Some Northwestern/UChicago admissions insight

Parents Forum
1

<p>My D's high school, through 2010, always had very high admission rates at Northwestern and the University of Chicago, in the 40 to 60 percent range at both schools most years. Last year, those rates plunged, and this year, they fell even more.</p>

<p>At a meeting of our parents' association this morning, the school's director of college counseling shared some insight. FWIW, here's what she said.</p>

<p>She said she talked to highly placed admissions reps at both schools.</p>

<p>At UChicago, she said, it's all about yield. The admissions department is under pressure from the president of the university to improve yield.</p>

<p>Why? She asked rhetorically? Because yield factors into the school's USNWR rating; which determines how good a college is perceived to be by the general public; and college presidents care a great deal about that.</p>

<p>So the University of Chicago has adopted a practice of turning down the very top applicants, who it believes will almost certainly turn down Chicago if they are admitted to an even more prestigious university. (She said she was told this, explicitly, by her admissions contact.)</p>

<p>Shocking enough (that they would admit it, anyway) - but then she told me she had had conversations with the admissions staff during the selection process - and they were asking her about candidates, "If we admit this student, will they come?" (She said her response was: "How would I know? I'm not the kid's parent!")</p>

<p>She also said that UChicago, because of its concern about yield, is highly likely to go ED or SCEA, perhaps as soon as next year.</p>

<p>Apparently the strategy didn't work, at least not with the students from my D's school. They admitted 10 of 33 applicants - and 2 will enroll.</p>

<p>(Off topic: I talked to the mother of one of the students who was admitted and is not going. The deal-killer - when the student had to submit to a grilling by an armed security guard when she wandered into a classroom building to get a drink of water during an accepted student visit.)</p>

<p>On to Northwestern.</p>

<p>Northwestern's overall admission rate this year, according to the counselor, is barely half what it was in 2010 - from 28% in 2010 to 18% last year to 14.9% this year. The strategy there, she said she was told, is to lower NW's admission rate to Ivy level, again to raise the USNWR ranking. That's why they joined the common app - to generate more apps. It appears they have been successful; their rate is now comparable to the so-called "lower" Ivies. The average ACT of admitted students this year, she said, is 34.</p>

<p>Hey, if this keeps up, their ranking (now 12) will climb, and a certain frequent poster, a Northwestern alum, will no longer need to remind us that as long as a school is "top tier," it doesn't matter where they are in the tier.</p>

2

<p>This is nothing new right? If your kid’s GC didn’t know about this then she is doing a disservice to the kids. </p>

<p>6 years ago Cornell admitted 6 students from D2’s school, no one matriculated. Ever since then they didn’t admit anyone from D2’s school, even though many kids were admitted to HYPS and many other top tier schools. D2 chose to apply ED, not because her stats were borderline, but because she wanted Cornell to know she would attend if admitted.</p>

<p>Those 2 schools probably gave special consideration to your kid’s school because of location/relationship, but if they don’t show the same love then it is not surprising they start falling out of love too.</p>

3

<p>Chicago has ALWAYS cared about yield – that is why it had its own app. Anyone who took the time to complete it was demonstrating great interest which leads to higher yield. Now that Chicago accepts the Common App, they are just being more up front about the need to demonstrate interest. The Common app has two effects: acceptance rate goes down, but so does yield.</p>

<p>Re: Northwestern app rate…see above.</p>

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<p>But what matters is the average of the yielded students, ie., matriculants. :)</p>

4

<p>This was bound to happen. I’ve always felt yield was a more important number than the number admitted. I am so hoping this is the tip of this cycle of kids applying to a bajillion colleges/unis. Chicago’s change to the common app made me sad. You had to really work and think to do their “old” app…something you wouldn’t put yourself through unless you seriously wanted to attend.</p>

5

<p>Are you still “stewing” about this? What happened to you to lead to this constant need to dump on top tier schools, especially Northwestern? Schools care about yield. This is not news. Should I be worrying that your revelation will make my Chicago degree worth less?</p>

6

<p>Yield is not even a factor is usnews rankings</p>

7

<p>Whatever Chicago’s yield-raising strategy is, it does seem to be working.
[Admissions</a> yield for College grows to 47 percent, with greater diversity | UChicago News](<a href=“http://news.uchicago.edu/article/2012/05/18/admissions-yield-college-grows-47-percent-greater-diversity]Admissions”>Admissions yield for College grows to 47 percent, with greater diversity | University of Chicago News)</p>

<p>If Chicago is turning down some top applicants as a yield-management strategy, they may be applying this practice selectively (to specific schools whose top applicants repeatedly have turned down Chicago in the past). I say this because, in posts to the Chicago 2016 RD Results thread …</p>

<ul>
<li>… students admitted to Chicago also have reported acceptances to: Dartmouth, WUSTL, Rice, MIT, Yale, Duke, Caltech, Columbia, Princeton, Penn, Stanford, Brown, Wellesley, Pomona, Amherst, Swarthmore, and Williams.</li>
<li>… none of the students reporting outright rejections from Chicago also reported acceptances to even more selective schools.<br></li>
</ul>

<p>However, some students waitlisted by Chicago have reported admission offers from other prestigious schools (Dartmouth, WUSTL, Stanford, Columbia, Northwestern, Swarthmore, and MIT). I don’t think there is anything too remarkable about that.
(<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/university-chicago/1305053-official-university-chicago-2016-rd-results.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/university-chicago/1305053-official-university-chicago-2016-rd-results.html&lt;/a&gt;)</p>

8

<p>Chicago does not put its Common Data Set on-line, so it is not easy to check section C7 about how important “level of interest” is in admissions.</p>

<p>Northwestern’s [2009-2010</a> Common Data Set](<a href=“http://www.ugadm.northwestern.edu/commondata/2009-10/c.htm]2009-2010”>http://www.ugadm.northwestern.edu/commondata/2009-10/c.htm) says that “level of interest” is “considered”.</p>

9

<p>UCB-- Northwestern’s policy has changed. They now take at least 40% of their class through ED. The new guy, whatshisname, wants a campus full of kids who have Northwestern as their first choice school, and I actually agree with this, completely. It is one of the best things a University can do for the “feel” of the campus when it is full of kids who are thrilled to be there. And this is one of the bigger missions in admissions for Northwestern right now. Just FYI, for anyone planning to apply next year.</p>

10

<p>It is no different than Penn, Cornell or Duke.</p>

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<p>Why would a student for whom a given university is not his/her first choice not be thrilled to be there? Any student who likes all of his/her choices, including the safeties, will be thrilled to go to any of them.</p>

<p>Or is this the counterpart to students having “safeties” that they do not like, so that universities feel that there is shame in being used as a safety? (Yes, the yield may be lower among the “safety” applicants, but as long as the yield can be predicted with reasonable accuracy, the university can admit the correct number of applicants to get the desired freshman class size.)</p>

12

<p>Interestingly, the student who I know who turned down UChicago - the one with the issue with the security guard - turned it down for one of the well-respected but not super-selective midwestern LACs (in the 50-60% admittance rate range). I think in her case it was all about atmosphere - though from what I know of her (mainly through her mom, whom I know well, and my D, one of her friends) I think she’d have been a great fit for UChicago and their unique style of undergraduate education.</p>

13

<p>The admissions counselor at our kids’ private high school in the midwest told me just last week that “there is a new sheriff in town” at U of C. They have become so much more like the Ivies in their admit patterns in the past few years her opinion (which I know is not actually what the OP said). Kids she thought would be a great fit there are now getting rejected, somewhat lost in the flood of apps from the Common App. She said U of C would have been a high target for D2 a few years ago, but is now a reach. Sad, as D2 is very much the type of kid that would have thrived there in the past.</p>

14

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<p>Dunno, but apparently many are not:</p>

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<p><a href=“http://www.artsci.com/studentpoll/archivedissues/3_2.pdf[/url]”>http://www.artsci.com/studentpoll/archivedissues/3_2.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

15

<p>I do not agree completely with the GC at the OP’s daughter’s HS. My DS (also at student at the same school as Annasdad’s D) IS a top student (3.97 UW gpa, 2320 SAT) and WAS accepted EA at UChicago. He is a great fit with the school and made his case with his application. I think they want students that REALLY want to be there. My S originally deposited at UChicago but subsequently withdrew when he came off the waitlist at his first choice, one of the top LACs.</p>

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<p>Re: <a href=“http://www.artsci.com/studentpoll/archivedissues/3_2.pdf[/url]”>http://www.artsci.com/studentpoll/archivedissues/3_2.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>But how many of the students attending their second choice school with intent of transferring are attending community colleges (i.e. their second choice school was a community college)?</p>

<p>Remember, the bulk of college bound students are not represented by the students posting on these forums who are aiming for highly selective schools, but students who are likely choosing between a less selective local state university and a local community college. Note that the students in the survey made extensive use of rolling admissions applications which are more common at less selective schools, but lesser use of other methods which are more common at more selective schools.</p>

17

<p>Post by OP is the same old jealousy we’ve been seeing from Northwestern for the last 5 years, and it’s getting old. Most of the arguments are based on willful ignorance; for instance, yield isn’t even a part of USNWR ranking criteria. All stats also point to the fact that Chicago’s class is getting stronger, so the argument that top apps are getting rejected doesn’t make sense. Chicago’s SATs are now at Harvard level, and last year, % of students in top 10% of their high school class went from 89% to 95%. These are what matter, and Chicago is excelling at them.</p>

<p>Ultimately, it’s very difficult to believe that Northwestern will ever get into the top 10 in the USNWR rankings. In the first place, nobody considers it a top 10 school. Secondly, in the stats that matter (i.e., SATs, professor quality, alumni giving, class sizes), Northwestern loses pretty bad to the top 10 schools and lies comfortably within its true peer group (Emory, Notre Dame, Vanderbilt, WashU).</p>

18

<p>momofthreeboys, Chicago still has the crazy essays and asks for a more extensive “Why Chicago” essay than most schools do. I’m not convinced that filling out the application now is easier than the old days, it’s just easier to upload. Nevertheless it’s pretty clear that going to the Common App still generated more essays. They also used the EA to give themselves several months to woo candidates. They came very, very, very close to getting my son, because of course, there is a lot to like about Chicago.</p>

19

<p>Uh, Phuriku, the OP dislikes Northwestern about as much as you do.</p>

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<p>Not so!!! I wouldn’t pay a premium to send my kid there (not that she’d stand a chance of getting in), but dislike it? Nope, it’s given me no reason to dislike it.</p>