<p>In a nutshell: that URM’s have [historically] been afforded less than equal opportunities in life, and thus they should receive positive consideration for their achievements. It doesn’t mean that ORM’s > URM’s, or that URM’s < ORM’s – there’s none of that. It just tries to set both the ORM and URM applicants on equal footing. That is all.</p>
<p>I don’t agree with the claim that URM deserves compensation for their dark past. When I attended an university’s philosophy class, I observed only URM insisted so. Majority disagreed with it because it’s unfair that whites and Asian are discriminated against for their ancestors’ crimes. Most people, however, seemed to agree with the necessity of AA for the diversity issue.</p>
<p>@EliKresses See, thats the thing! Diversity isn’t skin deep. Diversity is also socio-economic, personality-based, etc. The fact that we’ve adopted these stereotypes about certain races unveils the underlying problem that racism still exists in America.</p>
<p>This deteriorated pretty quickly, but I have a serious question for you guys. Does anybody know how often kids get their offers of admission rescinded? I’m from a pretty small rural school (38 kids in my graduating class), and I’ve gotten straight A’s for my entire academic career, but this year I took some online AP courses (only way to get AP at my school), and through a series of unfortunate events, I will likely end up with C’s for two of them. My weighted GPA will still be above 4.0 (4.21 right now) but obviously UChicago has high standards. While it’s obviously very far from a sure thing that I’ll be accepted, I was wondering how UChicago would view me suddenly getting C’s immediately after being accepted, if I am.</p>
<p>Hmm, @CJohnH, did you get A’s for the rest of your classes? and how many classes in total are you taking?</p>
<p>@penguin Yes I did. And will. The online format is totally new to me, and it takes a different skill set to succeed in an online class than in a traditional classroom. I just am hoping that they won’t take this as laziness, i.e. “As soon as CJohn took an actual difficult AP class, he didn’t succeed, so he’s clearly lazy.” I think the rest of my academic record shows that that is not the case (I spent the summer in a med school lab doing breast cancer research), but my poor performance in the classes has been quite a stressor, on top of being the only student from my school in more than a decade who has applied to a top 15 school, so I have no one to talk to about it. Also, I am taking 3 AP online courses this semester, and 4 next semester. The two I’ll probably have C’s in are AP Physics B and AP Calculus AB. I’ll have an A in AP Macroeconomics.</p>
<p>Let’s be honest, it’s 2 in the morning and I’m incredibly bored. I do have a few friends who applied to U Chicago though. I’m excited for all of you! I don’t think I’ll be hearing from Michigan for another two weeks :/</p>
<p>@CJohnH
I’ve hardly met people whose acceptance was rescinded. If you get Cs, it’s quite likely Chicago would send a letter to you demanding some sort of explanation. That’s what happened to some seniors last year. But once they explained their circumstances, their universities mostly didn’t care too much.</p>
<p>@CJohnH woops, didn’t see your post. But hmmm, my guess is if you get accepted EA, you’ll probably be fine. Just be scared if you have to go through the RD process. D:</p>
<p>…if you can get at least onee up to at least a B though, that’d be great.</p>
<p>Back to the purpose of this thread, does anyone know if putting a competitive major in the commonapp interest affects the chance of admission for UChicago? I’ve seen that MIT admits students without considering their major interest, but I’m uncertain about UChicago. Majors like econ would be very competitive in Chicago admission in my guess.</p>
<p>@penguin Yeah I’m sort of terrified. But the plus side of going to such a tiny high school is that my guidance counselor has really worked with me and made sure that her part of the commonapp outlines how the school’s limited opportunities (we have no clubs, AP courses, or, until this year, honors courses) has affected my education, and how I’ve gone “above and beyond” to find opportunities to challenge myself. She’s already told me that she’ll gladly explain to any admissions department how my performance on these online courses is not demonstrative of my abilities.</p>
<p>@HateSMUS, I don’t know about Chicago specifically, but in general, I think it definitely matters more what college within the University that you applied to specifically. For example, getting into Michigan’s engineering school would be a lot harder than getting in as an undeclared major in LSA.</p>
<p>Not sure if you’ve looked the question up, but perhaps this will help: </p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/university-chicago/1031948-does-uchicago-admit-major.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/university-chicago/1031948-does-uchicago-admit-major.html</a></p>
<p>@CJohnH That’s good to hear! Schools love it when students try to go beyond what the school offers :D</p>
<p>@HateSMUS An admissions counselor at UChicago told me that “Undecided” is consistently one of their most popular majors, and that they don’t take the intended major into account at all, because it’s so apt to change (she entered UChicago wanting as a Biology major wanting to become a doctor, but obviously went a total different direction).</p>
<p>yeahh^ My guess is it doesn’t really matter much.</p>
<p>I appreciate your introduction of the thread, penguin. Did anyone write or implied your passion in applications? Seems like I’ve written too much about Chicago school of economics when answering y Chicago question.</p>
<p>@afrojack That’s true of a lot of Universities, but UChicago is a lot more like a liberal arts college than a state university in the way they handle these sorts of things. It’s also one of the reasons I want to go to UC (no idea what career I want, and their career counseling is top notch).</p>
<p>@HateSMUS I talked about my curiosity and love of knowledge in general, without reference to any specific area. My commonapp essay is about a time that I ate dog food because I was super curious about why my dog was refusing to eat it.</p>