Types of Students at UChicago/Student Life

Fortunately, boots are probably more difficult to pilfer.

I agree with @milee30’s take. I am also from Florida which has done a phenomenal job keeping many of the brightest kids in state to schools like UF and FSU. Through the Bright Futures and other scholarship opportunities, kids that are competitive to schools like Chicago can go to a top 10 public university (UF) for virtually free. That is a compelling option. I know that many other states have similar incentive programs to keep high achievers in-state as well. In addition, many state schools offer in-state tuition to those out of state high achievers. Thus making many excellent state schools cost competitive.

I do believe that schools like Chicago have done a great job making their education accessible to families, but it is still a sacrifice in most cases. Looking at my situation, most people would think that based on our income our family should be able to afford the ~$35K per year EFC for our second child in college, but I would be hard pressed to find that room in my budget and it would most certainly be a significant sacrifice. So then the discussion turns to a cost/benefit discussion between ~$150k for Chicago or virtually free for a school like UF.

Then you consider that a bachelor’s degree is typically not the end of an academic career anymore, and should I invest more in the master’s degree than bachelor’s? Many believe that going to a top-tier graduate school is more important than undergraduate, so why spend that kind of money on undergraduate when you are facing a similar expense for graduate school?

fl234 - This is a common problem for persons accepted to UChicago. My own son, who started in the Fall of 2013, received the most prestigious scholarship from our flagship State university, which paid all tuition, board, plus research opportunities, etc. He and we chose UChicago nonetheless. It’s not completely clear yet whether he made the right decision. However, more and more I’m thinking that he made the right decision.

“DS’ comment about how we live a “blue collar” lifestyle even though we’re a full pay family.”

I don’t think those wearing that patch are usually full pay students who are US residents. It’s much more typical of international students-some US students actually shy from wearing/owning such a coat because of how it has become symbolic of something they are loath to endorse-that is wearing money on the sleeve. Same for the (always) white Lexus Maserati, BMW’s, and other luxury cars, that are becoming common place in some of the “best buy” SUNY’s. SUNY is a best buy for wealthy international students who can apparently easily afford high end cars even while paying for SUNY.

From my favorite VLog of an UChicago College student: she has just posted a week ago a video about what type of students would be most suitable for the College.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvxp2FcvApQ

I found this one fairly accurate as well.
https://youtu.be/-jUSkE8X9NQ

Regarding economic diversity at the University of Chicago, I suggest looking at the data collected by NY times, here:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/college-mobility/university-of-chicago.

University of Chicago:

Median family income: $134,500
% Students from top 1% ($630,000+): 10%
%Students from top 20% ($110,000+): 58%

Whilst these numbers suggest that UChicago certainly attracts wealthier students than an average college, compare it to Princeton/Penn/Dartmouth/Brown, similarly elite colleges:

Median family income: $186,100 - $204,200
% Students from top 1% ($630,000+): 17% - 21%
%Students from top 20% ($110,000+): 69% - 72%

Which I think speaks for the fact that UChicago, despite being similarly expensive, emphasises scholastic and academic merit/ achievement in its applications process more than the other schools, and emphasises legacy, donors etc less than the other schools.

Of course, the University of Chicago still attracts a disproportionate amount of elite/ well-off people, but much less so than other schools. And it’s important to remember that often people from wealthier backgrounds tend to perform better in HS/ testing etc. I think Chicago going test-optional this year will make the economic diversity stats go even further away from the likes of Princeton/ Penn.

I question how accurate those numbers are. The study states that it is based on “anonymous tax returns”. But for families that didn’t request financial aid at all there is no way UChicago or the NY Times would have access to their income much less tax returns. UChicago has no idea if we make $2 per year or $2 million and the IRS is the only recipient of our tax return. If they’re only using data submitted on FAFSA or other financial aid applications, many of these figures will be guesses and they’ll be on the low side.

Looking more closely at the data, the last period reported was for the class of 2013. The class size is listed as 1158. Unless class size has increased by approx. 500-600 in the last four years, that’s another indicator the study is missing large chunks of data.

That data is old. As numerous posters have pointed out in painstakingly detailed arguments, the share of kids from wealthy private schools has increased in recent years. This is one indicator (and one that is consistent with the anecdotal evidence I have seen as a student here for the past 4 years) that the undergraduate population at UChicago is, indeed, getting richer.

@HydeSnark - i believe you’ve mentioned this elsewhere a little, but could you go into the anecdotal evidence you have of the student population getting wealthier a little more?

More than anything else, an inceease in wealth would probably align Chicago most with its ivy peers (where, while cultures may be different, there is a consistent theme of wealth/elitism at any of these schools - and something that was less prevalent at chicago earlier, as the ny times data indicates.)

When I said anecdotal evidence I have seen, I meant that literally. I’m not referring to any smoking gun or secret report or anything - simply that it seems to me that every year there are more and more students from wealthy backgrounds.

Pardon if I was unclear @HydeSnark - I meant, are there any particular anecdotes or observations you’d be willing to share? Any examples, in your eyes, of the increasingly wealthy student body?

^ Perhaps the huge jump to ED the first year it was offered?

@JBStillFlying - sorry again if I was unclear, I meant observations or anecdotes from a current student - e.g. expensive nights out for students, lots of designer clothing on students, dinners at the best restaurants, etc. what are some examples?

Not intending to be polemical here, Cue, but I cannot believe that your interest is merely anthropological. Aren’t you seeking confirmation of a preference?

Suddenly everyone’s going out to Alinea for Saturday dinner! It’s frankly impossible for us poors to keep up these days :’(

Idk man, every year you meet people, they tell you where they’re from, they have a broad smattering of cultural markers and hold a particular type of social capital and you form a general impression of their class and background. This is aggregated over the hundreds of people you meet each year and you get an anecdotal impression of the makeup of the student body vis a vis their socioeconomic background.

I ain’t no anthropologist (nor have I been given IRB approval) - so I cannot legally share stories of people burning their piles of Supreme clothing from last season outside North the day the new line is released which, gosh darnit, never happened in the good old days of my first year.

In all seriousness, these changes are subtle. I can’t give you a long list of all the things that have changed as the student body got wealthier because most things have stayed the same. It’s just that you have more students from Greenwich or Bethesda or Palo Alto or whatever. Though it seems to me that absolute numbers of less wealthy students have not decreased - which makes me somewhat cynical towards the University’s motivations of increasing class sizes, i.e. that the increase in both class sizes and student wealth comes from admitting a class that looks much like the class before but with a few hundred extra wealthy students.

While all of this may be true its a tough correlation to draw, after all the economy has improved quite a bit over the last four years…

Perhaps that is the motivation behind the Empower Initiative. Maybe there just aren’t enough qualified low income candidates? I don’t know. It does appear that they are really trying to get more low to low-mid income students. The competition for the really bright low income students among the elites.

Occam’s razor: I have a better explanation.

5 years ago University was struggling over large debt, due to taking advantage of low borrowing rates in the wake of the financial crisis to embark on an ambitious building plan. Something akin to university-wide austerity* soon followed (and is currently ongoing). A large source of revenue for the university is tuition: hence, expanding the undergraduate class sizes and admitting more rich students.

The Empower Initiative is good politics. It gives them something to brag about to alumni (particularly young ones) to entice them to donate and it generates good press. But if you look closely it really is just window dressing; few students coming from families with income under $125k weren’t on full financial aid and in the same vein most other things touted as part of the Empower Initiative is simply the continuation and expansion at the same rate of ongoing programs (the Chicago Firefighter scholarship has been around forever, for instance).

Meanwhile the percentage of students on financial aid, as reported to US News for their annual ranking, has been dropping by about 2% each year (2015: 48%, 2016: 46%, 2017: 44%, 2018: 42%), which is pretty dramatic considering only a fraction of the student body is new each year.

The economy has been good for the rich in America. Real wages have not risen much lately.

*https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-03-17/university-of-chicago-is-outlier-with-growing-debt-load

**https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/06/09/university-chicago-cost-cutting-draws-objections

By the way - using quarterly census reports (https://uchicago.app.box.com/s/trkqpw1ztu0lc4niahgz0y7g6eyqt6z6) you can calculate the the absolute number of undergraduates receiving some kind of financial aid decreased by about 40 students from 2014 to 2018. Over the same period the size of the college increased from 5860 to 6600.