<p>I say ~52-53%.</p>
<p>49-50%. </p>
<p>UChicago will make more use of its waitlist this year than last year, which is a good thing! (Waitlists are SUPPOSED to be used to err on the side of caution.)</p>
<p>It went from 40% in '11 to 47% in '12. Do you think another 6-7% increase is likely?</p>
<p>Past trends can’t be extrapolated to the future, and huge increases often bring about huge decreases in their wake. For all we know, Chicago admissions could be in a bubble (that is, if you believe in those things, and I am aware that there are skeptics among us…)</p>
<p>In Chicago’s case, just maintaining the 47% figure would be great for the institution. But this year, it jumped from a 5-way tie for 5th to a 2-way tie for 4th in USNWR, which just builds on the progress that the Admissions Office is making. This will likely precipitate a significant year-over-year rise in yield (2-3% IS significant), and should pave the way for an increase in yield to the 55-60% mark over the next 5 years.</p>
<p>I predict 55%. It would have been higher but the reduced admissions rate much compared to last year that the admits have (presumably) more college options than just UChicago. </p>
<p>This means the wait list will be used a lot more (10% perhaps) which I think should be the case anyway. What’s the point of wait listing if you’re not using at least 10% of it.</p>
<p>Can someone please thoroughly explain to me why UChicago is more likely to use the waitlist this year? I’ve seen this comment multiple times and not just on CC. Right now, I just don’t get it.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Sure. UofC is in a position where it can’t precisely predict the yield rate. Last year they over admitted, leading to a huge class of 2016. So what they would rather do is be more conservative and, in the event that they under admit, they can pull people from the wait list.</p>
<p>Using a class size of 1400, they are going for a yield of 52%. However, I recently spoke with an admissions counselor and based on the rate of enrollment deposits, the yield is expected to be higher than the predicted 52%. There is a chance of overadmitting…again.</p>
<p>sa0209:</p>
<p>Really? That’s rather interesting. I’m trying to be conservative with my estimates of 49-50%, but I’d like to be proven wrong. :)</p>
<p>(However, as I’m sure you’re aware, there are many people around who claim to have this-or-that type of information. The owner of the mathacle blog, for instance, claimed last year that he had heard from “a friend that new admissions officers at Chicago” that Chicago had a huge summer melt that would bring its yield back down to the 40%-ish range, which of course never happened. So I’ll wait to hear the official word from the Admissions Office until I reach any conclusions.)</p>
<p>If they underestimate the yield AGAIN, then this will likely imply that next year’s admissions rate will be in the 6-7% range if applicant numbers can be pushed up to the 32-33k range (and I think they will). The University has repeatedly stated that it intends to catch up to Columbia in terms of admissions, which means that it’s likely aiming for a sub-7% admit rate. That would put it below Princeton and MIT, and maybe even Yale.</p>
<p>Two additional things to think about:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Didn’t they make some “Z-list” acceptances off the wait list last year? People who were admitted, but on the condition that they take a gap year?</p></li>
<li><p>With a constant class size and yield, you would probably expect admitted people taking gap years and people enrolling after gap years to balance out pretty exactly. If, say, 2% of accepted students agree to enroll but elect to take a gap year, and there were 3,400 accepted students every year, there would be 68 students electing to take gap years and 68 students enrolling after finishing their gap years. But if you go from 3,400 acceptances to 2,700, those numbers may not balance out. At a 2% rate, you would have a 14-student difference, and that’s assuming no change in the fundamental underlying yield.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>The bottom line is that, if the class size is really going to be 1,400, that may mean that only 1,360 or so students would be enrolling from the current pool of acceptees – a yield rate pretty close to 50% (although you will never be able to track the actual number exactly). It also means that if fundamental yield is still under 50% naturally, there will be wait list activity, but not as much as many people think.</p>
<p>And the other possibility is that the real class size expectation is somewhere around 1,450.</p>
<p>I’m one of the students they took off the waitlist, with the gap year condition. There is a Facebook group of gap year students with about 25 student members. Obviously not everyone would have a facebook, but I’m thinking the 2% assumption might be a little high.</p>
<p>@fauxthephoenix </p>
<p>How exactly did you go about arranging this gap year option. This is something that I have really wanted to do (I’m also wailisted). Is it too late?</p>
<p>The University called me and gave me the option. So it’s not something you can really plan for/ say that it’s too late for. They called me the last week of May, basically after I had already chosen to take a gap year.</p>
<p>Just resurrecting this post since this is where I predicted 55%. I predict next year, its 65%</p>
<p>^Very possible if they come up with better FA packages!</p>
<p>I’d be pleasantly surprised if the yield touches 65% within the decade.</p>
<p>60% is easy. Considering that even now they are still overenrolled. There are still tons of states that have not heard of UChicago that are low hanging fruit. The UCIB and other UCXX are getting popular. And there is still a lot to improve on FA. The new entrants are pretty much missionaries to their high school alma maters. And counselors are now talking UChicago up. Add the mini implosion of UMich and their international enrollment. And the wait list has never been really utilized. The city of Chicago is still pretty much a green field. Plus the more accepts peers take in ED, it means fewer choices for EA accepteds to get in these peer schools. Or RD accepteds for that matter. The “Engineering” programs will roll out to undergrads next year too.</p>