****Official University of Chicago Fall 2016 Transfer Thread

Yeah…
@Zieggy and @Vesperan do you mind posting your stats here to see what might have happened? Thanks!

I still think you’re making something out of nothing, and I don’t think chancing people based off of a baseless hunch is gonna be helpful at all. Its best to just not stress yourself out and wait it out.

Princess- Chicago does NOT make decisions regarding transfer applicants until it KNOWS how many Freshman students will be coming, and they wont know that until after the May 1 deadline.
They have to be able to house all incoming students, and need the actual Freshman head count to know how many spaces they will then have for transfer students.

@PrincessMorales In the email they sent me about the missing documents, they included a link to this page: http://financialaid.uchicago.edu/prospective-students/apply-for-aid/aid-application-guidelines. As you can see in the table, the FAFSA, the uchicago financial aid worksheet, and parents W-2’s and tax returns for 2014 were all due on April 15th. I received the email on April 16th simply because I hadn’t submitted the tax returns and W-2’s. As long as you’ve submitted all these documents, there’s no reason they’d email you.

While transfer decisions are “need-sensitive,” there’s still most likely not much overlap between the financial aid office (which sent the email) and admissions. The email was just to make sure people like me and Zeiggy got all the forms in on time.

On a different topic, what essay questions did you guys all choose to write about for the supplemental essay?

I also received an email to send 2014 taxes and I called UC financial office.
They said that if you applied before February 15 that the 2014 taxes was not on the list of things to do.
This email was just for missing information.
Many applicants received the email.

“Chicago does NOT make decisions regarding transfer applicants until it KNOWS how many Freshman students will be coming, and they wont know that until after the May 1 deadline”
Uh, no they actually do. They make the decisions way before this, if they didn’t how would they be able to send out admission letters on the first week of May AND financial aid packages? They know who they’re going to admit before May 1st.

Chicago likely knows who it might admit, given space. They can’t say “admit” or “reject” until they know how many spaces they’ll have.

The financial aid office requests info from everyone, and has a package ready for any student that admissions will simply add to the portal if he/she is admitted. Most of this is reliant on a few formulas and the data applicants submit in their aid application; Chicago does the same for ~31,000 freshman applicants, so 1,000 transfer applicants don’t create much more work for the aid office.

PRINCESS- they DONT know HOW many accepted Freshman will ACTUALLY be ENROLLING at Chicago UNTIL May 1!

If MORE admitted Freshman decide to accept Chicago’s offer of admission than Chicago had ANTICIPATED, i.e. their yield goes up, there will be fewer spots open for TRANSFER students.

GET IT??

If you end up going to Chicago you are going to have to learn to read more carefully…

Hey @menloparkmom, no need to be mean about it. princessmorales is most likely just stressed, like the rest of us. We’ll find out decisions for sure in early May, until then it’s all speculation and distraction from anticipation.

Has anyone else’s application portal changed? My application checklist disappeared and only my financial aid documents are visible.

edit - It appears that last year (2015), when the document checklist went down, the decisions came out the following day.

edit 2 - Further, it appears that in 2014, when the document checklist went down, the decisions came out two days later.

edit 3 - It’s possible that the same phenomena occurred in 2013 - one user asking if anyone could see their application materials, because they could not. The following day, decisions came out.

I noticed this also last night. I wasn’t sure though since I didn’t think decisions would come out during the weekends. Maybe it’ll be out this coming week?

I think it’s highly unlikely to expect decisions before May, however, something did explicitly change. The evidence points towards this being a precursor to notifications. I’m not going to count on a decision next week, but if it happens, it wouldn’t really surprise me.

It looks like in 2014 the document checklist went down on May 2nd and decisions came out on the 6th. Which still makes it seem like it’s early for them to take it down now. I wonder if it means anything? Someone could call and try to get a hint from admissions.

Also: I looked in the class of 2020 regular admissions thread, and found that this was added to their status pages in early march: “Thank you for all of the hard work that you have put into your applications. As of March 7, 2016, the application materials checklist has been removed from your account. If the committee needs any additional information to review your application, you will be contacted directly. Admissions decisions will be available in the late afternoon on March 16, and you will receive an e-mail when your decision has been posted.”

My checklist went down as well…but honestly I think it’s a bit early for decisions?

I’ll call them on Monday and try to get someone to say something…

From a software engineering perspective (I’m a software engineering intern @ one of the big-4), I seriously doubt that the system that these universities use would behave in a random way. I would suggest that once decisions are in a completed/near-completed stage, the database is cleared and the portal disappears - this would assume that the system is autonomous such that once a document is processed, we immediately see the update on our portal and likewise, once documentation is null, the system no longer pulls it. The rationale on the school’s end for this would be that until review is complete, it is imperative to maintain access to documentation. However, once decisions are made, the digital documents on the server become useless.

Though it’s just speculation, there is some rationale behind my suggestion. This doesn’t mean that decisions will be coming out early, but I’d go as far to say that, based off of past trends, that they are at least nearly complete.

Maybe this year UChicago didn’t receive as many transfer applications or perhaps more students in their freshman class are already committed so more rejections?

@kurutoga That sounds pretty reasonable… It’s possible that they’ve finished the decision making process (or are very close to doing so), and are now just waiting to hear back from the last few 2020 accepted students so they can be sure of how many offers to extend to transfers. It still seems most likely that they’ll wait till the beginning of May to release decisions, though–I would be pretty surprised if they’re posted this week. But perhaps we’ll get them early the first week of May, on the 2nd or 3rd? That would be nice.

Also–would you be planning to major in CS at uchicago? Where else did you apply?

@Vesperan, that could very well be why they wait. I would imagine that they have some sort of ranking system for transfers and offers are dependent on the class size. I could see this certainly be an early year (week of May 2nd).

Yeah, I’m planning for CS at UChicago. I also applied at Stanford, Yale, Cornell, CMU, JHU, Brown, and Northwestern. How about you?