@Cue7 Ok. Now you are just being rude and engaging in personal attacks. I am not railing or being overzealous. I amj just having a polite discussion. I have also repeatedly stated, if you took time to read my posts that the Naviance data is not perfect. Btw your comment is ironic, since others have pointed out that you have railed and been overzealous in your criticism of UChicago many times in your past posts. Just saying
There are two issues that are being conflated here
Overlap pools are indeed important but the Naviance data is imperfect or cannot be trusted
Who cares about overalap pools. They mean nothing.
I think you are arguing the former. There are others who are arguing the latter.
I would readily admit that the Naviance data could be skewed or incomplete, although I am not ready to discount it entirely. I think I have already stated this in my previous posts on this topic. I also disagree that the overalap pool is an “irrelevant piece of data” or that “a 20% overlap is fine” or “not showing up in the top five on any t20 list is actually good”
My D was accepted early into UChicago. While that was clearly her first choice school, her second choice based upon fit was WashU, followed by Columbia, Rice and Vanderbilt.
Among the HYPS schools, Yale should have been a front-runner (her first cousin attended there) but was removed from her list due to how they handled the Halloween costume issue. Princeton was too rural, and Stanford too far away. Harvard was on her list roughly at #6. If accepted there, she would have “reluctantly attended”.
If you look at the HYPM data. These are the schools that are considered “Peers of Stanford”, you will see Stanford fares very very well. You wouldn’t expect Stanford to break the top 5 with a non-peer school. That is the whole point of the overlap pool. That is why I am reluctant to discount the Naviance data. It explains the HYPSM phenomena pretty well, by confirming their peer status in the minds of the applicants with huge overlap pools.
@hebegebe Your anecdotal evidence is pretty much in line with the Naviance data. Chicago applicants don’t usually apply to HYPSM in large numbers, but do consider Penn, NU and Columbia seriously.
Looking at the data with a just the top 2, I see a much better correlation to peer institutions (especially with the HYP), with the influence of geography.
UChicago
Northwestern
Columbia
Northwestern
Michigan
Penn
For Columbia
Penn
NYU
For Penn
Cornell
Columbia
For Cornell
Penn
Columbia
for Brown
Columbia
Penn
For Harvard
1) Yale 48%
2) Princeton 44%
For Yale
1) Harvard 51%
2) Princeton 46%
For Princeton
1) Harvard 49%
2) Yale 47%
For Stanford
1) Berkeley 39%
2) UCLA, Harvard 35%
For MIT
1) Stanford 44%
2) Harvard 42%
“(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.)”
36% of Stanford undergrads hail from CA so they get a LOT of kids from that state who apply. Given the reputation of UCLA and Cal-Berkeley, it would be insane for these NOT to be the top two overlaps.
Actually, Harvard is tied with UCLA and Yale/Princeton (tie) at a few points behind. I’d call that solid overlap. Esp. with 49,000+ applications analyzed. Pretty good sample size and not one that’s necessarily restricted to a geo. region (although geo. factors are going to weigh in, esp. for CA).
So here is the influence of locality as this is the data for everyone who as applied to Harvard from my D particular HS., the number to the left is overlap. Obviously we live in Colorado.
You actually just made my point. The Penn, NU and Columbia applicants don’t consider Stanford to be a peer school. Kids that apply to Penn and Columbia on average don’t feel that they have a good shot at Stanford so they stick to other schools. They do apply to the east coast schools because of geographic proximity which I have already acknowledged plays a part in college choice or maybe these are SCEA rejects. But if you move to the Harvard, MIT, Yale and Princeton applicant pool you will see a different story. Because the applicants to those schools do consider Stanford a peer school and feel that they have a decent shot at the school there is a large overlap in the applicant pool. Remember that the overlap pool is a “Consideration” metric not an “Awareness metric” Penn and Columbia applicants are aware of Stanford ( who isnt?) but will not consider it for many reasons, one of the reasons being “This is probably a waste of my time, I will never make it”. But if they get in, Stanford handily beats both schools in cross-admit wins, because they certainly “prefer” Stanford to Penn and Columbia. You can see the same issue play out if you look at the overlap pool for let’s say “DePaul University” and “UChicago”. It’s not that the DePaul applicants don’t want to go to UChicago or are not aware of it, but most know that it is not very realistic so UChicago will probably never show up in the top 5 for the “DePaul” applicant pool. That says very little about UChicago and much more about the “DePaul” pool.
Unless you are making the case that Penn and Columbia applicants are viewing UChicago as a HYPSM equivalent and hence are staying away…
The Stanford number shows you that the Naviance data is not as suspect as you claim it is. In fact it reinforces common perceptions. I am sure there are exceptions, but in general it does a pretty good job at clustering peer schools.
@CU123 That is interesting data, even though it is one school and it is an encouraging pattern for UChicago!! If we start seeing that pattern in the Naviance data in 2-3 years, then it will really mean that perceptions have been completely altered.
It’s also important to look at the spread between first and second, or between first place and fifth. If first place is 35%, and 2nd 34%, that’s not really evidence that #1 is a peer and #2 isn’t.
I know many academics with kids who have applied to all these schools. The conventional wisdom is that Penn/Columia still considered to be closer peers to UChicago than HYSP. There are many factors for this difference, some of which is academic reputation (which of course these guys are considering). The Lexus branding strategy is not going to be particularly easy. Money is the biggest barrier at this point, although one doesn’t know what can happen in 20-30 years time. Money buys the best faculty, the best facilities, and the best overall experience for the students, so UChicago is going to need a LOT of money to be able to keep up with the big kids.
Amending the above ^^ to add: Money also buys the best students, both grad and undergrad. I have a CC friend who pointed out to me the Knight/Hennesey scholarship fund at Stanford (new). Don’t know all the details but it’s something like 100 grad school kids per year are fully funded for a 3-year period (so think B-school, law, med-school, etc.). The amount: $750 million. THAT’s the kind of moola Uchicago needs.
I would disagree with #93. From a branding standpoint there is definitely overlap (while we are on the subject of overlap). And both are normal-to-superior goods i.e. you purchase better quality the higher your income.
@denydenzig True, but UChicago is still only tied with Johns Hopkins, Brown, Cornell, and Yale, only ahead of Dartmouth, behind Princeton, and significantly behind Stanford in this very limited data set.
And, to be honest @CU123, it’s going to take quite a bit for them to catch up. Stanford has been gradually increasing it’s reputation over the past 30 years (more accelerated pace in the past 15 or so), and with the big bucks it can maintain its place. UChicago is where it needs to be - and rightfully so! Finally! - but where can it go from here is the big question. It needs a serious infusion of cash to shore up some of the programs that have maybe been lagging a bit. SS is strong - but the average age of it’s nobel laureates is . . well, not young. It just slipped in grad school ranking for Economics on USNews. Only one ranking I realize, but a signal nonetheless that perhaps it needs to get off its laurels and start graduating and hiring more future game-changers. This is an intangible, fuzzy observation, I realize (part welcome departure from all the stats you guys have been throwing around, and part rant . . . ). But unless the university as a whole can raise the kind of money significant endowment that Booth was able to procure, it won’t keep up.
Again, my apologies, I didn’t mean to direct a personal attack (which is why I started my past post with the word “Pardon…”)
You present the case of Stanford, and argue that, since it’s not on Penn or Columbia or NU’s top 5, applicants to those schools don’t really see Stanford as a peer.
That could be right, but then what do you make of the data on Duke? It’s not on the top 5 of any of these other schools, just like Chicago. Using your logic, what does that say about Duke? Is Duke (and Chicago) somehow “peer-less” based on this data?
Trust me, per my apparent reputation on this board, if there’s data that presents criticisms about Chicago, I’d be all over it. This data ain’t that, though.
@JBStillFlying - as I’ve been chastised in other threads for being the resident Chicago grump, I’ll keep this short: I agree with you, and I think there are many areas where Chicago’s standing is precarious, and there’s probably not enough money to fill in all the gaps. US News rankings are only worth so much, but it’s strange that the economics dep’t dropped below first place - that’s never happened before in the history of the rankings. Further, the med school’s dip isn’t good news either.
I’ll stop there, lest others decry my incessant negativity about the school!
(@Denydenzig’s data, though, still isn’t rising up on my list of Chicago’s concerns.)
You hit the nail right on the head. This is why I roll my eyes when folks get all preachy and whine about the ED strategy. The school is basically fighting for a spot at the very top of the pyramid and there is place for maybe five schools there. There are already 5 there and all are wealthier than Chicago right now. There are also a bunch who are ahead of Chicago in terms of wealth. Then there are ones that are nipping at its heels.
ED is the best strategy to bring in wealthy enthusiastic kids who will in turn give a big boost to the endowment in 10-20 years. This is the other reason the overlap pool is so important. Chicago really needs those full pay kids. The school cannot afford to put its future at risk, because it may acquire the ire of folks who would rather have it spend down its endowment giving huge merit aid to undoubtedly deserving students.
Fortunately Nondorf recognizes this much better than his predecessor ever did. Given where the university is financially, I think filling 75% of the class with ED kids is about what will be needed for the foreseeable future. The alternative is Chicago should give up its ambitions of being a top 5 school and get out of this race.
