<p>^I’d say it’s more do with chicago being known to be nerdy and difficult with grade deflation. Very few high school seniors see any value in that. Same reason Brown gets more respect than it deserves. Everyone scrambles to be “Happy!”</p>
<p>Someone made a reference on the Chicago forum to a study that pinpointed the main reasons for the lower yield to financial aid and Chicago’s rep as a grind school. According to College Board, The average debt at graduation of Chicago graduates is significantly higher than the average debt of graduates of peer institutions, so this leads me to believe that Chicago’s FA is not at all where it should be.</p>
<p>hey phi - where is your data?</p>
<p>[Admissions</a> yield for 2012 hits 39percent - The Chicago Maroon](<a href=“From Lance to Laundromats, band fad clasps campus wrists – Chicago Maroon”>From Lance to Laundromats, band fad clasps campus wrists – Chicago Maroon)</p>
<p>that is 2 years old now, but slightly relevant still. i don’t think 10-20% points is slightly lower. also considering uchi uses EA. also considering uchi uses merit aid. that it mails before ivies to try to push its yield up. no one is innocent.</p>
<p>and regardless, i would gather uchi admitted quirkier, nerdier and more socially awk kids that would have otherwise not been admitted to columbia et al., not because they didn’t have the grades, but didn’t have the other qualities the ivies so cherish. not a knock, but SAT scores alone are not barometers of quality. it is also why UofC gets a lot of diamonds in the rough, kids that didn’t present well, but blossom in college, and Ivies get a lot of burnouts. ivies operate along a multifaceted belief of quality - in which a student must hit on multiple buttons. and so in the game of admissions it lost out - and loses out, its yield, its cross-admit winning, its brand.</p>
<p>that is of course changing under the new folks as uofc makes a not so subtle hint that they want to compete with columbia directly and ivies in general. so the real question - what happens to those quirky, nerdy types that uofc now must reject if he wants to do the big leagues. 30 years ago columbia admitted that student, and today, it basically can’t. and even as uofc tries to maneuver into this territory, there are many structural issues that will make this transition slow - Hyde Park isn’t Morningside Heights, oversaturation of the Ivy model, and perceived weakness of the uchi brand outside the midwest (it is still regionally dominated, and not national as of yet). perhaps in 10 years phi your assertions could be warranted.</p>
<p>but until then - i don’t think the numbers or the other evidence supports. i think you hit it on the head about the FA, uchi ranks in the teens or so in their FA offerings, which strongly prevents it from competing, but its problems are more endemic than just FA.</p>
<p>EDIT: you write than it should be, uofc has a tighter budget, less aid, and less money that is earmarked strictly for the college (because its graduate divisions overshadow the college), so it could be that the finaid budget is maxed out unless there is a huge push for FA.</p>