From another social media site, someone posted the following:
Daughter was accepted in RD and we got an email from UChicago about an hour after decisions were sent. Here is the information that they offered in the email:
Summary Statistics for the Full 2020-2021 College Admissions Cycle:
37,986 Applications (largest applicant pool in UChicago history)
2,408 Admits 6% Selectivity (most selective in UChicago history)
That accept rate is actually NOT the most selective but certainly one of the most. The number of applications, however, jumped 10.5% from last year and truly is the largest it’s ever been.
They haven’t in the past so guessing no. All the top schools are up this year; a good number probably jumped well more than 10% in applicant numbers. Harvard was at 57k apps in January, and Yale’s early apps. jumped nearly 40%, as just two examples. UChicago has never gotten that sort of bump from TO.
The number of admitted students accepted is disturbing. If the yield is 74%, that will be 1782 students, even before taking any from the waitlist or transfers. If the yield is 80%, that would be 1926 students, before the waitlist or transfers. The College is already at 7,000 students. In the fall, this would put it closer to 7,100 or 7,200. Crazy!
The reason is (probably) that they weren’t sure how things would play out this year given the number of people applying to even more schools than usual. But, I can almost guarantee, that as usual, they will again over admit and end up with a huge first-year class. Keeping in mind the official goal is supposed to be about 1,725 first years plus transfers 25 transfers (to keep the College at 7,000).
The post says statistics are for “the Full 2020-2021 College Admissions Cycle”, so it seems to me that 37,986 applications includes every individual application received in any round, whether admitted, deferred, or denied. It seems logical that a deferred application…whether subsequently accepted, waitlisted, or denied…would only be counted in that total once.
Every top school has more apps bcuz of test optional …even schools that already were TO. Many kids would not have applied TO b4 thinking it was a lost cause realize it’s more acceptable this year.
@WRHarper they will go over 7,000 this fall. They have room for a larger first year class now with the new dorm. Whether this is temporary to help offset the Covid-hit to the bottom line, or whether it’s part of a plan to expand permanently beyond 7,000 is not known at this time. But your point is a good one - they surely can’t be expecting a lower yield than for Class of '24’s 74%. If they are back to their old yield of 81% that would be 1,925 enrolled! They seem willing to err on the side of over-subscription, which is consistent with what they’ve done in the past. The year before my D entered as the Class of '21, they enrolled under 1,600; there hasn’t been a class anywhere near that small size since then! Classes of '21 and '23 were consistent with a total enrollment of 7,000. But Class of '22 was oversubscribed by 50 and Class of '24 by over 100!
Remember, too, that Dean Boyer said he was trying to raise the % of students who could be housed on campus to 70% or so. They were even talking about building one more dorm (after Woodlawn) to accomplish that. But increasing the class size only makes it a harder goal to meet. I can see why they wanted to be the same size as Harvard or Stanford. But why larger? 7,000 is fine.
At least UChicago got more apps than Princeton, Dartmouth, and MIT.
It will be interesting to see what happens next year–once Princeton brings back early decision–and students with low stats discover they really aren’t going to get in to the other schools TO. I wonder if there will be a big drop at the other schools.
By the 50’s, it was primarily a residential college but you are certainly correct that it wasn’t known by the cutesy nickname UChicago. That didn’t exist in my day either. Edit to add: actually, I should clarify that there has always been a strong inclination to live off-campus for 50+% of the undergrads. I’m distinguishing that from “commuting” which implies that you live with family members and commute to school (as least as I understand the term).
We’ve heard of no plans to increase the numbers so your guess is as good as mine on that one. 70% of 7000 is nearly 4900 which would call for another large dorm. Current full capacity, excluding Stony, is about 4100. So they’d need to build another dorm the size of North or South.
@WRHarper , I too want to spike the idea that the College has been a commuter school at any time since the early decades of its existence. In the sixties, when I attended and when the student body was less than half the size it is today, there were very few kids from Chicago or the suburbs there - less than ten percent. The student body was composed very much then as it is today - of large numbers from the eastern seaboard, the greater midwest and the pacific coast, lesser numbers from the south and the western plains states, but almost no internationals. Even the kids from from the Chicago area almost all lived in dorms at least for the first year. I believe that was required of all first-years unless permission was given otherwise. Most of us moved into Hyde Park or Woodlawn after one or two years in a dorm.
I base these generalizations not only on my own observations but a count of where people came from and the dorms they were assigned to from my own tattered facebook (containing some pretty odd high school pictures submitted by the members of the class of '67).
This misimpression is worth correcting inasmuch as a mythology about the U of C of earlier times has developed in recent years as a counterpart to the narrative of resurgence and renewal. It is that the place was previously a blah regional school that couldn’t attract any kids except locals. No, that’s just false. Most of us came from more or less distant parts, and we did that because we were well aware of the uniqueness of the College and had a sense of pride in being there. That it was a well-kept secret from most of the human race, a secret not enhanced by its name and lack of sports teams, did indeed suggest a commuter college. For most of us that was a feature, though for some it was a bug. I was amused to read in a recent discussion on reddit that present-day students are still having that disagreement about the place. Now as then, some are irritated by the lack of recognition, but many feel a sort of reverse snobbery about it. It’s a fine thing to be in the know when everyone else is out of it. That culture is sticky even when the underlying reality has altered.
Perhaps UChicago is perceived among applicants as a distinct application process from many of the Ivies. For example, even if one is 100% chasing prestige, there’s still that darned 600-word free-form essay with the weird prompt . . . a more interesting question, IMO, is why UChicago received a higher bump this year, the third year of TO, than it did when that policy was first introduced.