<p>The</a> Daily Northwestern - Northwestern sees 8 percent increase in applications</p>
<p>Really? I thought it might be more, considering U of Chicago was a 46% increase or something. Is it April yet!?</p>
<p>I’m not sure, but I think I heard that U of Chicago made a huge effort to recruit students this year, much more aggressive than previous years. That’s probably why they had the huge increase. Although I think it was more like 42%, not 46%. But supposedly, they’re still only going to admit the same number of people that they did last year, so their acceptance rate will jump from 27% to 19%. Yikes.</p>
<p>In the paper version of the Daily Northwestern, there was an interesting graph that showed the application increases for some of the top schools. It’s too bad it’s not in the electronic version.</p>
<p>Over in the parents forum, they’re compiling a thread with the app increases for top schools. It’s till a work in progress, but it’s there if you want to check it out:</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/849181-applications-growth-class-2014-a.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/849181-applications-growth-class-2014-a.html</a></p>
<p>Speaking of their huge effort, I don’t know much but I did notice they completely changed their admission web page to make it look more fun. There’s certain energy to it. They seem to have a huge team working on admission. By contrast, our admission web page is pretty boring and dull and hasn’t been changed for quite a while. They have been very slow in updating stats. The latest common data set is still from 08-09. It seems to me NU has been allocating relatively less resources to admission when compared to most other peers.</p>
<p>I heard that University of Chicago recently joined the Common Application, which probably explains their huge increase.</p>
<p>I also think many prospective students believe University of Chicago’s location is similar to Columbia, NYU or George Washington University which are all located in hip areas of the city. Some don’t realize that Hyde Park is not near the Loop at all.</p>
<p>8% is good. It’s hard to have a significant increase when you have 25,000+ apps already. 10,500 more in one year? unlikely. UChicago experienced that increase because it hasn’t reached it’s potential yet (they’re not even at 20,000 even with this increase), and their admissions has been working hard to make that happen ASAP.</p>
<p>Edit: I didn’t realize we’re at 27,500 already until I read that article. That’s REALLY good.</p>
<p>^ Good point, brebeuff.</p>
<p>I’m a bit confused at what the actual figures are. According to that Daily Northwestern article I cited above, we had an 8% increase and Chicago had a 30% increase, but according to the Chicago Tribune, we had a 7% increase and Chicago had a 42% increase.</p>
<p>[University</a> of Chicago sees unprecedented jump in applications - chicagotribune.com](<a href=“http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-university-of-chicago-admissjan14,0,1037524.story]University”>http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-university-of-chicago-admissjan14,0,1037524.story)</p>
<p>Is the Daily Northwestern wrong, or is one source talking about ED and the other talking about RD, or something like that? Or am I missing something here?</p>
<p>not to be so technical, but the chicago tribune did say that we had AT LEAST a 7% increase.</p>
<p>No clue… I haven’t read up on the actual figures but even if NU’s increase were 7%, in the end, NU would still be rejecting more students (~20,000+ out of the 27,500 who applied) than the total # people who applied to UChicago (about 19,500?).</p>
<p>Honestly, I don’t care for selectivity that much beyond a certain point. Extreme selectivity does create a certain special aura about a school, but at the same time, the quality of students we’re getting is already great and that’s ultimately what matters. The truth is, many people who were denied by NU are great as well (I know plenty… if you met them in person, you would be just as impressed with their intelligence and persona and wonder why they got denied in the first place), but maybe they didn’t get in because maybe they didn’t work as hard on their self-presentation in the app or they slacked off a little bit after being in the pressure cooker for so long. The system can be unforgiving for these people, and NU knows that. A lot of the rejects are also just as good on paper but are waitlisted/denied anyway strictly due to lack of space, and that’s where a great deal of subjectivity comes in (a professor who read apps was telling me). What I like about NU admissions (I guess you could say the same for a lot of other top schools as well) is that it doesn’t pretend to make the right decisions all the time and knows some of the kids it ends up rejecting will end up doing great things in college and in the future. However, it’s simply faced with the harsh reality of highly selective college admissions.</p>
<p>NU actually considered decreasing its undergraduate population (and substantially increase its selectivity in the process) but ultimately decided against it. The reason for the proposal was to improve undergraduate education, but they concluded we can keep our size (or even increase it a little bit) and still be able to provide a topnotch education. Our student/teacher ratios are low enough, percentage of classes with 20 or fewer are high enough, research opportunities are already pretty extensive, etc. so there wasn’t that strong of an argument for the decrease (less revenue from tuition also?).</p>
<p>^NU actually has increased its size by a little bit in the recent years. The population used to be around 7800 a decade ago. Now it’s a bit over 8000.</p>
<p>Not to mention there’s a difference between not attending and being rejected.</p>
<p>Yeah, it was definitely around 8000 undergraduate students when I attended.</p>
<p>9% according to bloomberg:
[Princeton</a> Surge Beats Harvard as Applications Soar (Update1) - Bloomberg.com](<a href=“Bloomberg Politics - Bloomberg”>Bloomberg Politics - Bloomberg)</p>
<p>Northwestern is a great school in a great city. It is underrated because it lies in the shadow of two other schools in Boston (Harvard, MIT).</p>
<p>you are thinking of northeastern. big difference. NU is in Chicago</p>
<p>nyccard=■■■■■. claims Cornell is not an Ivy, makes fun of Rice and Asians…haha. He has the mind of somebody who doesn’t go to a top school, period. I wouldn’t pretend to be ignorant if I were you because it only gives people no reason whatsoever to pay attention to what you have to say. Better luck ■■■■■■■■ next time buddy.</p>
<p>I was making fun of the Rice thread because it is four pages long (and counting) about whether or not Rice is “respected.”</p>
<p>I was NOT trying to make fun of Asians. I am half-Asian myself.</p>
<p>I was also poking fun at the similarities between college names (Cornell College vs. Cornell University and Northeastern University vs. Northwestern University).</p>
<p>Sorry in advance to anyone who took offense at my attempts at humor. No harm was intended.</p>
<p>You offended my sense of humor with your bad jokes.</p>
<p>Wildcats are such sensitive creatures.</p>
<p>■■■■■■ are such dumb animals.</p>