I would agree except that there is a lot that is overlooked here and assumptions made (possibly erroneously). For example Caltech, those applicants appear to me to be applying to colleges with very strong engineering programs. UChicago should not be on that list if this is the case (and of course it is not on that top five). So drawing any conclusions can easily take you down the wrong path. Minus those wanting economics, MIT and Caltech are not peers of UChicago because of their engineering emphasis.
I see this thread as a reason why UChicago should spend more on marketing/advertising to applicants and parents from non-core regions.
For Caltech, I agree. But Chicago not breaking into the top 5 at any of the top 20 Research and LAC’s is very interesting. I think UChicago’s applicant pool seems very different from the other schools. There is very big overlap among the applicant pool for the Ivies. Chicago seems to be drawing from a different pool. I think the ED2 plan will radically alter this. But without an Early decision program, Chicago did look very different.
Can you give the specific numbers for UChicago, Northwestern, UPenn, Columbia, and Duke? So, for example, on the overlap list, how many Chicago applicants also apply to Northwestern , Penn, etc?
What admit the numbers for Duke, NU, etc.
The data is interesting - and probably they last remnants of Chicago being a “different” school.
I think it’s interesting to see Cornells top 5 spot on both CalTech and MIT, granted it’s yields the largest freshman class, but still surprising.
@fbsdreams I have heard Cornell’s Engineering, despite not being in the levels of Stanford/Berkeley/Carnegie Mellon/GA Tech much less MIT/Caltech is the best Engineering school among the Ivies.
@FStratford Indeed it is. I just looked into it and looks like it’s a top 10 program in various rankings.
Chicago ( 35,103 apps analyzed)
NU 37%
Columbia 33%
Penn 32%
Cornell, Brown 28%
NU (48,802 apps analyzed)
Michigan 32%
Penn 30%
WashU 29%
Cornell 28%
Chicago 26%
Duke (39,640 apps analyzed)
Penn 37%
Cornell, Stanford 32%
NU 31%
Harvard 30%
Penn (51,262 Apps analyzed)
Cornell 38%
Columbia 37%
Harvard, Brown 32%
Princeton 31%
Columbia (47,359 Apps analyzed)
Penn 40%
NYU 38%
Cornell 36%
Harvard 35%
Brown 34%
@Denydenzig thanks for saying it was College Match. Found it!
Perhaps I’m confused, but isn’t the lack of Chicago’s representation at other peer schools sprouting from the lack of Chicago apps analyzed?
Only 35000 Chicago apps were analyzed. In comparison, about 50000 apps were analyzed for Penn, Northwestern, etc. Similarly, fewer duke apps were analyzed, which may explain why duke isn’t represented at other schools’ lists.
If 37% of duke applicants applied to Penn (as seen above) and 50000 duke apps were analyzed (instead of 37000), duke would certainly be represented in UPenn’s current top 5, right?
@Cue7 Not necessarily, for example Princeton has fewer total apps analyzed than Duke but shows up in Penn’s top 5 list. Princeton is clearly more popular among Penn applicants on average than Duke.
Also, my guess is that Naviance analyzed the total apps they had on file for each college, which may indicate that in the Naviance world, fewer kids may be applying to Duke and Chicago than lets say Penn. In this world, the number of kids applying to a college becomes important. Having said that, if Duke tried to accelerate the number of apps it received, people would then cry foul saying it is just trying to “gin up” applications. I think relative applicant pool sizes shows brand strength to some extent. That is why for example there was quite a bit of hand wringing at Dartmouth this application season at the slight fall (3.2%) in the number of applications compared to other Ivies that are experiencing growth. There is a lot of explaining happening at Dartmouth to frame the decrease in the proper context instead of worrying about diluting brand strength. So they are clearly getting some questions on why only Dartmouth is experiencing a decline in applicants.
Duke and Chicago may be on an upward trend though, so it remains to be seen how the data changes in the next few years. I think, this may be the first year, Naviance has released this kind of data.
For Duke to emerge on Penn’s top five list, multiple things would need to happen. First Duke’s applicant pool would have to rise at a faster clip than Penn’s pool increases. Then the percentage of applicants applying to Penn would either have to grow proportionally or grow faster. There is no guarantee of that. Let’s say Duke’s analyzed pool in Naviance rises to 50,000. There is no guarantee that the percentage would remain at 37% of that pool for Penn. It could become less if say the newer kids in the Duke pool choose to apply to Rice or Vanderbilt, so the total may not increase on the Penn side, depending on where Duke focuses its marketing/outreach efforts. Finally the percentage of applicants and app pools from other schools would need to rise slower or stagnate and their Penn percentages would need to rise slower or stagnate.
One other thing complicating the data is the fact that generally speaking the international pool may not be represented in Naviance, and we know that the Ivies are generally more well known and sought after in the largest international countries of China, India, Korea etc. It is entirely possible that if you factor in the international applicants, the skew may actually work against Duke.
@Chrchill at #13 - What I’m wondering is: for those accepted in the EDII round, where did they apply first? Anecdotally, it appeared that many of them were deferred from UChicago EA.
Pardon, as I’ll still confused - as duke, Chicago, Columbia, Penn, etc all get roughly the same number of applications each year, but the naviance app numbers are so different, doesn’t that reflect the incomplete nature of the naviance pool?
It looks like not all students use naviance. So, while the pool is interesting to see, there’s a lot not being captured, right?
Do you know who typically uses naviance? Is it overrepresented in some communities?
My general thought is that the percentages matter more than the overall number of apps, since all apps aren’t captured.
Through that lens, whether a school is on a top five list or not is somewhat irrelevant - the percentages show where a chunk of applicants are looking. Further, it looks like for all schools, based on the percentages, the amount of overlap is still more minimal - eg yes Princeton is popular with upenn applicants, but certainly not to an overwhelming degree.
I was surprised there wasn’t more overlap between Harvard and Yale, for example. (Although the overlap there is quite strong of course - showing that those two schools, still more than any others, are admissions rivals. I don’t think the same could be said of any other two schools to the same degree.)
Not all schools subscribe to Naviance. My kid’s (private day) school didn’t. If you have a graduating class of 125, people can deduce (or think they’ve deduced) individual outcomes. Also, for highly selective colleges, it’s not that helpful when legacy, athletic recruits, and race aren’t identified. At least that’s the rationale the school provides. In my area, I think the public school systems generally participate but different private schools make different decisions. I’m also not sure whether some privates submit data but don’t give parents/students access to it (which obviously doesn’t have an impact on the data collected, but may have an impact of the reliability of parent perceptions regarding participation – including my own!)
@JBStillFlying ED2 are a combination of two populations. Those who were deferred EA from UChicago and those who were deferred / ejected EA in its various permutations from H, P, MIT
I find Naviance is a tool but not a great tool, the information is incomplete since it is self reported. Many kids simply don’t go back and fill out the information once they are accepted or denied and they also may not use it at all. Having said that, like a poll, the percentages are probably accurate to within a few percent error margin so in that respect the data is accurate. Personally I used ■■■■■■■■■■■■ as the site of choice for accurate information on acceptances/denials since that site actually requires verification of any admittance’s that you have received. However it also has its limitations.
I’d guess the coasts are overrepresented. Wealthy suburbs are also probably overrepresented.
Anywhere where people really really really care about getting into college.
@Chrchill theoretically, yes. But I don’t recall reading any posts from the latter. Maybe I missed them, or maybe they didn’t post on CC. There is a third pool: those who applied SCEA, were accepted, and then applied to their first choice UChicago EDII. Seems risky but at least one poster on another UChicago thread said that’s what they would have done last year. Limited to exceptionally strong legacies from those schools, I would imagine.
@JBStillFlying Legacy has become meaningless at Harvard, Stanford, Yale, and MIT. Still some consideration at Princeton and a bit at Columbia. Don’t know about UChicago and legacy. Does matter at Penn, Dartmouth and Brown.
Legacy at UChicago does give you an edge, all else equal.