UChicago similar to Dartmouth? In what way?
In that they both lack serious engineering programs.
I think you didn’t even mention the most important point - many applicants see NU and UChicago as prestigious schools IN THE SAME GENERAL AREA.
I think that’s why you see overlap between UChicago and NU, Penn and Princeton, Stanford and Berkeley. But you don’t see as much overlap between, say, Cornell and Stanford, Penn and USC.
I’d wager that if any of those schools were geographically closer, the overlaps would be a lot higher.
It’s less that applicants don’t consider these schools different, and much more does that top students tend to apply to clumps of top schools in similar areas.
Who the heck applies to schools on the basis of them both being bad at the same thing?
@Cue7 I did. Read my point 2) 
But let’s not try to oversimplify this. The students who apply to NU are not applying to DePaul and Loyola in the same proportion, even though they are also in the same city.
I think there’s more to the previous comment about the fewer number of UChicago applications that the previous response to it acknowledges. UChicago and Penn or Duke may get the same number of applications now, but that was not the case as little as five years ago. Depending on how many years back Naviance is looking, it may well be including some years when UChicago simply got fewer applications than some similar colleges, and thus had fewer opportunities for cross-applications at the level that would put them into one or another rival’s top five.
It’s also worth remembering that over the past few years, UChicago has gotten a huge percentage of its applications EA, which means those applicants could not have applied to HYPS SCEA. And if those applicants got deferred or rejected from Chicago EA, they may have viewed it as a message that they would not be competitive at those colleges. That said, I am not sure any kid I know applied to UChicago without applying to at least one of HYPS, but none applied to all of them…
Upthread, I think @denydenzig said, as if it mattered, that “fewer than 25% of Columbia’s applicants applied to Chicago.” I don’t know where that statistic came from – all I can tell from what has been on this thread is that fewer than 38% of Columbia’s applicants applied to Chicago – but regardless: that “only” 20% or 30% of Clumbia’s applicants applied to Chicago is hardly a matter or concern to anyone. (OK, I figured it out: 33% of Chicago’s 35K applicants in the data set applied to Columbia, and that’s a skootch less than 25% of the 47K Columbia applicants in the data set. Big deal. That’s a meaningful overlap.}
UChicago experienced a gigantic increase in applications once it accepted the common app.
I couldn’t disagree with this more. There should be a huge overlap between these schools, specially given that every time somebody asks which school is the most similar to Chicago, Columbia’s name invariably comes up. They are both in urban cities, both have the core etc etc.
The fact that Chicago doesn’t show up in the top five at “ANY” top 20 school (except NU) suggests that Chicago should be aggressively increasing its marketing outreach, not decreasing it as some have suggested. Kids applying to the top 20 schools should clearly be considering Chicago seriously and you should see it in the top 5 on almost any overlap list for the top 20 schools.
I think UChicago recognizes this already and is taking the right steps in terms of ED1 and ED2 to broaden its appeal and pull in more kids from the coasts. I don’t know how far back the Naviance data goes but one of the important metrics of how Chicago is viewed by “generally well accomplished ambitious students” is to measure if it is in the top 3 in the applicant overlap pool at a majority of the top 10 schools at the very least. Naviance may not have the most reliable or up to date data in this respect, but it does give a tantalizing view to us. I am sure the school has better ways to track this and they should be measuring this very closely.
Out of curiosity, what demographic(s) of Columbia applicants do you think have not been marketed to by Chicago? Our household received tons of direct mail from each, but my impression was marketing did more to differentiate the schools than to make them seem similar (center of the universe vs life of the mind). I assume that first-gen marketing is typically closer to campus (it’s labor-intensive, tends to be longer-term, and is probably more successful (in appealing to parents, at least) when the school is within driving distance). To me, it seems as if there will always be lots of Columbia applicants who have zero interest in Chicago (eager to be in NYC, must-get-into-Ivy) and vice versa.
I guess I just don’t see the problem you’re trying to solve here. I actually kinda like the fact that UChicago doesn’t show up as top 5 in any of the t20 lists. That’s the outcome you’d expect if UChicago applicants are making deliberate (and varying) choices about where to apply based on what they want to study and/or what kind of learning environment they want to be a part of rather than just looking at USNWR and applying to all the top-ranked schools.
We need to disabuse ourselves of this notion that UChicago is somehow so unique that it should necessarily only attract students with “singular tastes and interests” Lets be savvy enough to realize that “The Life of the mind” is as much a marketing positioning statement as it is “an actual thing”. The undergraduate at UChicago is not learning something weird and esoteric that isn’t taught elsewhere at its peer schools. Chicago provides a fantastic education, but so do many many schools and If a large majority of top 20 applicants (75%+ in some cases) don’t consider Chicago when they apply to college, then I definitely think this is a problem. This was indeed a gigantic issue a few decades ago and Chicago has done remarkable things to correct it, but I think instead of backing off, it needs to be even more aggressive now.
I am not saying that there needs to be an 80% overlap between the Columbia applicant ppol and the Chicago applicant pool, but I think closer to 50% would be a good metric. Maybe this is already happening and the Naviance data just doesn’t show it yet, but maybe it is not, and if that is the case, then I do think it needs to be corrected, instead of wearing the lack of mindshare among applicants as a badge of honor.
I honestly don’t understand why this has any relevance to, well, anything that matters.
I’m only approximately understanding the technical metrics of this discussion, but the last two posts have finally brought home to me what’s at stake. I am (for once!) very much in agreement with exacademic. Enough is enough with the Darwinian competition of duelling schools! No one here is arguing for anything like a return to a school “so unique that it should necessarily only attract students with ‘singular tastes and interests’”. That’s a straw man. Those of us who love the University of Chicago know very well that it needed to broaden its appeal and make its story known to a greater pool of talented high school kids. You can wage that battle - the University has in fact done it, I hope and believe - without ceding the (yes, I’ll say it) special if not altogether unique quality of the place, both for the students it attracts and the education it gives them. If that specialness is lost, the University will have lost its soul. One can accept that “the life of the mind” is both an actual thing and a marketing statement, but one of these things comes first, the other is merely instrumental to it. (You’ll find that point being made by Aristotle!)
I never bought that idea that UChicago has a monopoly on life of the mind (or that NYC is the center of the universe – guess I should have used scare quotes, LOL)). That said, I whole-heartedly endorse UChicago’s commitment to intellectual life and I don’t want to see it turn into a school that’s essentially interchangeable with any other t20 university. There are a lot of different ways of being smart/talented/ambitious and the seek money/seek power/build your network/build your brand/and spin, spin, spin model is already well-represented at those kinds of schools. I think it’s really important that the think hard/think carefully/think critically/think broadly/think deeply/think across boundaries/know what you don’t know model remains (or becomes) the center of gravity at others.
It’s not as if UChicago turns away applicants who believe in the former model – they just have to be simultaneously interested in (or willing to live with) the demands of the latter for the four or five years they spend in college. And it’s not as if UChicago’s ethos is getting in the way of it attracting very talented students (and more such students than it can admit). I think everybody benefits when schools do what they do well rather than try to be all things to all people.
And the whole “top 20 applicants” notion just creeps me out. It’s an effed-up way to define yourself for so many reasons.
This t-20 thing is way over blown and not in the way you think. Guess what, if you attract top students to your school your going to get a top 20 ranking whether you like it or not. It’s a self licking ice cream cone. What am I looking for in a college for my D, a) she likes the ambiance/location but more importantly b) that she shares a common interest in the pursuit of academic knowledge with other students at the college (which is much different than the current public HS she attends where 80% of the students could care less).
Other than Harvard and Yale, I don’t think there were any 50% overlaps among the non-California schools. So why the heck should Columbia and Chicago have a 50% overlap. Because they are both in big cities about 1,000 miles apart? Because they both have something called a core, but completely different personalities? Over 11,000 kids in the Naviance database did apply to both, which makes some sense, but I don’t get why it’s a problem that it wasn’t 24,000 kids. I don’t see why the Columbia applicants are so wonderful I wish more of them had applied to Chicago, and I don’t know what’s wrong with more Chicago applicants not applying to Columbia.
In my house, there was a 50% overlap. Kid #1 really wanted to be in NY at the most academic college, and Chicago/UChicago was a distant second choice. Until she started looking harder at both schools, then it became a closer second choice.(Or really third choice, because she would have gone to Yale in a heartbeat.) She’s lived in New York for 8 years, knows and works with any number of Columbia graduates, and thanks her stars all the time that she didn’t go to college there. Kid #2, a more competitive applicant stats-wise, had no desire to be in NYC, and thought Columbia consisted entirely of kids whose priority was either NYC-Ivy or Ivy-NYC. That didn’t interest him in the least.
@JHS My kid applied to almost a dozen schools, but none of the HYPS. Did apply to UChicago, and got in EA with a really good actual merit scholarship. He got into all of the schools he applied to. He was interested in the quirkiness of UChicago, but was very turned off by the concept of the Ivys altogether. Maybe he’s an outlier, but I do know a couple others who applied to UChicago and not to HYPS.
When Lexus entered the luxury car market in the late 80’s, Mercedes and BMW were considered the gold standard of luxury. They were followed by Cadillac and Lincoln. Lexus provided almost the same luxury at a lower price point, but also added reliability and customer experience to the mix. Yet when they first entered the market, nobody in their right mind who was shopping for a Mercedes or BMW would put Lexus on their list. You could go to a Mercedes and BMW showroom and the sales guy would laugh at the notion of Lexus being in the same league.
Acura also entered the Luxury market at the same time. Lexus and Acura followed very different paths and strategies. Lexus went aggressively after the Mercedes and BMW customer base with an aggressive marketing campaign. They focused on their core strength of quality, value and luxury but delivered a fantastic customer experience. They even questioned the rationality of purchasing an expensive German brand in their marketing.
Lexus realized the importance of going after the Mercedes and BMW customer base. They did not concede this space to the Germans, even though many mocked them for even dreaming of competing with the big boys. Well almost two decades later they have rewritten the rules of the luxury car market. They have clearly displaced Cadillac and Lincoln and today almost anybody who is in the market for a luxury car would look at Lexus seriously even if they choose a Mercedes or BMW.
Acura is in a very different spot today. They were never able to get the same share of the Mercedes/BMW car buyers to consider them seriously.
Today we have a new set of entrants in the luxury car segment. Hyundai and Kia. Guess what. They are going after Lexus customers with their luxury with value message. Do they have the brand permission yet. Probably not. Kia as a luxury brand is not taken seriously today, but in 10 years, the story might be very different.
Overlap matters. It signifies brand strength, brand prestige and brand permission in the eyes of the consumer. Lack of significant overlap means that the brands are viewed very differently in the eyes of the consumer. When Lexus started out there was little or no overlap between the potential luxury car buyers considering the German brands and its customer base, but that is not true anymore and the results are there for everybody to see.
Many here regard Chicago as a ** peer institution** to Penn, Columbia and HYPS in terms of educational quality and overall educational experience and outcomes, but simply claiming “peer status” is not enough. The underlying data has to reflect it too and overlapping applicant pools and cross admit wins are two metrics to sanity check that assertion, even if they are not perfect or the “only metrics”
I think Chicago has made huge strides in becoming a viable alternative to “the Ivies” (yeah, I said it )and even surpassed some in terms of brand strength and attractiveness. Maybe “the overlap pool” is a lagging indicator. I don’t know. We can also have legitimate disagreements about what the overlap percentage should be, but ignoring it, treating it as irrelevant or celebrating the lack of overlap as “desirable” is also foolish if you are interested in the lasting brand value of a UChicago education.
Like it or not, the “Ivies” are the gold standard when it comes to an education brand moniker. Very few universities have the same or greater brand permission, prestige and recognition compared to an “Ivy”, so an overlap with this pool of applicants, regardless of what you think of the applicant pool becomes important ** from a branding perspective**.
In the branding world, there are three factors, that hold sway: Awareness, Consideration and Preference.
Are students aware of UChicago: This is where aggressive marketing comes in. You always go for higher awareness.
Consideration: Would students consider UChicago. This is where the overlap pool plays an important role.
Finally Preference: Would a student prefer UChicago compared to other schools. Here is where the cross admit data comes in.
All three are important for the strength and future of the UChicago Brand.
Awareness, Consideration and Preference can also be measured by the number of applications, Number of ED or EA applications, Yield etc.
Also look at how Stanford fared in this discussion, are we to conclude they don’t have the brand awareness from this data. The ivies are in the NE, of course they will have overlap with each other more due to geography than anything else.
Pardon, but I think you’re getting overzealous here. You make all these assertions, but the data may actually be considerably incomplete. In the data you showed, Naviance analyzed about 50,000 apps from NU, UPenn, and Columbia, but only about 35,000 from Duke and Chicago.
Leaving Chicago aside for a moment, why doesn’t Duke have as many apps analyzed as NU or UPenn? For decades, it’s been just as popular as these other schools. How come Penn and NU have so many more apps analyzed than Duke?
That to me is the issue here - you’re railing away without the full picture. And it’s puzzling that a school as popular as Duke is so under-represented here.
Until we have the full picture, there’s not much you can draw about brand strength with this data. If you did, you’d see Cornell, Penn, etc. as having stronger “brands” because they have more Naviance apps analyzed in comparison to Duke, and more top 5 representation at other top schools. I doubt, if you look at apps actually received and strength of incoming classes, that this is actually the case.
(Your data, btw, shows that Stanford seems to have more overlap with Berkeley and UCLA than it does with, say, Columbia and Cornell. Further, it looks like Stanford isn’t in the top 5 for schools like Penn, Columbia, NU, etc. Should such data worry the leaders at Stanford? I think not.)
You need to calm down for a moment and consider the very incomplete nature of what’s before us.