A high placed U Chicago admission official commented that only 75 students have thus far turned down offers of admission. The source added that the turns downs are so rare that he is nearly capable of commenting on the reasons for these 75 turn downs on a case by case basis, which seems startling in the in the context of +/- 30,000 applicants. The last part of the conversation disclosed that over a half dozen Harvard cross commits have already selected U Chicago. It appears likely the big news of this season from U Chicago will revolve around what is sure to be record yield, but which may even turn out to be a national record for yield.
I came away from the conversation wondering what type of cultural reverberations–both in the near and long term–U Chicago would feel from being nearly every one of their incoming student’s first choice school.
Here is the WSJ link that also coincided with this conversation.
This can’t be accurate given the other data they have released unofficially. If they took 8% or around 2,240 students and only 75 or even 100 turn them down, the class size will be unmanageable. Also they have started taking people off the waitlist. If only 75 had turned them down, they wouldn’t do that. Something doesn’t add up??
UChicago’s Facebook page has been steadily increasing in numbers, from right below 1400 at the time of RD decisions to 1,686 this morning. The increase has also picked up since the first overnight, perhaps as students have been finalizing their decisions.
Just for comparison I looked at the FB pages and freshman enrollment numbers (class of 2020) for some high-end comparables:
UChicago: FB: 1686 Incoming class size ? (class of 2021), about 1600 (class of 2020)
Harvard: FB 1581 Incoming class size about 1700
Yale: FB 1708 Incoming class about 1400
Princeton: FB 1744 Incoming class about 1300
Columbia: FB 1641 Incoming class about 1400
Penn: FB 2036 Incoming class about 2500
Have no idea whether UChicago - or anyone else - is removing members of the FB page as they decline admission to go elsewhere. This is just an indication of potential class size. Someone said on another thread that for UChciago the entire admission staff is on that FB page so you need to subtract about 40-50 (?) from it. Still, the net is over 1600.
There’s like 100 tour guides in the UChicago 2021 group. And some just let any current student in - my friend keeps sending me screenshots of the Princeton 2021 group.
The other issue is nothing has been “officially” released so everything could change in the Fall, although that number would make more sense if you were only talking about RD and not EA.
@HydeSnark Princeton is an open group although I think you still have to request to join. The others are closed I think. Yeah – this isn’t the best way to gauge numbers but it is a way and it’s data. I’m pretty sure that all the other Facebook pages will include admissions officers and so forth. What was interesting to me was the increase in the past three weeks – about 300 new members.
They would not pull anyone from the waitlist if they thought there was a major risk of over enrollment. So it’s safe to say that if only 75 have actually declined that they expect many more to do so in the next couple of weeks. Just more contradictory information contributing to the mystery that is the admissions and enrollment process this year.
The thing is they have a very broad standard for who can be allowed in - if you’re in any sort of leadership capacity in any club you can make the argument that they should approve you so you can talk about what you do.
Just because the other groups aren’t public (I think that was a mistake on Princeton’s part, lol) doesn’t mean some of them don’t have similarly broad standards for letting people in. All groups let in a certain amount of current students in to talk about the school.
The increase is interesting. Wonder if they’re proactively adding people in?
@HydeSnark - you mean by “proactive” that they are letting in current students to inflate the numbers or that they are adding accepted students who are requesting to be added?
All indications, including statements by admission staff at admitted student receptions, are that yield will be substantially up this year. This is entirely consistent with ED1 and ED1. Acceptance rate will be at or slightly below 8 percent.