Admissions offices are always staffed in part by recent graduates. I doubt it was any different in 1999. As the staff gets larger, things probably get more bureaucratic, but I don’t think the people in the office today are fundamentally different from the people then – and that includes Jim Nondorf vs. Ted O’Neill (although I don’t think anyone is going to find Nondorf teaching core classes). But the job is really different now.
That’s a wonderfully evocative article, Cue. You must possess the world’s largest rolodex of squibs on your alma mater. I remember reading that piece at the time it came out, but I had since forgotten it. It vividly captured both the substance and the drama of the process as it then was. The particular discussions of the pros and cons of the highlighted applications seemed to me to focus exactly on the right factors. That was an era when most of those getting offers would decline them. That isn’t talked about much in the article, but it must have been a bummer for the admissions people. That’s the big difference today, especially of course in respect of the ED pool. No doubt the mechanics of the process as it exists today will have changed owing to the greater volume of applications. Perhaps there is a rougher initial sorting to screen out the hopeless. However I see no reason to doubt that the substantive focus on suitability of mind and temperament for a Chicago-style education will have remained the same.
I wonder if these oversubscriptions that you complain about aren’t being brought about largely by all the extra love the University is getting these days from so many more very suitable applicants. It must be hard for the admissions people to say no. It’s a forgivable failure. Find the beds for them!
@JHS. We are all imprisoned in our own experience. I never wanted to attend any other school than Chicago and thus am perhaps a little too prone to have a tenderness for kids of the modern era who are like that, especially given that such kids stand to be swamped by all the objectively excellent but less Chicago-centric kids in the world. I can’t help seeing ED as a tool to correct for this.
My Dear Q (cue7 First, you should always listen to me, Think of me as Cicero with better hair. Second, UChicago is ahead of most ivies. So it does not Ivy envy. Everybody has Harvard envy – and justifiably so. That will never change, UChicago may have Princeton undergrad envy. But then its apples and orhanges. It is ahead of Yale in many areas and Yale is ahead in others. Rooughly equal. I posted on this earlier. UChicago is without a doubt top 5 and getting stronger ! Yes – biosciences /med is a big problem for them.,
@Chrchill (my dearest!)- yes, everyone has Harvard envy, but why would Chicago have Princeton envy? Chicago is all about the theoretical, so it doesn’t offer the most popular (and very practical) major at Princeton - lawn care & maintenance.
Yes, biosciences and med is a big problem - but wouldn’t you say money is a problem too? The resources looked to be stretched thin, per input from @HydeSnark
@JHS - re age of employees in an admissions office - the Newsweek article noted that, in 1999, the average age of Admissions counselors was 35. I wouldn’t be surprised if that number has dropped now in Chicago’s admissions office - to maybe closer to 30-32. Almost all the counselors I’ve met from the Nondorf administration (and I’ve met a bunch now) were in their early to mid 20s.
College Admissions work is a grind now - few people stay in it for the long haul.
For the Class of 2022+, I imagine more students admitted ED, fewer students admitted EA and RD, and a ginormous number of students offered waitlist. And that solves that.
And just like that, @Materof2 - we’d be reaching close to 100% yield - look how popular we are!
the Vue53 residents will have RA and RM’s and have dedicated dining tables in Baker. This seems to be a long term option they are considering for housing. I don’t think there will be more than 50-60 two bedroom apartments in the complex? So maybe it can accommodate 100 to 150 overflow students?
55% of the undergrad population were in campus housing for 2016-2017. I recall they had around 3,300 beds, and it looks like they probably had around 35 empty beds left. They blew past that pretty quickly. Looks like more and more kids are electing to return back to campus housing in their sophomore, junior and senior year. Given that campus housing is more expensive than other options in Hyde Park, it suggests that with each successive year, less students are value shoppers. Looks like Chicago is pulling in richer kids.
@Cue7 lol, 100% is indeed very popular. For some reason I just had a flashback of Meatloaf singing “Two out of three ain’t bad”…
And @pupflier - the dorms are generally much nicer. I couldn’t imagine wanting to live in Pierce (or, since you could be a young’un - google Woodward Court UChicago - that was an old dorm) or Maclean for four years…
(Personally, I think Chicago overpays for its dorms - but there’s no doubt they are nicer than their predecessors.)
And yes, as the student body skews richer, I imagine the cost savings in an apartment (say $5k-$7k a year, and what’s $5-7k when you’re rich?!) mean a lot less.
@pupflier You’re estimating too high. They aren’t holding that many. There is no way this is a long term solution, they’re going to have this only as long as they need it. There were also way more than 35 beds left - there were more than that in I-House alone.
I-House is hardly a long-term solution for keeping kids on campus. Not too many people will be volunteering to spend four years there.
The off-campus apartment that one or the other of my kids lived in for 50 months was not just cheaper than the dorms (not $5,000 cheaper,though, unless you put a lot more than two people in it), it was waaaay nicer. Huge living room, separate sun porch (complete with pre-war swastika-pattern tiling), semi-separate dining area, huge kitchen and pantry, two nice-size bedrooms separate from one another. Second-story walkup. Nice landscaping. When Kid #1 moved in, South was still two years from completion.
@HydeSnark You may be right. I was going by the numbers given by the Maroon, but they haven’t been known for their sterling journalism, based on the fly by nature of how they cover issues. They said that the dorms could occupy 55.6% of the undergrad student body and as of now they held 55% of the student body. Current enrollment is around 6,000, so that means they didn’t have much capacity left.
Ah, I’m going off of information directly from housing.
@JHS personally, I like I-House
@JHS - re your comment about the admissions counselors then being similar to the ones now, I don’t dispute that, BUT I do think Chicago looks and values some different things now.
For example, I think ethnic diversity, athletics, legacy status, and wealth (or using proxies that lead to wealthier classes, like ED) are more important to Chicago now, and the admissions committee uses a broader set of metrics to determine a candidate’s eligibility.
I think this is timely, and not altogether a bad thing. I just read an article about jon huntsman and generations of huntsmans attending UPenn, and multiple versions of the Biden family doing the same at Penn.
I wish Chicago could have generations of power families sending the bulk of their offspring to Chicago!
A sidebar: Does Chicago have any such multi generation power families connected to its College?
(I know about the Ricketts family - Chicago cubs owners and Chicago alums - but are there any others? At upenn there’s the trumps, bidens, huntsmans, perelmans, and more…)
@Cue7 I am curious. As a percentage, tell me what your ideal class demographics for UChicago would look like by
Race, nationality, gender, geography, socioeconomic status, full-pay vs Need based, Pell grant students
So for example you can say "If I was in Nondorf’s shoes, UChicago would have 60% women and 40% men, 20% of the class would be Pell grant recipients. 70% would receive financial aid. etc, top 1% kids would be 10% of the class etc.
Give me percentages, not “I would like more Pell grant students”.
@Cue7 I think they are all over the money issue. And I am relying on you to make a mega donation to help fix the problem.
“A sidebar: Does Chicago have any such multi generation power families connected to its College?”
Do academic families count?
Anyway UChicago, being a tad younger than UPenn won’t have as many multi’s for its generations. No Huntsmans, or Bidens . . . or Trumps, for that matter.
@pupflier - re percent of pell grant recipients, that’s easy - the number should be similar to Harvard or Princeton - about 15-20%. Further, about 10% of the class should come from the super rich/powerful (think Obamas kids, the sons and daughters of billionaires, Titans of industry and politics, Hollywood types, etc.).
In other words, the proportions should mirror Harvard’s, but the students should buy into the Chicago approach. Surely, from around the world each year, you can find 1500 or so kids who fit that mold.
@JBStillFlying - age is a bit of a silly metric to use. Stanford, Duke, Northwestern, Cornell etc are all about Chicago’s age, but I’d wager they have more multigenerational power families than we do. And remember, for most of the 20th century, Chicago was a top 2 university in terms of wealth and stature - far greater than Penn. The reason they have less is that they didn’t cultivate and care about this as much, and the college was an unpleasant place to spend four years.
I’m just wondering if they had any - the only one I can think of is the ricketts. Pritzkers donated a lot of money, but most wouldn’t have gone to chicagos college if you paid them to. Wrigleys, Heinz, Firestones, fords, rockefellers, etc (or other big prominent Midwestern families) all insulted uchicago and went east (or maybe to northwestern).
It’s a little embarrassing how much talent Chicago has lost - some in its very own backyard (like Michelle Obama, Arne Duncan, and others who started at the lab school but then would never deign to go to chicagos college - the Obama kids come to mind).
(This is also why Chicago should push to form a league with a few other top schools - Standford, Duke, Johns Hopkins, etc. Clubs and associations matter. There is no shame In Riding on Stanford’s coattails a little bit. @Chrchill - as a Harvard alum, you must feel the same way about Yale!)
@cue7 I have no feelings for that drama and music conservatory in New Haven.
If the Admissions people are attempting to fill the latter part of Cue’s prescription for greatness they ought to be shot - or else frog-marched straight to Penn. We don’t need no stinkin’ sons of titans.