It seems to me the ones who bemoan the high number of applications and the school attracting the wrong type of students are full of themselves.
Who is the University of Chicago for exactly? Who is it that should not apply?
My take is that the university could easily fill its beds with perfect score, ECs out the ying yang kids, but they are perhaps hoping to do better. Success isn’t all test scores and GPA and obviously orchestrated attempts to appear “well rounded”.
I think this has something to do with the fact they offer EA, ED, ED2, and RD.
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As far as “feeder schools” for Uchicago, no mention of the Uchicago Lab Schools? I think this is the only high school that legitimately sees Uchicago as a back up school due to the high number of acceptances.
I might be a bit off here but I think Uchicago accepts 30% or so of applicants from Lab.
Doesn’t the assumption of 38,000 applicants seem a bit high? Last year there were some 32,000 applicants, so that would be about an 18% increase, which seems like a lot. Unless you guys think the test-optional shift will attract that many more applicants?
Looks like the admissions office is delegating a lot of this hard work to applicants based on the large boost to ED1/2 applicants. In the process I guess they lose a lot of great students who would thrive at UChicago even though their first choice may be different.
“Looks like the admissions office is delegating a lot of this hard work to applicants based on the large boost to ED1/2 applicants.”
- Bingo. But UChicago doesn't publish how many applications are ED1/ED2 they get. It's possible that they still might have to do at least some of the work sifting through all of them ;). They've cleverly figured out that the candidates know themselves best as to how much they TRULY like UChicago and, as long as the application is sufficiently strong, are taking them at their word.
“In the process I guess they lose a lot of great students who would thrive at UChicago even though their first choice may be different.”
- no, because those applicants can always apply to UChicago ED2. :) UChicago has said outright that a whole bunch of kids not offered admission would do fine there. This is about getting the class they want to commit to the College. They wouldn't be accepting so many ED's if those kids weren't what they were looking for. Also, the EA/RD's oversubscribed last year - not exactly a sign that UChicago is missing the mark on those applicants.
I will add a few additional figures that seem of interest to readers, and which I left out of my first post:
Yield:
MIT 77%
Other Feeder States:
New Jersey 87
Massachusetts 80
Florida 76
Connecticut 57
Of note, Texas and Florida are the 2nd and 3rd largest states in USA. These two states’ populations are growing rapidly, and at the expense of California, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Illinois. Both Texas and Florida are substantially underrepresented in the Chicago class. One explanation is that the state economies of Texas and Florida are so large, and so strong, that options like the University of Texas and University of Florida (from their honors programs) are seriously competing with University of Chicago.
Other Feeder Schools (in addition to first post):
Texas:
Polytechnic Public High School of Fort Worth (7)
The Hockaday School of Dallas (5)
Florida:
Pinecrest (8)
Chicago Area:
U Chicago Lab School 13 (thanks “I Love UofC” for pointing this out)
New Trier Public High School (11)
Whitney Young Magnet High (8)
Adlai E. Stevenson High School (8)
Illinois Math and Science Academy (6)
Walter Payton High (6)
Lane Technical College Preparatory Public High (6)
St. Ignatius (6)
Hinsdale Township High School (6)
Northside College Prep (5)
California:
Harvard Westlake (8)
Dougherty Valley High School (7)
The Nueva School (6)
Santa Margarita Catholic (5)
The College Prep School (6)
The Bishops School (6)
The Harker School (5)
San Francisco U. High School (5)
DC Area:
St. Albans (9)
Thomas Jefferson Science & Tech (9)
Sidwell Friends (6)
New York:
Hunter College High (11)
St. Ann’s of Brooklyn (8)
Riverdale School of Bronx (7)
Fieldston School of Bronx (6)
Connecticut:
Hopkins (9)
Hotchkiss (6) #
Groton (5) #
Greenwich Academy (5)
Loomis Chaffee (5) #
Brunswick School (5)
New Jersey
Lawrenceville (8) #
Millburn Public High (7)
denotes a boarding school, so be aware that the state in which exists gets full credit but the students are just as likely to be from anywhere in the USA or world.
Among the statistics cited by @BronxBorn the one that especially got my attention was the tippy-top level of the average SAT. You can’t explain that one away by saying it isn’t apples to apples. Indeed, if it says anything at all about the edge Chicago is giving to applicants in the ED rounds (whatever that edge actually is) it is that it is not coming at the expense of recruiting the smartest students in the country. The College is getting objectively the very highest quality in a domain (pure intelligence) it especially values AND is getting an ever greater number of kids who view Chicago as their favored destination in both word and deed. I find nothing not to like in that combination - especially if one recalls that in the not distant past Chicago SAT scores, though good, were not stellar and that way too many applicants used Chicago as a safety, hence lacked the je ne sais quoi of commitment to the ethos of the place that comes with making it one’s top choice either from the outset (ED1) or at least the second round (ED2).
Just some nuance to these #s. First I don’t know if they include gap years…so if a student from School X was accepted in 2018 to join as a class of 2023 student (vs the “normal” class of 2022, how is that student counted? Second, class size id not indicated…so for DC which I am familiar, Thomas Jefferson has a class size almost 4X that of Sidwell.
@BronxBorn , with respect to the lagging numbers from Texas, I hypothesize that it has something to do with a deep and even emotional feeling about the state as being sufficient in itself, with a culture so different from anywhere else - and so much bigger and better! - that abandoning it is either incomprehensible or feels like an act of disloyalty and apostasy. So it seemed to me in a previous era, when I was one of three from the state in my class at the U of C. Admittedly, that very element of transgressiveness could be part of the appeal for a certain type of kid. Not sure how you market this.
@Tiglathpilser: 100% agree with you.
Adding some more nuance to the absolute numbers, you have to look at the admission figures over the span of a few years. Every class is different. There are good years and bad years for different high school classes.
Certainly, UChicago is doing just fine with their admitted students, I never said otherwise. However, my guess is it creates a lot of bitterness in the process. I imagine there are many STEM-oriented kids who apply to MIT and Chicago EA. These are, of course, very different institutions, but they both attract a certain type of intellectually focused students. If a strong applicant’s first choice is MIT and second UChicago, it’s quite possible they’ll be deferred at both and then have to make a hard choice - switch to ED2 at UChicago and forego their first choice if admitted to both, or risk not being admitted to either. This risk of course always exists, but this situation somehow feels less fair because it takes even more power away from the student.
I think the flaw in the above argument is there is one superior choice in the MIT vs Chicago decision. In this specific case, both are “good enough”- and you play the probabilities…I think there is a lot of angst trying to decide which choice is “better” when in reality you are trying to choose between two “equally good” choices…
Some specifics about UChicago lab schools below. Class size in the 120’s and send on average 15-16 students a year on to the College.
https://www.ucls.uchicago.edu/uploaded/publications/lab_hs_profile_hi_res_singles_FINAL_10-11-17.pdf
@tiglathpileser I agree and in my son’s class (2021) there is one that we know of that chose UChicago math over MIT for a specific professor in the math department. He is also one of the few RDs that he has met.
@Tiglathpileser yes, they’re “equally good” for an impartial observer, but if we’re talking about feelings, lots of kids have their “dream schools”, however irrational.
I really wonder why the cynical approach to all of this. I just have a hard time thinking that a bunch of smart people who run the university really came up with a diabolical plan to just raise the numbers.
They have a great way of doing the University thing and like they ask every kid that applies to tell us how they + the University of Chicago make the world a better place. They have tried to push their core, they stand out as an institution that tells people look at all issues need to be looked at from different angles before you make a decision on that issue. Then it comes out with a way to try to reach lower income and those less advantaged.
Those things make it a desirable place. More people will apply. Admissions rates will go down. Yeild will go up. SAT scores will go up. And then rankings will trend up.
Maybe, just maybe, UChicago is a great school.
“Certainly, UChicago is doing just fine with their admitted students, I never said otherwise. However, my guess is it creates a lot of bitterness in the process. I imagine there are many STEM-oriented kids who apply to MIT and Chicago EA. These are, of course, very different institutions, but they both attract a certain type of intellectually focused students. If a strong applicant’s first choice is MIT and second UChicago, it’s quite possible they’ll be deferred at both and then have to make a hard choice - switch to ED2 at UChicago and forego their first choice if admitted to both, or risk not being admitted to either. This risk of course always exists, but this situation somehow feels less fair because it takes even more power away from the student.”
@yucca10 agree with everything but the last part. “Fair” is not a criteria because UChicago can admit who it wants to. But I agree that it totally takes the bargaining power away from the applicant. ED specifies that you commit to them. They do NOT have to commit to you. We know a few kids who have experienced and are currently experiencing the scenario you have laid out, including my son this year and my daughter two years ago. ED2 will involve some tough choices! And, in fact - just to clarify something - barring some wierd fin. aid. outcome, ED2-admits do NOT get to find out whether they were going to be admitted to that other school. They will need to pull that app. well before then.
@tiglathpilesar at #32 - agree 100%. This is by no means a “crisis”.
@yucca10 at #34 - the greatest gift you can give your child would be to encourage matter of fact decision-making and discourage excessive feelings over a “dream school”. This is college, not a fairy tale.
@fbsdreams: The matriculation numbers are tricky since Labbies use UChicago as a back up but not for the usual reasons; most U Highers grow up in Hyde Park and want to get away for their college experience. The actual acceptances to the College are pretty high (higher than any other school, I’d imagine) but Labbies typically choose to go elsewhere since they’d rather not spend another four years on the same campus as their Uchicago faculty parents.
@yucca at #34- I understand kids having “dream” schools, but you would be surprised (or maybe not) how often in my consulting career I ran into (much older) clients fixated on a dream solution. There have been many times I earned my fees by reframing the problem to include more than one solution, each solution being “good enough”