If I didn’t take AP English or AP History in 11th (but I will have taken 6-7 other AP’s), should I even bother applying to UofC?
Also, Chicago’s crime rate worries my mom. Is it safe around campus?
Would applying ED 1/2 or EA affect my Financial Aid offer, if admitted?
Thank you everyone for attending today’s live AMA w/ UChicago! We’ll go live in a minute and I’m excited to welcome @JustinAdmUChicago to his first College Confidential event. Justin will answer your questions in the next hour. Make sure to ask all your questions by commenting below.
Thanks, Sorin! Hi everyone! My name’s Justin Klein and this is my sixth year as an admissions counselor here at UChicago. Before that, I attended school here as well and I could probably tell you just about anything you want to know about UChicago and college in general. I’m looking forward to answering your questions!
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Hi everyone! My name’s Justin Klein and this is my sixth year as an admissions counselor here at UChicago. Before that, I attended school here as well and I could probably tell you just about anything you want to know about us and college in general. I’m looking forward to answering your questions!
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@theamw, of course this changes from year to year, but some of the most common RSO’s (short for registered student organization, aka clubs) are Model UN, University Theater, and Doc Films.
I’d say the most unique thing about UChicago is the way academic thinking comes up throughout the day of an average UChicago student. Not to say you can never escape your homework, but you’ll find students at the dining hall devising new statistics in basketball, or Kant might have thought about last night’s Bachelor in Paradise.
Both of those are quite popular! Creative Writing is consistently one of our most popular majors to add to a double major, too.
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@DroidsLookingFor, we do not publish admissions data on individual rounds. With four different rounds (EA, ED1, ED2, RD), the data can vary pretty widely from year to year so it just wouldn’t be useful. We have recently seen ED2 increase in popularity among first-time applicants and deferred students, and we generally balance our admitted students to reflect the pool overall in many ways.
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@hello_admissions, no, students are not at a disadvantage if the choose not to submit scores of any time.
@bouders, of course we always want to see “good” test scores and grades, but there’s a lot of context to what makes a score “good” for each individual student. In general, you should submit your scores if you’re proud of them or feel they represent your ability, and hold on to them if not.
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@tommyshelby, we do recommend submitting the video profile! It really helps us get to know students. We’ve used it for a few years, and while there are of course valid reasons to not want to submit one we have found that we feel we know applicants in better depth when it’s there. If you’re a bit over the 2 minute guideline, that’s not a problem. Be mindful that there’s already a lot of content in an application, and if your video starts running on then all you’re doing is diluting the information we’re trying to understand from you.
@clockila, we do not publish admissions data on individual rounds. With four different rounds (EA, ED1, ED2, RD), the data can vary pretty widely from year to year so it just wouldn’t be useful. Some years it may be that high, some years it will be much lower, it really depends.
oh okayyy. I have a little bit of speech impairment so my voice is not very clear. Is there any way I can mention it or should i add subtitles?
@rosechild, we aren’t looking for any specific activity, which includes sports, arts, or anything else you might do. While consistency can be nice, we also want to make sure that you’re doing things you enjoy. If you’ve dropped activities to start other ones that you are excited about trying, that’s certainly not a negative in our eyes.
We do take scheduling conflicts into account. We know there are way more things going on than any individual student may be able to participate in and that’s not a problem. Please let us know when things like that come up!
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@tommyshelby, either of those are fine! If you think subtitles or a transcript will help, great.
Thankyou so much. One last question, if I want to add a transcript, then where should I add it???
@Versova, gosh there have been so many good ones over the years. I hesitate giving exact responses because I don’t want students to think that this is exactly what we’re looking for, but ones that stand out are ones where we can see a student’s excitement come through. An example that stays with me is one that connected the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle to the Zeigarnik Effect. I’ll let y’all google those if you want to learn more about them.
My best last minute tip is to make sure you’re being direct! The best applications are ones where I can easily grab lots of information.
@Abror_Akmalov, if you’ve completed at least one marking period at any other institution in a degree-seeking program, you are a transfer student. I can’t add a link here, but you can find info on the international transfer process on our website!
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@spikygal, we do not recalculate, so when it comes to GPAs we’ll see it how it’s reported on your transcript. Frankly, I don’t care much about your GPA. GPAs lose a ton of information, and fortunately I went to a great college where I learned how to read. So I can just read your transcript! I’ll get lots of info on your academic performance and rigor through that full read, much more than if I were to boil it down to one number with a GPA.
@JustinAdmUChicago, is it a negative if you’ve taken AP classes but haven’t taken the tests for those classes? I missed the window to sign up for two of my tests last year, although I did get an A in both classes through the school year.
@Cassiopeia1, there are a lot of factors that go into that decision, but the long and the short of it is: do you feel like your test score is representative of your ability? If so, send it our way. Do you feel like the rest of your application does a better job of showing us that you’re awesome? If so, keep it to yourself. We want you to feel like you put your best foot forward.
You can totally submit the video later. To ensure that we have enough time to include it in our review, I’d encourage getting it in by mid-November or so for the early rounds or late January for the later rounds.