Rumored Yield

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of Chicago ✅
21

“It sounds like we agree that around 2/3-3/4 of the UChicago matriculated class is admitted ED (which was my point).”

Oh good because there’s a difference between 2/3 admitted and 2/3 matriculating. Agreement on the latter not only helps move the discussion along, but it’s consistent with what others have heard from admissions.

“At the Ivies that use ED (Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth and Penn), that proportion ranges from a little under to just over half. This, I suggest, is why UChicago only discloses its admissions statistics partially and unofficially to admitted students, who are now on the team and presumably are fine with this.”

Actually, when I started reading the UChicago threads back in 2015 and 2016 - before the switch to ED - I noticed that families were scrambling to get info. on early rates then as well. IIRC this non-disclosure was a switch from prior practice at some point. UChicago has since been followed by Stanford in holding the cards close. Schools have their unique reasons but UChicago understands that most who are interested in attending are numerate enough to figure out the ED ratio. So there’s no benefit in non-disclosure for secrecy reasons or because they are insecure or defensive about their admission policy. As I’ve stated before, UChicago uses ED a tad differently than do other schools. It believes it has a relatively large number of self-selectors into the College; these kids have done their research and know what they want. Given the marked increase of ED apps overall, this is nothing unique to UChicago; however, they might be far less constrained than other places to respond by upping the number of ED admits. As well, UChicago is playing catch-up on establishing a thriving and successful alumnae base. It wasn’t so long ago that it was nothing but a back up with an admit rate of > 50%. ED is a no-brainer way to build a great alumnae network.

UChicago publishes overall admit stats on its website by the end of fall quarter. Given that this past cycle saw a 7% early admit rate (combined ED1 and EA), with a likely admit rate for ED1 of only 10%, I posit that it has reasons other than shame or insecurity for not making that info public. This year they didn’t even disclose the number of early apps to anyone - that info was leaked to WaPo. And the number had jumped 15% over a very healthy prior year.

I just suspect they are playing a different game than many are thinking. Perhaps it’s a long game with the understanding that demographic trends point to a plummeting application cycle for everyone beginning in about 10 years’ time. That would support stuff like TO and other outreach efforts to find talent from the less typical pools. In fact, many if not all of the top schools have been using various strategies to do the same. Not saying it’s all about age demographics when you look over the horizon, but that concern must be a factor in their efforts to leave no stone unturned.

TO had no positive impact on application numbers this cycle. TO appears to reflect the Nondorf/Zimmer philosophy regarding the role of the university as a tool of opportunity for every qualified applicant, rather than a cynical attempt to increase application numbers. And perhaps part of the long game, as mentioned above.

DeepBlue, I see your last paragraph in #19 as describing more a matching process than a divvying up of first gens among the elite. Each college at least professes to admit individuals. Some of the unique attributes of this or that candidate will be appreciated at some college but not another and vice versa. It’s all part of the equation for the overall class each school is trying to build in a given year. Naturally , as more talented first gens apply, their own niche could become competitive, all else equal - but it’s not equal, since the proportion of first gen and other non traditional admitted groups - including Vets! - has also grown more robustly with time.

22

@JBStillFlying 's numbers from a previous post show that the matriculated ED’s at Chicago come to around 64 percent of the class, not quite two-thirds. Nevertheless, if it’s true that the ED ivies admit around 50 percent ED, that’s a statistically significant difference. It should hardly surprise anyone that Chicago differentiates itself in this way as in so many others from the ivies. To describe why this would be so, however, requires a choice between theories.

One of them holds simply that it is all about “juicing the numbers”, so as to create an unwarranted illusion that Chicago’s numbers are equivalent to those of the ivies. That’s of course the theory preferred by some of the more jaundiced visitors to this board and those words are the very ones used by DeepBlue in previous posts. It fits well with a general disposition to see Chicago’s rise in attractiveness in recent years as taking it out of its traditional lane - that of a worthy school without much general appeal. The numbers game is the mechanism by which this is being done - illegitimately so, as they would see it. I am not, however, aware of that theory being based on anything other than a somewhat cynical brand of speculation.

But how about another theory to explain the divergence? Boasting about numbers may be an obsession of this board, but isn’t it barely possible that the College really does want to use its ED structure to somewhat different substantive effect than do the other ED ivies? Chicago’s student body was historically different from theirs. That difference may have abated somewhat, but many of us think it remains in some degree, and most of the talk on this board assumes as much. And many think that ED, whatever else it may be, is a way of identifying applicants who truly do see Chicago in that light. What Chicago offers isn’t in the same lane, to coin a phrase, as what the other ivies offer, and it has an accordingly greater need to identify kids who really want to get in that lane.

Choose the theory that you think fits the facts.

23

I’m just using Occam’s razor and assuming that the simplest explanation consistent with the facts is more likely than not to be the correct one. If UChicago isn’t publicly disclosing numbers that other schools publish routinely, my assumption is that it’s because they don’t want the world to know them.

If they publish the information required to calculate ED1, ED2 and RD admit rates, like many of their peers do, I haven’t seen it. Do you have a link?

Now we’re getting closer to what I think is going on. Drop hints and leave a trail of breadcrumbs (e.g., Nondorf cocktail party remarks that get published on CC and in the Chicago Maroon) for the clued-in kids with high stats - and, I suspect, who are mostly full payers - that you should apply ED if you want to have a realistic chance of getting in. Then fill most of the class with applicants who figure that out and are willing to commit, and make up the rest of the class using merit money, offers off the waitlist and some where they’ll risk a jump ball, because yield’s guaranteed to be at the desired level given how much of the class has been locked in with ED. Don’t publish the numbers, though, because that would give the game away, depress apps and make it clear to applicants unwilling to apply ED that they were probably wasting their time.

The spin from the university’s fans is that this is wonderful because it means they get the kids who really want to go - the UChicago type. I would argue, though, that this approach just skews the applicant pool and the admitted class to a narrow subset of the students that the peer schools aim for and are willing to risk not getting.

24

Sorry DeepBlue - your musings are off-topic. But if you’ll start a separate thread you’ll undoubtedly get a few takers. In the meantime, it’s best to stick to posts about the rumored yield rate. Speaking of which, I understand from the various trustee receptions and so forth this spring and summer that one advantage of such selectivity and yield is that the Class of '23 is the most diverse group in the College’s history. So I’d have to disagree that ED skews the admitted class away to a narrow subset of the SCEA schools. This seems to be one area where UChicago is, indeed, becoming more like other top institutions.

25

To follow up on an earlier point above - want to underscore that @Marlowe1 is correct - we are very likely not looking at something as high 2/3 of the matriculated class being ED. But regardless, an 83% yield strongly hints at a pretty high non-binding yield rate. In fact, you’d have to assume something like an 80/20 ED/non-ED ratio to get the latter yield to as low as 50%! Despite all the criticisms of Nondorf, no one has suggested he’s quite that extreme.

As stated above, the College is doing something to keep those non-binding admits. They aren’t just increasing the number of admitted ED’s to push up yield.

26

For a guy who professes devotion to Occam’s Razor, @DeepBlue86 , there are an awfully lot of moving parts in that scenario of yours starting with the bread crumbs at cocktail parties and carrying on down through a fine calibration of merit aid and jump balls, with everyone supposed to keep mum about the great game afoot lest the grand stratagem be ruined. The UChicago Admissions office in your telling is starting to sound an awfully lot like Kipling’s India. Yet all that scheming and Rube Goldberg-like pressing of levers and opening of trap doors results only in Chicago getting kids that the peer schools are “willing to risk not getting”. Take that, all you Chicago spinners! Your kids aren’t that hot.

If this were Kipling’s India, we could settle this point in a meeting at dawn. However, I’m content to say that the Chicago-type kid is just the type Chicago wants. Always has been, always will be. As someone on this board once said, “Harvard just doesn’t quite get us Chicago types.” The peer schools are welcome to their own types.

27

Am I missing something @DeepBlue86, but UChicago’s filling 50% of the class ED is very close to Ivy ED and SCEA admission numbers, as most of these also fill half the class from early admits. Early admit matriculation rates should therefore be very comparable.

28

I think UChicago would be more likely to lose cross-admits to state flagships than to HYPS. On this forum, come around April, you always hear difficult decisions like Yale at $70k vs state flagship at $20k, but you almost never hear UChicago at $70K vs state flagship at $20k.

29

^UChicago wins every cross-admit comparison with a state flagship - it’s not even close.

30

^^ Actually let me walk that back. UChicago basically ties with U IA and IA State and loses to AZ, ASU, and Hawaii, although none of those comparisons have enough data to establish a difference at the 95% confidence level. The latter three are probably not truly comparable. However, IA and ISU are nearby, relatively speaking, and charge some of the lowest in-state tuition you’ll find in the Midwest.

31

Yes the typical kid UChicago loses to a state school is one where the parents make approximately $100 - $200K and UChicago is unaffordable for them with the FA they would get in that income range. They are also going to be at the very tip top of the class at State U so will be offered significant FA (possible a full ride) but just another quality candidate at UChicago whom will be replaced by a very similar candidate. This is quite different from the kids that are cross admitted from HYPS of which there are VERY few.

32

@CU123 - How is HYPS more “affordable” to that family? Are you saying that the FA would be better than what they could get from UChicago? Or that some top schools are simply going to be more “afforable” than others?

Also - data? I took a look at parchment cross admits for Univ. FL (83% in-state) and noticed that UChicago slightly beats HYPS there. Moving along to the UC schools, for Cal Berkeley (76% in-state) Stanford and Yale dominate Chicago by a solid margin, Princeton much less so and Harvard falls short. So is there another set of data we should all be looking at to confirm what you are saying?

33

I think you misread what I was trying to say, HYPS is not more affordable, my point is that State schools are. I wasn’t comparing HYPS to UChicago. More succinctly, UChicago isn’t going to lose to state schools when UChicago is cheaper than a state school (high FA from UChicago). It doesn’t lose to state schools when the parents are wealthy enough to afford UChicago easily. It can lose to state schools when UChicago is much more expensive then State schools (occurs when UChicago doesn’t give much FA or state schools give a ton of merit). This is the same for HYPS.

34

“I think you misread what I was trying to say,”

  • Perhaps, @CU123. I read the following from your post #30 -

“This is quite different from the kids that are cross admitted from HYPS of which there are VERY few”

  • to mean you thought that HYPS outdoes UChicago with these top in-state kids of a particular income demographic who get into both sets of schools (ie State U vs. HYPSUChi) but don't get FA from the latter. In fact, I read your post #30 to mean you concurred with @jzducol at #27. Is that not a correct reading?

“It can lose to state schools when UChicago is much more expensive then State schools (occurs when UChicago doesn’t give much FA or state schools give a ton of merit). This is the same for HYPS.”

  • True. But who loses to state schools more? UChicago or HYPS? I thought that's what we were discussing? My point was that it's not clear at all that UChicago loses out more in this case. Do we have data to show it?
35

MODERATOR’S NOTE:

While that may be what you were discussing, it’s really OT to the thread, so let’s move on from cross-admits and affordability.

36

No I simply meant what I said. There are very few students who are admitted to both UChicago AND any of the HYPS. They would have to be admitted to at least one via RD. (UChicago EA vs HYPS RD or HYPS SCEA vs UChicago RD) both scenarios are very difficult to do. Not really referencing which school wins these kids.

37

@CU123 - ah, OK. Sorry for misunderstanding you earlier.

38

Sorry, took a CC break.

The confusion is between ED admits as (i) a proportion of total admits and (ii) as a proportion of the enrolled class. UChicago doesn’t fill half the class ED, rather (based on Nondorf statements as reported by @JBStillFlying and others), about half the offers UChicago makes are ED offers, which results in 2/3 or more of the enrolled class being admitted on a binding basis (through ED1 or 2).

This is significantly different from the Ivies, all of which make more - typically much more - RD than ED or SCEA offers. As a result, when you take account of class size and make reasonable assumptions for ED/SCEA yield, generally around half of their enrolled classes are admitted early (and, in the case of HYP, which use SCEA, no one in their enrolled classes is admitted on a binding basis). See below for the class of 2023 (stats compiled by a consultant based on public disclosures):

School ED/SCEA offers RD offers
Brown (ED) 769 1,782
Columbia (ED) 650 1,540
Cornell (ED) 1,395 3,788
Dartmouth (ED) 574 1,302
Harvard (SCEA) 935 1,015
Penn (ED) 1,279 2,066
Princeton (SCEA) 743 1,152
Yale (SCEA) 794 1,384

One other point for @marlowe1: when I said, “I would argue, though, that this approach just skews the applicant pool and the admitted class to a narrow subset of the students that the peer schools aim for and are willing to risk not getting“, my last few words meant that, in contrast to UChicago, the Ivies were willing to take the risk of a lowered yield as a result of handing out more non-binding admits to a broader range of applicants who might not be inclined to take them, not that the Ivies weren’t interested in the sort of kids UChicago would admit, which is how you seem to have read what I wrote. I don’t doubt that UChicago kids on average are very academically strong and on that dimension stack up well against many kids who go to Ivies. In fact, I’m sure that each Ivy has a large group that’s fundamentally interchangeable with the average UChicago student.

39

Ah, putting all the confirmed and unconfirmed rumors together… we have:

Apps
ED1 4,000
EA 11,000
ED+EA 15,000
ED2 4,000
RD 16,000
ED2+RD 20,000
Total 35,000

Acceptance Rate
ED1 15%
EA 4%
ED+EA 7%
ED2 9%
RD 4%
ED2+RD 5%
Total 6%

Accepted
ED1 610
EA 440
ED+EA 1050
ED2 375
RD 640
ED2+RD 1015
Total 2065

Yield
ED1 100%
EA 75%
ED+EA 90%
ED2 100%
RD 63%
ED2+RD 76%
Total 83%

Enrolled
ED1 610
EA 330
ED+EA 940
ED2 375
RD 400
ED2+RD 775
Total 1715

% Class
ED1 35.6%
EA 19.2%
ED+EA 54.8%
ED2 21.9%
RD 23.3%
ED2+RD 45.2%
Total 100.0%

40

[QUOTE=""]
The ED1 admit rate this year was around 10% so yeah - twice as high as the EA rate;

[/QUOTE]

Really? If I redo my math using that number, then the RD Yield could be closer to 70% than 60%