<p>Don’t believe the HYP</p>
<p>Meshugener- what do you mean?</p>
<p>Play on words
HYP= hype</p>
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For the year for which I have a complete data set, two students turned down MIT for JHU (EDIT: and two turned down MIT for Chicago). 150 turned down MIT for Harvard.</p>
<p>Overall, that year 68% of MIT admits chose MIT. Of those who did not, 70% turned down MIT for one of the Ivy League schools (primarily Harvard, Yale, or Princeton), Stanford, or Caltech. Comparatively few students seem to turn down MIT for merit scholarships.</p>
<p>I know people who denied Harvard and Columbia, and many who denied MIT to come to Chicago, despite receiving a worse financial aid offer.</p>
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<p>I can name two right off the top of my head now. I met him during my first day out at JHU. He showed me his admissions essay package (it was shocking, it was cool). 800 perfect SAT writing, brilliant dude from Exeter… He wasn’t even a JHU BME… lol. His entire family were MIT alums tho.</p>
<p>I’m sure there is more than just two. I know one right off the top of my head, the other I read in a new article since he was a Baltimore scholar (full ride to JHU)… Only two!?</p>
<p>*btw, I know what you mean. If I got off the wait list at MIT, I would totally take it over JHU hahahaha</p>
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<p>What year was this? I can name 4-5 people off the top of my head who denied MIT for Chicago (not all in the same year, though), and they’re all in the math department. And somehow I doubt that everyone who denied MIT for Chicago is a math major, though it does make sense that math would be an overrepresented field in that respect.</p>
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I’m not surprised. The numbers are undoubtedly extremely small. At Stanford, only 9 universities stole more than 1% (6 students) of non-enrolling admits. </p>
<p>Those 9 were the usual suspects (Harvard, Yale, Princeton, MIT, Caltech, Penn) plus the top CA schools (Berkeley, UCLA, USC).</p>
<p>Let’s leave “many” claims out of the discussion unless one has something better than anecdotal evidence.</p>
<p>People are turning down Caltech and MIT because a career in which you spend the rest of your life working as an engineer is unappealing and unrewarding (financially)</p>
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70% of Caltech students and 62% of MIT students don’t major in engineering.</p>
<p>Many of my econ/business friends thought like that. They weren’t so sure after they lacked job offers while engineering students had them coming out of their ears. :eek:</p>
<p>IBClass06: I guess you are right. :D</p>
<p>Phuriku - there may be some Chicago students who chose the U of C over HYPSM, but there are probably very few. I do alum interviews for the U of C, and the admissions rep for my area told me that Chicago loses about 97% of its cross-admits with Yale and 98% of its cross-admits with Harvard. I think Chicago would probably lose about the same percentage to MIT as well. </p>
<p>Generally, HYPSM is a cut above.</p>
<p>Cue7: I agree. Chicago has a terrible cross-admit win rate and really needs to improve on that. I’m just curious as to why I personally know an extraordinarily large percentage of the people who happened to reject MIT, and why they’re all in the math department. You’d think at least some of them would be econ or physics majors.</p>
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<p>In terms of prestige, yes. I find your lack of faith disturbing.</p>
<p>phuriku, as the parent of a math major who turned down for MIT for Chicago…it ultimately revolved around the Core. </p>
<p>He spent so many years being totally focused on math/CS (and I mean to the exclusion of all else) and later in HS, finally got some history/polisci classes and philosophy that lit his fire. He knows he wants to do grad school in math or CS, depending on where his specialty lives at particular schools, and felt that UG was the time to learn new things in other fields.</p>
<p>The other big factors for him were that 1) he felt he would be challenged to grow more as a person at Chicago and 2) he wanted to hang out with people who were as passionate about literature, philosophy, etc. as he is about math. He knew he’d be very happy in Random Hall, but also knew the perils of staying entirely within one’s comfort zone.</p>
<p>Chicago’s math dept. has such a great reputation…hard to go wrong. DH has been trying to talk S into taking some econ classes…no dice. S is an academic at heart – no desire to be a Master of the Universe! He took MathPhys senior year and liked it a lot – it was just more math to him.</p>
<p>Phuriku - the reason why you may find so many is because, at least under Dean O’Neill, the Chicago admissions philosophy has been to “accept the best, and get as many as we can.” With this in mind, I wouldn’t be surprised if out of the 3400 or so students Chicago admits, it has maybe 350 or so cross admits with MIT. This means that, in any given class, there are probably around 20 Chicago students who turned down MIT for Chicago. </p>
<p>Also, in terms of my “lack of faith,” I loved my time at Chicago, and I learned a lot during my four years in Hyde Park. At the same time, after reading more scholarship about the university pecking order in the US, following a variety of rankings, meeting scores of graduates from HYPSM, going to a good grad school, etc., I’ve grown increasingly convinced that those schools (HYPSM) still form the gold standard in American higher education.</p>
<p>Now, don’t get me wrong, in certain specific areas, other schools can compete with the very top. Chicago, for example, does a tremendous job in terms of actual liberal arts education offered. Wharton, for example, places its graduates pretty much just as well as HYPSM. </p>
<p>At the same time, I don’t really believe that any other schools offer as good of an ENTIRE package as the top 5. In terms of financial resources, strength of faculty, social catchet, grad school placement, job placement, for connections and networking, etc., these 5 generally eclipse all the rest.</p>
<p>Yes, Chicago offers a great education, but at least in the American tradition of higher learning, a college is more about the education offered. Social catchet and preparing graduates to take on positions of power, however unfortunately, matters. Chicago does a great job on the education front, but it still lags in the OTHER goals that a top school fulfills, at least in american society. </p>
<p>Similarly, yes, Penn for example has a great business school and medical school, or Columbia has enjoyed great success with producing nobel laureates. In terms of the OVERALL package across fields, though, from what I’ve seen, the top 5 are a cut above.</p>
<p>Phuriku - one other note, I think Chicago’s yield rate is around 38% or so. This actually isn’t that bad a yield, considering Chicago’s current admissions philosophy. Most schools, after ED, have about a 45-50% yield rate. If Chicago was more savvy with its admits, and didn’t say, admit so many students that probably are getting into HYPSM, it would do much better. Again, under Dean O’Neill, the philosophy was to admit a ton of kids, and then take the 3% from Harvard or 4% from Yale. </p>
<p>Under Nondorf, I’m assuming this will change, and Chicago should bump its yield rate to around 45%, which is similar to pretty much everyone else out there. As a result, though, there may be fewer MIT admits walking around Hyde Park in the years ahead as Chicago gets to be more savvy when it comes to admissions.</p>
<p>To be clear, in terms of education offered and strength of faculty overall, I’d put Chicago RIGHT UP with HYPSM. In terms of an OVERALL university fulfilling the myriad goals that an elite american university must meet, I put Chicago a cut BELOW HYPSM, and on par with Columbia etc. (So in terms of a rough rank, I’d put Chicago as around #7 or so in the nation - in that group with Columbia etc. I don’t see this as demonstrating a horrible lack of faith in my alma mater. Being in an extremely strong second tier of elite american universities is nothing to scoff at by any means.)</p>
<p>My ‘lack of faith’ comment was made somewhat in jest. However, you have explained yourself well. I agree that Chicago has not done as well as it could when it comes to preparing graduates for positions in power. Whenever some good news or statistic about the university was reported by the Maroon, the comment from O’Neill or Behnke tended to start with “Well, the University of Chicago has always been regarded as one of the top three or four universities in the nation.” This was also a common comment when inquired about negative traits of the university. It almost seems like they were hanging on to the past and the general reputation among the academic community, without really trying to push the university forward. This was just my impression, though. </p>
<p>I love O’Neill, but I think Nondorf will be better for the university, similar to how Zimmer has been better for the university. Nondorf’s reputation isn’t exactly that he’s admissions savvy, though - it’s that he knows how to win over admits. He boosted the “best student” yield rate at Yale from 10% to 34% in three years. Hopefully, he’ll get similar results at Chicago. Also, in the three years he was at Rochester, the number of applications increased by over 100%. The guy must really be something.</p>
<p>(By the way, I was using molliebatmit’s 2 per year statistic. Hopefully it’s more than this!)</p>
<p>Yeah I liked O’Neill a lot too, but he was more of a member of the “old guard” at Chicago. I’ve posted about this in the past, but basically, for most of the 20th Century, Chicago took the stand that ONLY education and academics mattered - everything else was secondary. HYPS, on the other hand, took the stance that social catchet matters first, and academics are second. So HYPS was more about preparing students for positions of power, and chicago was more about preparing the future intelligentsia. </p>
<p>The problem with chicago’s philosophy, however, is that it did not leave the university itself in good standing. Chicago produced hundreds of pioneers in a variety of academic fields, but the university was not in good shape. While HYPS thrived during most of the 90s, Chicago struggled with a very small endowment, a unhappy class of alumni that thought the school was too rigorous, and a generally unhealthy university environment. More or less, the Chicago take on the goal of a university (only academics matters) had failed.</p>
<p>By the late 90s, Chicago changed its policies pretty drastically. The core became more flexible, the endowment improved greatly, Chicago changed some of its admissions policies, and the school - while still very strongly intellectually driven - adopted the HYPS model a bit more. U of C became more rankings conscious, became more selective, and, by all accounts, the school is a much happier place now than it was a decade ago. </p>
<p>At the same time, I think the old guard, with people like Ted O’Neill, has become a bit disillusioned with this direction. They really wanted Chicago to be the last true place where intellectual meritocracy rules. Unfortunately, as I’ve said before, in America, a school is much more than just the academics it offers. Zimmer’s goal is to make sure Chicago maintains its academic standing, but also becomes more “elite” (and gains more of the social catchet that HYPS boasts). </p>
<p>I think Chicago is well on the way to achieving this goal. Again, when I was at Chicago, I think the school was ranked maybe #15 in US News, student morale was still kinda low, and my cohort of students was just not as accomplished overall as the current group of Chicago undergrads. It’s my hope that Chicago maintains its strongly academic bent, but produces graduates with more polish and social acumen than my graduating class at U of C. </p>
<p>Again, all signs point to this. For example, I don’t think we’re horribly underranked in US News now, but as selectivity continues to improve and we improve our grad retention rate, etc., we should be able to cement a spot in the top half dozen or so in the nation. This is certainly solid ground for the U of C.</p>
<p>With regards to Nondorf, I believe he worked at RPI after Yale, not U of Rochester. Either way, you’re right - he does wonders for student recruitment. When I talked about being “savvy” with admissions though, I mean just that - I don’t think he’ll follow O’Neill’s policy of just accepting every qualified individual and hoping that some will come. He’ll be more calculating and careful in who he targets, and he may modulate some of O’Neill’s more laissez-faire policies with an eye for becoming more selective.</p>
<p>My data is for the class of 2010, and I have no reason to believe it was an unusual year.</p>
<p>My suspicion is perhaps that not everyone who says he turned down School X for School Y is telling the complete truth.</p>
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<p>Engineering students had jobs offers coming out of their ears when the Nasdaq lost half it’s value and the economy was in a recession? haha ok</p>
<p>Anyways, I still hold that there is a discrepancy between the salary and the intelligence of people in engineering or other science-related fields. Why put in twice the effort for the same reward?</p>
<p>“I know people who denied Harvard and Columbia, and many who denied MIT to come to Chicago, despite receiving a worse financial aid offer.”</p>
<p>Chicago is just heaven for a certain type of students interested in pursuing career in pure academia. However, it doesn’t do a great job attracting the general applicant because many applicants hold the notion that at Chicago they can get to the same place as Ivy + Stanford, MIT, and Duke grads, but they would have to work a lot harder. I spoke with a senior admissions officer at Chicago, a family friend, and she said Chicago usually lose 75% cross-admits to Brown, 70-75% cross-admits to Columbia, Dartmouth, and Penn, and split 50/50 with Cornell.</p>