I still await your response re what the data says about Duke!
(Seeing as Duke, like Chicago, isn’t on any of the top 5 lists presented.)
Duke shows up in many top 5 lists. Here are the ones I am aware of. There may be more. Chicago is kind of unique in being a no show on any list.
4th on Notre Dame
3rd on Rice
1st on Vanderbilit
5th on WashU
The Duke numbers make sense to me. The students applying to Vany, WashU, Rice would consider Duke a peer school and would consider it as part of their application pool
I am curious, denydenzig, as to what changes of policy or direction you are advocating on the basis of your interpretation of this data, assuming for the sake of argument that it shows that Chicago loses to Stanford and the top ivies in the competition for the objectively best students and that this is a bad thing. You may be advocating simply a more vigorous marketing campaign. However, it sounds to me like you really do want “the product”, to use a business metaphor of the sort you are using, to be differently designed. Is that right? If so, what changes would you make to a Chicago education? Would those changes make Chicago more like an Ivy or something different from an Ivy?
@marlowe1 Actually I love the product. If the product were different, the University would not appeal to me. And I think the University is doing exactly the right things, including some things that others despise here.
Here are the things I like about what the University is doing
- Aggressive marketing to improve awareness. They should be doing more of this, specially abroad.
- Giving ED1 and ED2 options to students. I have always wondered why they did not. They started this year.
- I think Chicago’s dog-whistle about “no trigger warnings and safe spaces” is a brilliant marketing ploy. It is also in keeping with the Chicago tradition, but to highlight it in such a dramatic and noisy way generated a lot of fee publicity for the school and a lot of goodwill among the segments that are likely to apply ED. I think it is no accident that President ZImmer gave another interview with the Wall Street Journal in Feb of this year and brought this up again.
- I actually like the fact that they are promoting the growth of fraternities and sororities on campus.
- I like the fact that they have a very good career services team and are really focusing not just on the education, but on career outcome for the students.
@dennydenzig As you can see from the recent New York Times article, all of the ivies and what we consider Chicago’s peers have families significantly more skewed towards the top of the income bracket. I’ve linked the study here:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/college-mobility/university-of-chicago
The median family incomes are, in order:
- Brown, 204,200
- Dartmouth, 200,400
- Penn, 195,500
- Yale, 192,600
- Duke, 186,700
- Princeton, 186,100
- Harvard, 168,800
- Stanford, 167,500
- Cornell, 151,600
- Columbia, 150,900
- MIT, 137,400
- Chicago, 134,500.
As you can see, Chicago is MUCH more representative of American families than its peers, who, admittedly, all have median family incomes of students in the 6 figures. At a time when income inequality is growing and has no signs of stopping, you now suggest that Chicago should emulate its peers and seek to become more unequal and more representative of the top 1% of families. This is also in the wake of a presidential election where a big driver of discontent has been growing inequality and the processes that drive this, like automation and globalisation. It’s pretty reprehensible that you want Chicago to perpetuate, or even embrace, the growing economic inequality in American society which is increasingly making our “free” country look like one ridden with castes.
Speaking as a student with personal experience of the University, one of the pleasant surprises for me was just how much things like conspicuous consumption are frowned on and seen as unseemly. The ivies can have their rich students, who bring elitism to their campuses … I’m fine with Chicago, which has obviously aimed to provide more access to lower-income students, as a model for what a great research University should be.
Hmm, relentless self-promotion (sometimes disingenuous), more breaks for the wealthy, more boys’ clubs, zero tolerance for “whiners” who care about issues of equality and inclusion, and if all else fails, promise them jobs. Sounds strangely familiar.
FWIW, I don’t think that actually is the UChicago administration’s playbook, but if it were, I’d be really disappointed. That said, my sense is that the faculty recognize/value what’s distinctive about UChicago, so I’m fairly confident that my daughter will continue to get the kind of education she came for.
Math is unforgiving. It doesn’t care about your quest for social equality, or for that matter, anything at all.
It takes money to propel a university to greatness, because you need it to:
- Hire away star professors from other places that want to hire them.
- Provide scholarships to lure away the very top students that HYPS wants for themselves.
- Build up new departments like molecular engineering or any additional engineering programs.
- Build new dorms that appeal to students, and maintain the existing beautiful but old infrastructure.
- Invest in people and equipment required for a top notch medical school.
The money for a university comes from the tuition it gathers from its students, and from returns on its endowment. Because the earnings of families sending their kids to UChicago lags its peers, more financial aid is required and therefore less is collected from tuition. And because its endowment is lower, the returns from its endowment will also be lower. Finally, UChicago graduates traditionally have not gone after the highest paying jobs, which means lower donations in the future to its endowment.
If you want UChicago to compete at the highest levels, it must use its money judiciously. And quite frankly part of that means that a larger fraction of its incoming class must be full pay.
“At a time when income inequality is growing and has no signs of stopping, you now suggest that Chicago should emulate its peers and seek to become more unequal and more representative of the top 1% of families. This is also in the wake of a presidential election where a big driver of discontent has been growing inequality and the processes that drive this, like automation and globalisation. It’s pretty reprehensible that you want Chicago to perpetuate, or even embrace, the growing economic inequality in American society which is increasingly making our “free” country look like one ridden with castes.”
- Uh, @denydenzig didn't exactly PROPOSE that UChicago change it's admissions plan. He/she just liked what they did. And, @neweducation - suppose you can enlighten on on how you view the currently-completed admissions cycle? Will UChicago still represent American families, or has the situation changed?
@exacademic, sounds to me like you’d be happier with your kid at Harvard* or Yale? How did she end up at UChicago?
*Harvard and Columbia actually sent us a LOT more material than did UChicago!
@exacademic lol. Nice one. Truly creative. Btw, after reading your post, I grew concerned that I had grown horns on the top of my head and I had really small hands. I rushed to the mirror and let out a sigh of relief when I discovered I had neither 
Well actually my husband tells me I do have small hands
May I offer a more thoughtful response to @denydenzig, in order to keep the conversation civil and free of insults, wild assertions, or other unpleasant degenerations:
“1) Aggressive marketing to improve awareness. They should be doing more of this, specially abroad.”
- Makes sense. Some areas of the country are relatively "sleepy" in that the kids stay local or just a few hours away. For the Mid-Atlantic, New England and CA this is esp. true given the plethora of excellent schools. While UChicago can't compete on price against the top UC's, it CAN compete against some of the privates on the East Coast, by making that area more aware of what they offer. Truth is (and my in-laws are prototypes), people on the East Coast are not as knowledgable about, say, Midwestern schools as Midwesterners are about the East. That's just a fact. No uni is so sacred that it's somehow "above" the idea of improving it's brand in certain markets.
“2) Giving ED1 and ED2 options to students. I have always wondered why they did not. They started this year.”
- Personally, I HATE that they've done this. However, if I were the director of Admissions, I'd be derelict if my research showed that it improves outcomes and ignored it because of some silly personal gripe. Enough said on that.
“3) I think Chicago’s dog-whistle about “no trigger warnings and safe spaces” is a brilliant marketing ploy. It is also in keeping with the Chicago tradition, but to highlight it in such a dramatic and noisy way generated a lot of fee publicity for the school and a lot of goodwill among the segments that are likely to apply ED. I think it is no accident that President ZImmer gave another interview with the Wall Street Journal in Feb of this year and brought this up again.”
- If ANYONE thinks that UChicago is simply trying to mimic the Ivy's please re-read their press releases on these issues. But, IMHO, it's no marketing ploy. They take it quite seriously and believed that brouhahas noted in the news brought about the perfect opportunity to clarify their views. They owed that to the student, faculty and parent communities.
“4) I actually like the fact that they are promoting the growth of fraternities and sororities on campus.”
- Wasn't aware that they were PROMOTING it (have I missed something?). They've allowed it for years and, unlike Harvard, are not trying to suppress students' free association rights by prohibiting such. BTW, I figured there would be lawsuits associated with the latter but haven't followed any news on that. Status?
“5) I like the fact that they have a very good career services team and are really focusing not just on the education, but on career outcome for the students.”
- These are just best practices emulated by other top-tier uni's. Any time you follow best practices, that's a GOOD thing. In this sense I really DO hope that UChicago mimics the Ivy's. (Also, it should be noted that career services were pretty poor before so any notable improvement is going to be be newsworthy).
No idea why you got that impression! She got in EA last year and accepted (almost) immediately – withdrew her application to Wisconsin and never applied anywhere else. I’d told her for years that UofC was nerdvana, that people in the Midwest were just plain nicer, and that it was good to go to college in an area different from where you grew up. She went to an Ivy-obsessed HS and was really turned off by the effects of that obsession (and hated the idea of benefitting from a legacy preference). Loved UChicago and Madison when she visited. And enjoyed UChicago’s marketing efforts. Was depressed when the Ellison letter came out just before she headed off to campus.
“No idea where you got that impression!”
- From this: "More boys clubs";
- and this: "zero tolerance for "whiners" who care bout issues of equality and inclusion"
- and this "If it were (UChicago Administration's playbook), my sense is that the faculty recognize what's distinctive about UChicago." You do realize that the administration has a wonderful history of drawing from it's faculty, right? Perhaps Harvard does, too.
- and this "If it were (UChicago Administration's playbook), my sense is that the faculty recognize what's distinctive about UChicago." You do realize that the administration has a wonderful history of drawing from it's faculty, right? Perhaps Harvard does, too.
An interesting story: Throughout much of the university’s history, the speaker at convocation used to be a faculty member. No celebrities, political figures, etc. That changed when Pres. Hugo Sonnenschein offered the podium to none other than Bill Clinton (as a result of the hew and cry, he backtracked and allowed Clinton to speak, but not give the convocation address). There are some who say Sonnenschein lost his job as a result.
@exacademic I’m glad your daughter loves UChicago. But if the Ellison letter depressed her, I stand by the opinion that she’s not as happy there as she would be elsewhere. Unless she’s come to view the Ellilson letter with new eyes?
BTW, my kid also applied to UWMadison and would have been very happy attending. She just likes UChicago better.
@JBStillFlying Personally for my family Chicago’s move to ED is not great. I would have loved to have my child apply to a Chicago that gave us the opportunity to shop for the best financial aid package without lowering our chances for admission, but I recognize that what may be good for my family may not be good for the future of the University. So I still appreciate the move because it is a smart one.
Question: Why does a college increase it’s effective tuition? Answer: Because it can. Anyone who thinks that any of these schools operates with anything but a hard-nosed business approach needs to go spend their money elsewhere because you are going to be very disappointed in what you discover over the next 4 years. Charging everyone what they can pay is oftentimes mistaken for being “egalitarian”. Newsflash, folks: It’s called “pure price discrimination”.
@denydenzig Wow. I learned something new today. Did you go to Kellogg?
btw UChicago should take you on as an adviser for their continued marketing campaign
The overlap between Stanford and UCB/LA/SD/SC are being overblown. In CA there is such a thing as “Guaranteed Admission” for top students to one of the UCs AND there is only one application to ALL the UCs (there are checkboxes for preferred campus) so naturally a California-based top student applying to Stanford will 100% do a UC app - because that is his default guaranteed “safety” school system.
It is mentioned above that 36% of Stanford undergrads hail from CA… so we kinda expect that a minimum of 36% overlap with the 2 top UCs is a given.
But even with that boost, UCB and UCLA can only get to 39% (a mere 3% bump from non-CA applicants maybe?) vs Harvard’s 35% overlap (with no help from a “guanranteed Admisssion” program). Clearly then Harvard is the peer school of Stanford, not UCB or UCLA.
@CU123 So UChicago is already tied with Yale? That is a start… .
Before tying Stanford, it has to go through MIT, Princeton, and Harvard first, me thinks.
Stanford is the THE gold standard
@JBStillFlying Hate to break it to you but you are totally uninformed about UChicago’s academic standing and you seem to relish putting it down a bit. If you look at Nobel prizes since the year 2000 (and you can google the list), UChicago is too 5 world wide. Remarkably, Harvard and Yale are not even top ten. ( Israels Technion and Germany’s Max Plank Institute are top ten). While Economics has slipped a spot, Chicago is tied in first place with Berkeley in English and is top five and certainly top 10 in all major subjects; it’s one clear relative weakness is in life sciences and medicine. The Law School in now ahead of Columbia again for the first time in years. Booth is behind Harvard and Wharton. The college’s ranking in third place in USNWR is the one key ranking by which high school counsellors, parents and high school applicants are most guided. Many top NY kids do not even consider Columbia because they want to get out of the City after so many years in high school. UChicago is clearly riding a consistent momentum wave. Columbia is not. Stanford has already reached the crest of its momentum and is the only University that seriously challenges Harvard.
In general, this is all hair splitting. UChicago is one of a handful elite universities in the world. With 8 percent accoetance, it is one of the single most competitive undergraduate programs anywhere, Who cares if some X percentage of students prefers going to X or Y other universities.