<p>I’m sure IMSA was pretty well-represented at Northwestern. Yield concerns can’t be what is driving the drop in admits from IMSA. Considering you have to be in the top 1-2% of your school to get into magnet schools like IMSA, I would venture to guess that admissions drop means that:
they care more about GPA than getting good students. You have to be a top student to get in, but not everyone gets "A"s once they get there.
they are starting to weight non-academic merit more than academic merit once you get past a certain academic threshhold. What this means is that it may be a professional mistake to keep trying to develop academically once you are past a certain threshhold–that is, one of the top few people in your school. Instead, it may pay off to be more “active.” To me this is sad you have to can’t be an intellectual in high school without it hurting your options for college (assuming of course, you can’t make IMO.)
yield concerns may come into play for the top students. So they reject the smart students with blemishes on their record, and they reject some of the brilliant people with perfect records if they suspect they won’t go to NU.
the new admissions dean, who is from Princeton, may be driving these changes to be more ivy-like. Incidentally, I think I recall that Annasdad said that Princeton doesn’t take hardly if any IMSA people. So now that NU has Princeton’s dean, now NU is not as enthusiastic about imsa people.</p>
<p>While I don’t think Chicago is afflicted with Tufts’ syndrome, I do wonder if they preferentially package students for financial aid. I received a likely letter from Chicago this year, along with an excellent financial aid package. While it seemed that many students (on the Facebook group) were complaining about their awards, Chicago beat Stanford, Columbia and Dartmouth by about 10k for me, and by a far larger margin for Brown, NU and a few other highly selective schools. While the others (aside from Brown) quickly matched Chicago’s numbers, it seemed a little unusual to me that they would come in so cheap when the others (particularly Dartmouth) are known for their excellent financial aid.</p>
<p>The GC said that yield was the concern at UChicago. At Northwestern, she said, it’s admit rate.</p>
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<p>Part of it is just math. They’re getting lots more applications from high-statistics student. The student who two years ago was a standout with a 32 ACT is now below average, and the one with the 34 who was off the chart is now average.</p>
<p>This compares favorably with UChicago, where they’re trying to drive up application numbers with little regard to quality. Otherwise, why the widespread reports (that I can personally verify) of kids with no conceivable chance getting multiple mailings from UChicago?</p>
<p>(Wait a minute - I just compared something at Northwestern favorably with another top-ranked school. I forgot … I hate Northwestern.)</p>
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<p>You recall imperfectly. It’s Harvard (and Brown) among the top-ranked colleges that don’t seem impressed by IMSA students. The admit rates for Princeton over the last four years (including this one) are 5%, 17%, 13%, and 9%, which averages about to what Princeton’s overall admit rate has been. For Harvard, 0%, 4%, 0%, 4%. For Brown, 5%, 10%, 0%, 4%.</p>
<p>According to Kiplinger data, the average need-based aid at Chicago is higher than it is at MIT, Princeton, Brown, Cornell, Penn, Caltech, Georgetown, Northwestern, or WUSTL. Yet, Chicago’s total cost per year also is higher. </p>
<p>Like the Ivies, Chicago is a need-blind, full-need college. However, all these schools are somewhat free to define how they determine “need”. The aid levels they report are averages. I’ve never seen data on the variance for financial aid at expensive private schools.</p>
<p>This post isn’t about comparing reputation between the two and you were all of a sudden talking about how Uchicago was the greatest and NU was thought of as “upstart” when you were a grad student, right after how people talked about how they liked Monty. That’s really awkward. I guess it’s because the OP put UChicago in a more negative light. Let me tell you this: nobody cares about what people thought back in the days you were a grad student and it’s UNRELATED to the discussion here. But since you brought that up, please note that plenty of people choose one over another and vice versa whereas an overwhelming majority would choose Columiba over NYU. That’s the attitude nowadays.</p>
<p>"According to Kiplinger data, the average need-based aid at Chicago is higher than it is at MIT, Princeton, Brown, Cornell, Penn, Caltech, Georgetown, Northwestern, or WUSTL. Yet, Chicago’s total cost per year also is higher.</p>
<p>Like the Ivies, Chicago is a need-blind, full-need college. However, all these schools are somewhat free to define how they determine “need”. The aid levels they report are averages. </p>
<p>Chicago over the last 6 years has had a very skewed FA policy- awarding very generous FA packages to a few students and miserly ones to many others. The AVERAGE of the FA packages makes them look generous, but a peek under the covers reveals a more nuanced, uneven, inconsistent approach to FA awards.</p>
<p>I wish one poster would stop making veiled insults about NU. Enough already. </p>
<p>These are private universities where the admissions folks determine who will or won’t be accepted. That is the way it has always been. It is impossible to know the criteria other than being a “top student” that is weighed for each student.</p>
<p>I’m not sure I understand the point of this thread. With average SAT scores in the 1500 range for all three sections…the “rigor” of the student body could certainly be questioned…and tha ability to get all A’s at this high school might not translate into success at a highly competitive university.</p>
<p>re post 47
^ I was talking about the inconsistency of their FA awards, once a student was accepted, not about who Chicago was choosing to accept or reject. .</p>
<p>Let me be blunt. You could (and should have) stopped listening to this discourse right there, as it is the typical horse manure spewed by local guidance counselors to justify their own ineptitude. Talking to highly placed admissions reps? Yeah right!</p>
<p>The discussion about yield makes zero sense, especially at Chicago. Take a look at the EA admissions numbers versus the enrollment!</p>
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<p>You ask this person to explain to you what percentage of the USNews ranking is influenced by … yield?</p>
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<p>Yeah right again! That is such BS. Schools no longer operate like in the 50s or 60s. Are you really that gullible?</p>
<p>Since you don’t know the guidance counselor in question, and I do, maybe, just maybe, I’m in a better position than you are to judge her credibility.</p>
<p>Annasdad, it is obvious that I do not know this person … at all. For that reason, I have to rely on what you post here. Perhaps, you misunderstood what she says, but what you reported is utter non-sense. The fact that you find it worthwhile to report here also seems to indicate that you might not have noticed how misleading (and factually erroneous) that person’s comments are. Again, take a look at the methodology of the USNews, and you might appreaciate how STUPID the comments appear to anyone who possesses a modicum of understanding of college rankings.</p>
<p>As far as believing that an admission officer would entertain the conversations you reported, let me put this way. I believe that as much as believing Theodore O’Neill used to accept bribes. As I said, the days of the horsetrading between college prep schools and the most selective schools are long gone, except for the development admits. </p>
<p>In that story, one person is full of it, and I do not believe it is …you!</p>
<p>What’s so hard to believe about that? Either I am misunderstanding what you were trying to say, or you are quite wrong to doubt that something like that could happen (the conversation, not the content). I’ve had a lengthy talk w/ a highly placed admissions rep at a top school just within the last month. Also, one of our best friends roomed w/ a highly placed admissions rep at another top school and talks to them all the time and then gives us the low down. And…I know of another admission rep at a top school talking to our HS guidance counselors. In fact, I would bet that they talk to HS GCs pretty often.</p>
<p>Finally, I have read various blogs from admission offices where they have said that they will call a students GC occasionally to ask a question or seek a verification.</p>
<p>It makes sense to me for admissions officials to be concerned about yield, even though it does not contribute directly to the USNWR rankings. They are aiming for a fairly narrow range in the number of students who enroll. </p>
<p>If the number of applications per student is rising, particularly among those who might go to either Northwestern or the University of Chicago, then the predictability of enrollment is likely to drop, on average (especially at the University of Chicago, after they joined the Common App). They generally want to hit their target enrollment without taking too many students from the waitlist, because that complicates all of the balancing that goes into constructing the admitted class as a whole.</p>
<p>Also, if the yield is kept relatively high, then not as many students need to be offered admission, in order to complete the entering class. As a result, the admissions rate can drop, which does factor into the USNWR rankings, I believe.</p>
<p>If the admissions office does take yield into consideration, the likely outcome is that the predictability of admissions at Northwestern and the University of Chicago will drop off. That is, greater predictability about the incoming class is obtained, from the standpoint of the admissions office, while the predictability of admissions for an individual applicant (assumed to be well-qualified) decreases. Of course, the likely outcome is that individual applicants will tend to apply to more universities–which then, finding their predictability of enrollment dropping, put even more weight on yield. </p>
<p>A vicious circle, but with a silver lining: Once applicants reach the limit of applying to every university on the globe . . .</p>
<p>I attended a presentation in Houston by Andrew Linnehan, our regional adcom for NU three years in a row.</p>
<p>His tone changed last June quite a bit from the previous two years. He said the new president preferred students who want to be at NU more than anything else, all things being equal. He said it was upto adcoms to judge interest and commitment to Northwestern and whether they would show up. So it makes perfect sense to me if adcoms started asking school counselors if a kid would show up. </p>
<p>Out of one hour of questions at the end, 20 minutes was devoted to answering how they would judge interest. He mentioned that they preferred students go through admissions/adcoms for all their requirements like planning a trip, wanting to contact a professor to request more information about their areas of interest etc or planning to attend a class, and they would track every contact ever made by a student through the process. </p>
<p>He said if someone is within driving distance and the adcoms don’t have anything on file that they have ever visited, the application is not worth filing.</p>
<p>I have to say, though, that I find the reported average ACT score of 34, for admitted students at Northwestern University, to be a bit dubious. The most recent Common Data Set that I could locate easily on the web for Northwestern covered 2009-2010 (that’s a little odd in itself), but the 25th %ile ACT composite then was 31, and the 75th % ile composite was 33. Even with changes in the strength of the incoming class, it seems unlikely that the new average would be higher than the old 75th %ile. </p>
<p>Also, Harvard’s ACT composite scores listed on the 2010-2011 Common Data Set were 31 at the 25th %ile and 34 at the 75th %ile. Do I believe that the average at Northwestern now is equal to the 75th %ile ACT score at Harvard? Even taking into account the Midwest leanings toward the ACT (which might push the scores up at Northwestern), and taking into account the population at Harvard likely to be submitting ACT scores? Nope.</p>
<p>I could easily believe that the average ACT score among the applicants admitted from IMSA was 34 at Northwestern, though. Perhaps that is what annasdad meant.</p>
<p>The most recent CDS for Northwestern shows that the 25th % is a 31. Thus not only can one be accepted with a 31, 25% of the student body is accepted with a 31 and lower. Heck, 15% of matriculants had a <30. (fwiw: The 75th% is a 33.)</p>
<p>The odds of their statistics moving that much in one year…?</p>
<p>bluebayou, first, a suggestion: when you’re quoting someone to take issue with something they’ve said, don’t cut off the part of the original that qualifies what you want to dispute. The quote above was immediately followed by the qualification, “absent something else compelling in the application.”</p>
<p>Now to the substance: I think it is very possible to get that kind of a move in ACT range when your admit rate, in two years, gets cut in half.</p>