated u need or more, you cannot break the contract. Also international rich kids don’t even apply for aid, so they do not have any way of breaking the contract. I strongly disagree that there is a considerable number of kids who pass up the opportunity of applying to their #1 choice in order to settle for a second-best more realistic choice. A kid applying to Penn ED as a non-legacy and non-athlete has to have very competitive stats to get in. This kind of applicant is not gonna risk eliminating the possibility of applying to its first choice by applying early to an ED school. So it is safe to say that most Penn early applicants genuinely have Penn as their first choice. When it comes to Chicago things are not so clear since it has EA and not ED and thus it is not binding, so one could easily apply to HYPSM RD but still apply EA to Chicago to increase their changes of getting into a good school. Also many early applicants at Penn apply to one of the famed dual degree programs (M&T, LSM, Huntsman, Vagelos, VIPER) for which people routinely turn down HYPSM, and also to Wharton , which there is a good number of very business-focused and pre-professional students who turn down YPSM for.

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So you can’t apply to Penn ED and MIT, Caltech, UChicago any longer. (I’m sure there are more I’m not thinking of). I wonder if they were getting some kids with EA financial offers on ED that they were having to match or let them go based on not meeting need? I think this will hurt Penn but I guess this is their counter to UChicago. It probably helps the prestigious state EA schools though since Penn ED applicants will probably do more applying to places like GA Tech, UVA, UNC, Michigan, etc. rather than MIT, UChicago, etc.

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Penn95 - let’s turn this around - why do you think UPenn chose to make their ED program even more restrictive? What was their reasoning here? On its face, it seems like a confusing decision, as other posters (like JHS) have commented.

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@Penn95 why do this? That’s the question. Clearly they want the private college EA applicants to choose. Why? Penn already has them with the contract. The EA school can’t trump Penn. So why do it?

You don’t indicate how much aid you need. You just submit the FAFSA and the CSS profile. Then you cross your fingers and wait. You can estimate how much you might get thru the net cost calculator, but the ED contact doesn’t ask you if you have calculated your need and will accept if that amount is given to you. So you can turn down any ED schools’ offer for financial reasons without giving any justification. This is the only way to break an ED commitment

I am speculating that Penn is finding that sufficient kids are using this financial aid escape hatch. I can’t think of any other reason to demand that students not apply to a private EA school. For a kid thinking of using the escape hatch, an admit from a school like UChicago or MIT is the safety parachute. They can now bail from Penn and try something better at Penn’s expense. If everything else fails, they still land at a good school. Kids are being forced to play these games because admission to these colleges had become very unpredictable. Even the best kids can’t take an admission for granted. So a high achieving kid may choose an ED school just to boost their admission chances even if it is not their absolute top choice if their first choice doesn’t have an ED option. It’s a risk mitigation strategy. For such kids, using the finance escape hatch right after they got a nod from an MIT or UChicago was a way to have their cake and eat it too. They can’t do that now. Penn just took away their parachute. They would only do this if they are noticing too many kids using this EA parachute.

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I was also wondering if the Penn announcement is a reaction to UChicago’s changes to its program?

Penn Received over 5,600 ED apps this year. Lets assume 50% had some hook, were athletes etc and probably are sure that Penn is their first choice. The other 50%, maybe around 2,800 apps were from unhooked students. We know that Chicago, Penn and Columbia share a number of applicants, so lets say maybe 50% or higher put in an EA app to UChicago? That would be around 1,400 apps or higher?

With UChicago switching to ED, the question is what percentage of these students would now apply to Chicago ED and not Penn thereby reducing Penn’s applicant pool. And how would Penn react to that? They could play defense and try and recruit more applicants or they could play offense and try to discourage applicants from applying to UChicago.

Yeah, I know, that sounds childish, but in this world where Universities try to match each other’s moves, maybe this is a possibility. Again pure speculation on my part.

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I think @VeryLuckyParent in post #137 absolutely nailed the reasoning behind Penn’s decision. Sad that this is the game that schools play (and force students to play). ED is terrible.