NYT: UChicago winning 40% of cross-admits vs. Harvard/Yale, 60% vs. Princeton

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of Chicago ✅
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<p><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/09/04/upshot/college-picks.html?_r=0&abt=0002&abg=1#s=1416"&gt;http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/09/04/upshot/college-picks.html?_r=0&abt=0002&abg=1#s=1416&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>New data out from Parchment.com indicates that UChicago is performing better than ever against its peers in the cross-admit battle. In the most recent admissions cycle, here is how Chicago performed:</p>

<ul>
<li>Won 37% of cross-admits vs. Harvard</li>
<li>Won 37% against Stanford</li>
<li>Won 44% against Yale</li>
<li>Won 60% against Princeton</li>
<li>Won 75% against Cornell</li>
<li>Won 75% against UPenn</li>
<li>Won 80% against Northwestern</li>
</ul>

<p>The data on Parchment.com's official website hasn't been updated, so if you want to do a comparison with last year's data, you can. In any case, Chicago seems to have performed better head-to-head with each peer university, with the exception of Duke, which is an outlier (and artificially boosts its numbers in the cross-admit battle by admitting 47% its class ED, more than any elite university). This is extremely impressive, and would be unimaginable even 5 years ago.</p>

<p>Every year, someone criticizes Parchment.com's small sample sizes, but let me nip this in the bud right now. Parchment.com's methodology is statistically sound and its sample sizes are sufficient. Every 4 years, presidential election polls use sample sizes of 1,000 or fewer to model opinion trends among millions - and often to a very good degree of accuracy. Considering that there are definitely no more than 200-300 cross-admits between any two given elite universities, a sample size of 15-20 per university pair is statistically sufficient to afford an accurate picture of cross-admit trends.</p>

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<p>Also, this might have been overlooked:
<a href=“Top 100 SAT Scores Ranking: Which Colleges Have The Brightest Kids?”>http://www.forbes.com/sites/schifrin/2014/08/04/top-100-sat-scores-ranking-which-colleges-have-the-brightest-kids/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>UChicago now has the 2nd highest SAT scores in the nation, behind only Caltech.</p>

<p>UChicago’s average CR + M scores are 1515, higher than Harvard/Princeton’s 1505, Yale/MIT’s 1500, and Stanford’s 1475.</p>

<p>By all means, UChicago is killing in the admissions game. Although admissions is only one part of the University’s mission, I’m convinced that Zimmer/Nondorf have certainly earned their salaries.</p>

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<p>Chicago is winning not only in the admissions game (apart from H, S, Y according to the data), but also in making rapid gains in career advancement and improving the social environment. </p>

<p>The UChicago Careers in… program hasn’t just helped prepare students for certain careers, but also attracted a ton of name-brand employers. I’m very impressed by the number of finance and consulting firms that recruit on campus… no doubt helped by successful alumni from Chicago Booth. Firms like Blackstone, Goldman, JP Morgan, Citadel, AQR, BCG, Bain, U.S. Fed, U.S. Treasury, and more all recruit from Chicago now. </p>

<p>Hyde Park has been experiencing a revitalization lately… check out this article on the number of new stores and restaurants opening on 53rd Street in the past two years: <a href=“Hyde Park's retail revival is on a roll”>Hyde Park's retail revival is on a roll;

<p>Also interesting to note is that the yield rate is 60%+ this year, and this is WITHOUT the use of early decision. Really phenomenal considering that schools like Duke (sorry, gotta call you out) lock up so many of their students through ED, and yet still have a lower overall yield. </p>

<p>All this reinforces what we already knew… that Chicago has always been a top university and its rise is not the isolated result of “playing the admissions game”, but rather, part of a very concerted effort to re-invent the College. All the pieces are finally coming together. </p>

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<p>It was also just ranked the #2 school for Happiest Freshmen (i.e., first-year retention rate) by the website College Choice.</p>

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<p>phuriku, why don’t you do us all a favor and stop peddling lies? Penn, Brown and Columbia all use ED more heavily than Duke does. Furthermore, if you believe that Chicago is actually winning 60% of its cross admit battles against Princeton, you’re more deluded than I suspected.</p>

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<p>Also I had no idea that 37% = 40%…</p>

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<p>On the Duke issue–I doubt that its because Duke take a lot of people ED, but that Duke seems a lot more fun on paper (they’re about equal on campus, maybe with a slight Duke edge–but Duke doesn’t have downtown Chicago 7 miles away either) and that, combined with the ED effect and a reputation for being better with pre-meds (a not insubstantial portion of the applicant marketplace), makes Duke win out.</p>

<p>Also, I don’t know if I would say that retention rate determines happiest freshmen. Most Content, maybe, but happiest seems to put too much of a meaning behind that statistic.</p>

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<p>A small collection of non-random samples shouldn’t be considered representative. Don’t overanalyze. Only the socially awkward would use this to brag.</p>

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<p>Hey</p>

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<p>Sorry to burst the bubble, but this is useless and the NYT should be ashamed. It isn’t random sampling. At all. UC is a great school, but this isn’t useful data. It doesn’t even pass the common sense test, if it was extrapolated to all applicants that were accepted.</p>

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<p>Chicago is a great institution, but so too are Duke, MIT, Stanford, Northwestern, the Ivies, JHU. Berkeley, Cal Tech, very best LACs, and so forth. Thanks to CC, we all can easily play (and some can even enjoy) a limitless variety of “quantitatively-based admissions/stature games” . . . just wait until next week when U S News’ annual assessment is released.</p>

<p>However, certain overriding facts endure. For example, each year every one of these schools denies MANY times the number of exceptionally qualified (and highly deserving) applicants that it accepts. Most of those who are sadly rejected are, in fact, essentially indistinguishable from those who eventually matriculate. They doubtless will excel at some other excellent university – and, much more important, most will also excel at life. None of our undergraduate admissions departments can identify THE very best “x” thousand candidates with precision; the information accrued – although crucial – truly does not provide the detailed insight that would be required to do so.</p>

<p>Therefore, and presuming all of phuriku’s numbers are both accurate and current, aren’t we left just about where we have been in recent years? Chicago is an outstanding university, their statistics are impressive, and I suspect they are “on a roll.” However, many of their peer institutions are also annually eclipsing past achievements in admissions, teaching, research, service, charitable donations, diversity, internationalism, etc.</p>

<p>The best universities persevere for many centuries (Oxford and Cambridge are good illustrations), lasting changes take decades to become solidified, and the best measure of their successes is likely the sustained performance of generations of their alumni, not a few undergraduate admissions cycles’ “numbers.” </p>

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<p>Parchment seems to update instantly. I added some data.</p>

<p>Before:</p>

<p>Yale:Williams :: 87:13
Yale:Amherst :: 86:14</p>

<p>After:</p>

<p>Yale:Williams :: 88:12
Yale:Amherst :: 87:13</p>

<p>I suppose that the data on the website are cumulative?</p>

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<p>One can update all one wants, but as long as there is so little representation from most of the country and heavy representation from a few states, the data yields meaningless results. Unless one wants to comment solely on choices made by students from Michigan and a couple of other states. Even then, until we can know the nature of the data collection and how complete, accurate and/or random it is (is it self reported when it comes to acceptances? If so, then it is meaningless), there is little to conclude from this article and the reports. Everyone is wasting their time even talking about it IMO.</p>

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<p>I consider parchment cross admit numbers the most useless ones anywhere.</p>

<p>It is provided by whoever wants to update them and not by the colleges who track such outcomes. Colleges which do care about yield do detailed polling of the students who did not join them to see where they are going.</p>

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<p>^ ^ ^ ^
“Colleges which do care about yield do detailed polling of the students who did not join them to see where they are going.”</p>

<p>Absolutely correct; they also attempt to ascertain why (as well as where). </p>

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<p>Even then, of course, one can draw only limited conclusions unless the response rate is extremely high and you trust the accuracy of the responses. Otherwise there is a fairly high chance of selectivity bias, i.e. those that choose to respond have particular characteristics compared to those who don’t and therefore skew the response levels.</p>

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<p>^ ^ ^ ^
That is completely true; however, it is frequently – but not always – better have limited conclusions than none at all. </p>

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<p>Parchments cross-admit data is very unreliable and inaccurate. I wouldn’t necessarily believe the numbers that you are seeing. </p>

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<p>Right^ Especially when they have more students choosing Princeton over Chicago.</p>

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<p>This thread is dead, but if Stanford’s Dean of Admissions is to be trusted, the Parchment results are suspect–</p>

<p><a href=“https://stanford.app.box.com/s/y4abufqg66nte7uax6eq”>https://stanford.app.box.com/s/y4abufqg66nte7uax6eq&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Stanford won 42% of cross-admits with Harvard this year.
58% with Yale.
75% with Princeton.
61% with MIT.</p>

<h2>(Apparently, Stanford loses only single digit percentages of students to all other schools with which it shares admits.) </h2>

<p>Compare to the NYT’s report on Parchment’s results:</p>

<p>Stanford won 54% of cross-admits with Harvard.
61% with Yale.
81% with Princeton.
74% with MIT.</p>