My beloved UChicago ranked the dead last in most measures among the top 12...Ouch.

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of Chicago ✅
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@Chrchill at #19: Not sure what exact issue you have a problem with, so I’ll help with some references:

College education and longevity of Marriage:

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/12/04/education-and-marriage/

https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2013/article/marriage-and-divorce-patterns-by-gender-race-and-educational-attainment.htm

Gaming the Rankings System:

http://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/article/2014/08/26/how-northeastern-gamed-the-college-rankings/3/

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/01/education/gaming-the-college-rankings.html

As for UChicago’s underlying reason for the rapid rise, I think you and I agree that it should be in the top 10 (and probably top 5). How it went from USNWR #15 to #3 in just 12 years is a separate issue. When you change admissions policies to help with selectivity and rankings, that’s playing to the rankings.

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@JBStillFlying the marriage comment was made in total jest. You folks are way too serious.

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What ranking do you suggest ? All rankings are flawed. Want to go by Nobel prize winners since 2000 ? Harvard and Yale are not even in the top ten? Uchicago rose because
it made its admissions more user friendly with common app and it improved the college experience in numerous salient ways. I don’t think that’s gaming the rankings.

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@Chrchill pardon my seriousness. :smiley:

Over the long run strength of academic departments is going to influence rankings the most, since pretty much all systems rely strongly on peer reviews. If UChicago slips out of the top 5 it will be because the academic departments haven’t kept pace with the very significant positive changes at the College.

UChicago certainly doesn’t play around with J-Frosh or freshman study-abroad and so forth the way that NEU does to misrepresent its stats but make no mistake, they DO look closely at these rankings and they do make changes (some long-term, others short-term) in order to improve their standing. I saw the same phenomenon at Booth many years ago when they jumped from #8 to #4 in the much talked-about B-Week rankings. That was a one-year increase, by the way and it was announced, along with Merton Miller’s Nobel Prize, at our Friday TGIF. Rankings are helpful in that they signal quality in a very low-cost way but they are obviously subject to manipulation. UChicago is not alone in understanding their importance, but they probably have a better handle than most on the information value. They SHOULD, at any rate, given the school’s traditional strengths in the decision and social sciences.

As stated before, the jury is still out.

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@marlowe1 and @DunBoyer

I understand that the older data can be edifying, and it’s interesting to see. Further, I agree that the ethos of the student body is largely similar to past Chicago classes.

This being said, how can you argue that in terms of more surface-level factors (like wealth of incoming students, which does not dictate how intellectual the students are), there hasn’t been change, especially in the post Nondorf era?

@DunBoyer - you said Chicago hasn’t changed much since 2006. I agree on student ethos staying consistent, BUT, here are ways the school is noticeably different:

  • MUCH more racially diverse incoming classes (20% Asian American, another 20% of the class is Latinx, African-American, etc. - this is a significant increase from a decade ago, and a huge difference from two decades ago)
  • Notably sportier (in the Div. 3 rankings, Chicago was ranked #41 in 2006, and #15 now, a fairly big change)
  • More amenities in and around Hyde Park (lots more restaurants, new grocery stores, the Logan Arts Center, Institute of Politics, etc.)
  • Big change in career advising and graduate placement (of those going straight to the work force in 2016, about 40% headed to finance/consulting - these are very similar to numbers at other ivy plus schools, and I'd say at least a 10-15% increase from 2006)
  • Admissions changes leaving some mark: yes, most was application inflation/gaming, but I think going from 40-50% selectivity and 35% yield (which is where we were in 2006) to 7% accept and 70% yield will lead to some difference in the feel of the class. Probably more people at Chicago now have it as their real #1 choice, and it probably feels a bit different/more elite to be so selective. I'm not saying this is a huge change, but it probably changes the tone a little.

… there are other changes too, but this is enough to present for now!

To sum, I think while the heart of the student body is similar to 2006, there’s a LOT different now.

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@Cue7 Since Chrchill casts recent rankings changes as a reflection of vast improvements in Chicago, I largely addressed the most important ranking criterion (academics) in my response. There have been shifts in wealth, diversity, sports, etc. - but pretending that US News is showing a massive change in the College’s academic caliber since the days of shame, ignominy, and #15 rankings (!!!) is boosterism plain and simple.

Some changes over that time period are definitely noteworthy. The average wealth of students has almost certainly gone up, for one, though the left tail of the distribution may be larger than it used to be due to better financial aid. With rising tuition, heavy marketing to well-heeled private HS kids, ED, need-aware admissions for internationals, and more, the College likely has fewer students from the upper middle class (or, in cities like NYC/SF, the honest-to-god middle class). This is just my best guess/extrapolation from admissions and financial aid policies - I don’t have 2006 data.

The change in racial diversity may be less pronounced at Chicago than at other schools. From 2004 to 2014 (the first year that came up when I searched for demographic data), the share of Latinx/AA students* may have held largely steady. In 2004, IPEDS data showed 552/4513 students (a tad over 12%) identified as Hispanic/AA.* In 2014, the figure was 756/5674 (just over 13%).** Numbers for the class of 2018 (172/1445) were actually lower than the average, at just under 12%.

Unless there’s been a huge change in diversity since 2014, the party line (which claims 21%+ of the class of 2020 is Latinx/AA) may be the result of some funky math and statistical tricks. It may also be counting international students who are Latinx or (more likely) AA. I don’t know if the IPEDS data is a perfect substitute for Common Data Set numbers, but since UChicago doesn’t publish a CDS (Yay transparency), it’s all we’ve got.

IPEDS is a government-mandated census of the student population, which the university carries out each year (AFAIK). I just discovered it myself. It looks neat.

Caveats:

*It seems IPEDS data lists students as non-resident aliens or Hispanic/AA. I’m sure the actual number is over 12%, due to nonwhite international students, but there’s no breakdown of their ethnicity. No telling if this held constant between 2004 and 2014, so take all this with a grain of salt.

**The 2014 figures also included a new category, “two or more races.” The 2004 numbers did not. This adds uncertainty to the numbers.

(***) The percentage of people with roots in Latin America identifying as “Latino,” and not “White,” has risen considerably over the past 10-20 years, which lengthens the error bars some more.

(****) It looks like the Fall 2014 numbers are the most recent IPEDS submissions online - or at least that’s what source #3 suggests.

Sources: https://registrar.uchicago.edu/sites/registrar.uchicago.edu/files/uploads/pdf/statistics/ipeds/IPEDS-Aut04.pdf

https://registrar.uchicago.edu/sites/registrar.uchicago.edu/files/uploads/pdf/statistics/ipeds/TABLE4-FINAL-fromIBHE_0.pdf

https://registrar.uchicago.edu/page/annual-ipeds-submissions

https://collegeadmissions.uchicago.edu/page/profile-class-2020

Sportier: can’t argue with that. Athletes still need to clear a semi-high bar, but decent recruits with academic credentials are probably paying some attention to the US News rankings.

More amenities/businesses: probably more apparent north of the Midway. The Med, Salonica, etc. have always been there, and the university had decent standard facilities (gyms, cafes, etc.) before the Nondorf era. There’s definitely been change on 55th, and 53rd is Ground Zero for future gentrification. Woodlawn’s turn is coming. IMO this has especially been a selling point for those with the parental income to eat out/buy junk food/patronize rich-person businesses regularly. I do these things sometimes, but in a major city having these things right on campus doesn’t matter so much.

Logan, the IOP, and (for the normies) new dorms are nice. The biggest selling point, judging by tour guides’ pitches and routes, remains the quad area.

Career advising: yep.

Impact of selectivity: we likely have more students whose #1 choice was UChicago, but fewer who are on board with distilled quirkiness/weirdness.

Wall of text over. Just some thoughts.

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Excellent post @DunBoyer - and my apologies, I forgot about the Registrar data re Chicago’s students.



I haven’t looked, but has the percentage of Asian American students increased in the past ten years?



Finally, I think the goal has been to find intellectual (high iq/horsepower) kids of many different colors, stronger athletic abilities, and more varied interests. Having more rich ones is a goal too. On aggregate, this creates real change to the college. Maybe not to the intellectual fabric, but to the overall climate.


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@Cue7 I don’t know how you can possibly read my post at #14 as saying that there has been no change in what you call the “surface” aspects of student life. Who would deny all the many changes? Whether those changes - and their continuing trajectory and extent - could in the end undermine the ethos that we both agree has always existed and continues to exist is another matter. I take from this and other posts of yours that you want to see the changes continue and go much further, with an endpoint at which the college experience at Chicago will have become something like that at H, Y, P or S. Your only concern is that the University may not have the resources to bring this off. Do I have that right? If so, do you see such a transformed College as still possessing the aforementioned ethos of the past and present College? Is that ethos something you actually care to maintain? --These are not meant as rhetorical questions.

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@Cue7 Yes, I forgot to mention that. The percentage of Asian students has increased markedly. In 2004 there were 656/4513 (about 14.4%). In 2014 the figures were 973/5674 (just over 17%).



Asians are lumped together with Pacific Islanders, a URM, which complicates things. However, I don’t believe the number of Pacific Islanders is great enough to significantly affect these numbers.



()Most of the caveats from my previous post apply to these numbers as well.



I believe this percentage has risen further since 2014, and is one of the highest among top schools (the CA publics, where affirmative action is banned by law, are one exception). I attribute this trend (and a fairly low share of AA/Latinx students) partly to the university’s efforts to rise in the rankings. Admitting more kids with high scores is one way to do so quickly, and by taking only AA/Latinx students with high scores (and filling the extra seats this leaves with high-scoring white/Asian applicants - who, unlike high-scoring URMs, aren’t in short supply) UChicago may have bumped the average test score up. IIRC, our SAT midrange is second only to Caltech’s.



It’s also possible more high-scoring URMs have been admitted to HYPS and turned UChicago down. I would need data on cross-admits to say for sure. Most likely, both these factors have had an effect.

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The ethnic Asian presence at UChicago seems substantially greater than 17%. At least when my kids were there, a substantial majority of international students were also Asian, many of whom had spent a good number of pre-college years in the U.S., too. There were large numbers of kids from Singapore and Korea, and in general they seemed well integrated into the student body (unlike the Chinese students at another university recently profiled in the New York Times Magazine).