Oversubscribed Class of 2021!!

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of Chicago ✅
21

@JBStillFlying - yes, Chicago doesn’t clamor to be like other places, but, in this case, don’t you think transparency with admissions data is a good thing? Even just providing general numbers so applicants can strategize and consider over the summer would be a good thing. To radically change the admissions system and then NOT provide any data (especially when the data is now 99% final) is so unfortunate.

Instead, it’s a complete black box - how is this atypical behavior a good thing? In this way Chicago is separating themselves from their peers, but NOT in a good way.

I know all schools have self-interest, but this is come on…

22

And @pupflier - re socioeconomic diversity, the goal is to find the right mix, and chicagos numbers are going in the wrong direction - they had more pell grant recipients in 2008 than now. We don’t need “bus loads” of economically strapped students coming to Chicago, but the mix should be better than it is. Current decisions, though, seem to point the school in the other direction.

Finally, yes, I want Chicago education with Harvard brand, but where in that playbook do you need something as applicant unfriendly and unfair as ED/ED2? I’ve already posted my game plan (check post #510 in the uchicago declining thread)) and ED/ED2 actually just detract from chicagos credibility. The school they most resemble in admissions now is Vanderbilt…

23

@Cue7 I think you are too harsh on the administration. I think they will eventually find the right mix between ED and RD. Once they have numbers from a few years, they will probably decide to do away with a few of the options because they will be able to more accurately predict the ED/RD mix along with yield for both. Right now they are just experimenting with what works for the University.

ED is probably going to stay because too many other schools are doing it and it confers legitimate benefits to some students and a large benefit to the school. You can judge ED all you want, but there is a reason so many schools have adopted it.

The only question in my mind is whether ED2 will survive. I think EA is going to go away in a few years, if not sooner. I feel that once the ED applications stabilize, they will phase out EA and ED2 and just retain ED and RD. I think they have ED2 now because, they just don’t know with any amount of certainty what the ED1 pool looks like for Chicago and they don’t want to fall flat on their faces by over estimating it, so ED2 is more of a defensive strategy and less of an aggressive “stick it to the students” as you interpret it.

And I think the ED/RD strategy will result in exactly the mix you want. A good spattering of rich kids through ED and a decent percentage of lower SES kids, URM’s, and first gen kids through RD, like in other elite private schools. This strategy seems to be working for other schools without destroying campus culture, so I think this is the way Chicago will end up as well.

ED allows Chicago to continue to be a need blind school and spend its Financial aid budget on needy students.

The students who will be harmed by this move are the “upper middle class” students who used to get a decent combination of merit and some need based aid from the school. Chicago is sending a very clear message that the days of trying to entice these kids with merit money are coming to an end. In a few years, Chicago will probably only give out need based aid and phase out merit aid completely like the Ivies.

There is also one other angle. I think the administration finally feels that it has made enough changes and has established enough brand power to now expect that kids should legitimately want them as their first choice instead of using them as a backup to Penn and Columbia. They want kids to express their love, because it makes them feel special. It might be as simple as that too :slight_smile: Who among us doesn’t want to be popular, liked and have a fan following? In the universe of higher education, one strong way of showing that is by applying ED.

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@pupflier

What exactly was the problem last year when Chicago had EA/RD, an accept rate of 7%, a yield of 65%, and the 2nd highest SAT scores in the nation? In the past 5-6 years, with its US News ranking in the top 5, and a yield generally around 60%, how many students was it really losing to UPenn and Columbia? Even viewing Chicago in an unfavorable light, given its stringent admissions, who would see it as a backup to UPenn and Columbia in recent times? How is a school with a 7% accept rate and 65% yield a backup school to anywhere but HYPS - and even that is a stretch?

Also, as Chicago can clearly be picky in admissions, didn’t it have enough rich kids, poor kids etc. to chose from last year?

To sum, what was so weak about its position last year that prompted a radical change in the admissions strategy?

Relatedly, schools institute Early Decision because they CONCEDE superiority to other schools, and acknowledge their roles as a backup. They then fight to get the best of the rest with ED. You can read about this here: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2001/09/the-early-decision-racket/302280/

Finally, if you think Chicago is going to ED/RD, why is it playing games in the interim? Schools in the past just made one switch - or switched back - and that was it. In 2001, Brown made a straight switch from EA to ED. Stanford went from ED to SCEA. Why play these games in the middle when other schools don’t? It may be good for the school’s self-interest, but the optics are awful.

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again - this is pure games. Chicago is trying to squeeze the last few drops out of the bucket, at cost to the applicant pool and its standing. It’s gone from having a fairly principled admissions process to being the absolute worst in the group - and it’s done this in a short period of time.

Sad!

25

“Even just providing general numbers so applicants can strategize and consider over the summer would be a good thing. To radically change the admissions system and then NOT provide any data (especially when the data is now 99% final) is so unfortunate.”

@Cue7 What the Maroon reported is that this definitive information is forthcoming in the fall. Hardly think that a timing change is going to cause a prospective applicant to go into a tailspin - if it does, that applicant may not be the best fit and is better off not wasting time on UChicago. In the realm of things that the university has done lately to defy conventional wisdom, a definitive lack of yield data by summertime is a pretty small matter.

If the Maroon had done its job properly those Nondorf-based stats we all heard would have been sourced and reported on. Hopefully the “higher quality” incoming class of 2021 will bring a new level of journalistic talent to the student periodical. [-O<

26

All the numbers posted back in March look to be confirmed at this point. EA/ED will account for 1150+, 1700+ total class size. I don’t see how yield will not be atleast, 75% especially with less than 2% RD. Can’t wait to see the official stats of the class of 2021.

Guess this means my son has no chance at a single in North though :frowning:

27

“Also, as Chicago can clearly be picky in admissions, didn’t it have enough rich kids, poor kids etc. to chose from last year?. . … To sum, what was so weak about its position last year that prompted a radical change in the admissions strategy?”

Perhaps they see a lot of noise out there in the applicant pool and ED/EDII is an easy way to filter out some of that noise. Do we know that ED/EDII drew a plethora of rich kids to UChicago? And if it did, were those the kids chosen for admission? (Anyone? Anyone? Chicago Maroon? Anyone?).

Also, are schools like Penn and Columbia - both of whom offer ED - really caught up in “conceding superiority” to HYPS? Or are they using their admissions policies to weed out those who are applying to the second-tier Ivy (if such exists anymore) as an afterthought? Most admissions people seem far too busy to be caught up with who’s just ahead of them. Seems that the “rankings race” might be more of a time-trial. Although admittedly UChicago has bucked that one as well.

28

@fbsdreams I can’t remember how my daughter ranked having a single - her first choice was Snell-Hitchcock and she was hoping for a single there. Now I’m very worried she’ll end up in I-House! (not that I-House is bad for those who specified that choice - she’d just rather have a double in Hitchcock or BJ rather than a single in I-House).

Really hoping she ends up in Snitch. Wants to be on the winning Scav team! LOL.

29

@JBStillFlying - don’t you think it’s better for prospective applicants to see acceptance rates, avg. incoming SAT scores, yield, etc. over the summer? NOT having the data might not put applicants into a “tailspin,” but isn’t it better for the process to have this info over the summer?

If I was an applicant, I’d sure like to see as much data as possible. How is Chicago withholding the data (when it’s 99% complete) helpful in any way? Why is it doing this?

Your posts seem confusing to me… like, do you really not see the shenanigans here, that seem to be for no reason?

Finally, I’m not sure why Chicago needed TWO rounds of early decision to “filter through the noise” - their yield last year was 65% - so they did a plenty good job of it last year. If you need two rounds of Early Decision to figure out who really wants to attend, that’s a pretty sad state of affairs.

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@Cue7

Any school that just has an EA can be treated as a backup school without a big price to pay for the applicant. No school wants to be in this position.

There is a reason even schools like HYPS have moved to SCEA from EA. They basically force kids to eliminate all private ED/EA schools and their most likely competitors (the other three) by forcing them to apply SCEA. They do it because it works. Why are you holding Chicago to a different standard than all its peers?

You really don’t know how much Chicago had to expend more than it would have liked on merit and “meeting and beating need based aid offers” from competitive schools to put that EA/RD class together. You see that as a “no cost” option for the school, when it was probably extraordinarily expensive for the school.

For over 30% of the class of 2020, Chicago was not their first choice. Even for those that had Chicago as their first choice, they were able to bargain harder for more financial aid from Chicago before accepting. I think the numbers will be very different this year. Now you do have a point. Chicago was not in a “weak position” when you compare to “Private universities” in general, but if you narrow the list to peer schools (maybe ten other schools), it was indeed in a weak position.

The fact that HYPS have SCEA, which is just ED in a different form completely invalidates this point. Many of the Ivies and other elite privates all have ED programs and none of these schools have an inferiority complex. It is more about exercising and consolidating their ** Market Power**. If you have no Market power, you can’t afford to play the ED card. No kid will apply ED to “Pacific Northwest University”

Just because you assert it again and again doesn’t mean it is true :slight_smile: You clearly have an axe to grind with Chicago. You interpret everything they do from a negative angle. You also indulge in a lot of extreme hyperbole in attributing bad motives to the administration. As I explained to you before, in my opinion ED2 was most probably a defensive move to protect the school from any blow back from a weak ED1 application pool.

And even if it wasn’t a defensive move, I don’t see a huge blow back to Chicago from having taken this step. It is even possible that some schools might follow suit, if Chicago doesn’t abandon ED2 in a few years because these schools may perceive Chicago’s ED2 option as weakening their market power to compete for students.

31

@pupflier

Did you read the article on the Early Decision Racket? The entire reason UPenn came up with ED is precisely because it had an inferiority complex - it was tired of NOT being a first choice, so it was willing to take itself out of the competition for the very tippy top applicants, and instead looked to get more students who had Penn as their #1.

This is so strange to me - there are articles and even scholarship demonstrating the pernicious effects of ED on applicants. I’m not the only one saying Early Decision is a racket - there’s literally an article with that title! I have yet to see a real defense for this. Instead, students at top schools realize ED can burnish their newfound brand, so they accept and even succumb to it…

This point aside, you argue that Chicago switched to ED1/ED2 because it was expending considerable resources convincing students to come, and it wasn’t a first choice for a sizable chunk of the student body. I find this position questionable - Chicago has maintained a position of getting great students with EA/RD and using merit aid for a long time. What was it from last year to this year that prompted the admin to throw their hands up and decide they were now investing too much into this type of recruitment?

In the midst of their big capital campaign, is there some sort of money shortage we don’t know about, that led them to decide to STOP expending as many resources to win over admits (which, by the way, is what a good Admissions Office should do)?

Again, what you posit is so strange - you’re basically arguing that ED is good because the Admissions Office can now do LESS work and expend FEWER resources. But that’s exactly the opposite of what an Admissions Office SHOULD Do - it should be actively competing to win over applicants!

Finally, @pupflier you should also read former Chicago Admissions Dean Ted O’Neill’s excellent article on Admissions Failure, found here: https://thepointmag.com/2016/examined-life/admissions-failure

(Btw, if you can find any articles/scholarship that view ED as a POSITIVE for anything besides schools consumed by their own self-interest, please post them. Everything - literally everything - I can find on ED point to its faults.)

You keep saying that I alone find these shenanigans to be games, but there are articles about it, and a former Dean even resigned because he got sick of it…

32

Don’t kid yourself. Ted O’Neill didn’t resign. He got squeezed out, and arguably for good reasons. From the University’s point of view, his replacement has done a far superior job.

@pupflier “Just because you assert it again and again doesn’t mean it is true You clearly have an axe to grind with Chicago. You interpret everything they do from a negative angle. You also indulge in a lot of extreme hyperbole in attributing bad motives to the administration.”

Get used to it. Cue7’s relentless negativity about every possible aspect of the University has been going on for almost a decade now. Every year, as UChicago gets ever more popular, ever more highly ranked, as Hyde Park improves and students are happier and have better career prospects and a better quality of life, Cue7 finds new ways to slide deeper into existential despair about it all. :slight_smile:

33

@ThankYouforHelp

You’re a Chicago alum, no? Do you remember the “Ted O’Neill is my Homeboy” t-shirt? Tell me, where’s the Nondorf swag and comparable rapport in Hyde Park? Lest you forget, Ted O’Neill was immensely popular at Chicago, and he had a productive two decades at the helm. Don’t undercut what he did for Chicago in your rush to embrace Nondorf.

Also, what do you think of all the articles about ED, and its pernicious effects?

I guess, though, if it helps Chicago’s standing, why should we complain?

Please also qualify your post - I’ve noted with pride that Chicago’s College is in better shape now than ever before. There are definite black spots out there, though, and it stuns me that on a Chicago board (a Chicago board!) the naysayers and skeptics have been winnowed out.

That high US News ranking is powerful, huh? I suspect if Chicago was still #16, I’d find some more compatriots on this thread!

34

@Cue7 IMHO EDII is to catch the cream of the crop from the HYPSMIT, etc. top tier deferreds.

It’s a great strategy for UChicago. Gaining entry to the majority of these schools EA or SCEA is difficult statistically. EDII would generate some highly qualified applicants. I think this is the reason why they accepted so many EA/ED/EDII.

And we all know the impact that has on RD. If UChicago didn’t accept even 1%, could you imagine what that would do to their total applicant pool for next year?

That’s the real reason they are not releasing a less than 2% RD.

I think they will straighten that out next year.

35

@fbsdreams - I agree completely - they are withholding numbers until late to not deter potential applicants.

If they disclosed that the ED accept rate was (say) 35% and the RD accept rate was 1.5%, what do you think that would do for apps this year?

So, because their numbers were wonky last year, they’re not going to divulge the numbers until late. Also, don’t be surprised if they obfuscate the numbers - e.g. don’t reveal ED1 and ED2 accept rates, RD accept rates, etc.

These are all games to keep the admissions machine going…

36

The university is more broke than they’d like to disclose publicly. Don’t be confused by them now subsidizing 43 two bedroom apartments in View53, plus one for the RHs and one or two for the RAs. They’re up to their ears in debt and Zimmer would do Paul Ryan proud with the hacksaw he’s taken to the university’s budget to avoid cutting into the endowment.

The push for ED is nothing more than a push for richer students. It’s just another signalling factor they can use to filter out the middle class and take on more of the full paying affluent while still being able to take talented low income students in the EA and the RD rounds (which they bill as altruism but let’s not kid ourselves - Zimmer and Nondorf only care because Harvard cares) and without giving up being need blind.

Being ED is prestigiously acceptable because the Ivies do it too. Coming out and admitting they need to admit more rich kids isn’t.

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@HydeSnark

This is the best description of the reason behind the policy change that I’ve heard.

It paints a much less rosy picture than what @ThankYouforHelp @pupflier and others present. I suspect it’s also closer to the truth. If money is indeed the issue, ED1/ED2 is the perfect solution - you get richer kids and expend fewer resources to do so.

A question - why is the university so broke? What caused them to spend so much money so rapidly?

38

Building things is expensive. A story, in three news articles:
(March 2014) [University of Chicago is outlier with growing debt load/url [url=<a href=“http://www.chicagobusiness.com/article/20160223/NEWS13/160229950/university-of-chicago-downgraded-by-s-p”>http://www.chicagobusiness.com/article/20160223/NEWS13/160229950/university-of-chicago-downgraded-by-s-p</a>] University of Chicago downgraded by S&P/url [url=<a href=“https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/06/09/university-chicago-cost-cutting-draws-objections%5DCuts”>https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/06/09/university-chicago-cost-cutting-draws-objections]Cuts Questioned at U of Chicago](Bloomberg - Are you a robot?)

In the last recession, borrowing money became cheaper. Zimmer jumped at the opportunity and went on a borrowing spree for construction beyond what the university could normally afford. He bit off more than he could chew, and now we’re in our current position.

Is it worth it? I don’t think so. Zimmer should go back to studying superrigidity theorems.

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@HydeSnark

I think this article summarizes Chicago’s money woes best: http://www.chicagobusiness.com/article/20130817/ISSUE01/308179974/u-of-c-tries-to-keep-up-with-the-ivy-league

And that article also summarizes the problem - Zimmer did this because he felt he needed to keep up with the Ivy League (presumably, the top ivies). In the article, Zimmer said: "the school cannot scale back our academic and programmatic ambitions in a way that risks our future excellence as a university.”

The then-provost David Greene said: "If we are in a position where we can’t provide an adequate facility for people in astronomy and astrophysics, for example, they’re going to go elsewhere because there are other places that will.”

A higher ed expert, Richard Vedder, provided this analysis in the article: “U of C “may be suffering from Ivy envy.”

That all sums it up. Chicago is over-leveraged because it is terrified of falling behind, yet it competes with peers who have 4 times the resources.

It’s a game Chicago can’t win. (Although, if you listen to @Chrchill - what’s there to worry about? We are comfortably a top 5 Uni!)

Also, for all those claiming that Chicago is a maverick - it looks to cement its academic standing in the same way as all of its peers - through $ and spending. It just doesn’t have enough.

40

So tell us what, exactly, you’re advocating here, @Cue7. You tell us Chicago will never have enough money to be Harvard (sigh). You say taking on debt is not the way to go. So if Chicago can’t be Harvard and ought not to take on debt, is there any other worthy sort of school it could be? For once give us your thoughts about ways the university might actually succeed as against all the many ways it has failed and always will fail.