U. of Chicago: Is University Strength Declining?

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of Chicago ✅
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The NYT article says it’s 2013 data (for the two rankings I mentioned) and it’s not just a ranking of the 12 “Ivy plus” schools – it’s “elite” universities, which encompasses schools like University of Miami (looks like about 80 colleges in all). Other parts of the article, on intergenerational mobility, necessarily rely on data from earlier classes.

The link to UChicago-specific data does involve comparisons to other Ivy-plus schools. In those rankings, Chicago and MIT have the least rich/most poor undergrads of this small, highly-privileged group.

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UChicago actually spends significant time and expense recruiting URM’s. However, they have not been successful in attracting blacks for a couple of reasons, including:

1 - The UChicago PD is sometimes labeled as racist due to profiling of black students on campus. This is not surprising given the nature of the surrounding neighborhoods and the openness of the campus.

2 - There is a very limited pool of URM students with the stats to succeed at a school like UChicago, and there is tremendous competition for these students. We know a couple of kids who were in UChicago sponsored URM recruiting programs who ended up at equivalent universities on the East Coast.

The marketing materials we got for Princeton and Yale focused almost exclusively on the excellent aid these schools gave, and how families with incomes more than $200,000 can still receive significant need based aid. Since they do not offer merit aid, the marketing strategy of both these schools is to out-bid everyone else with need based aid.

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@exacademic - the study used by the ny times tracks students born primarily in the 1980s, no? (I think it was students from 1980 - 1990.) So, the bulk of the data they assessed was old - of Students graduating before 2012-13. So, it’s hard to draw as much from that because Chicago’s admissions policies have changed so much.



The pell grant data is more recent, and shows a dip from 2008 to now.



But yes, sorry, uchicago used to be 11th amongst elite schools in the link you provided, not just ivy plus schools.

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The article explicitly states that the two rankings I referenced were based on 2013 data.

This statement is the footer for the table that compares the percentage of undergrads whose HH income falls in the top 1% to the percentage in the bottom 60%: “These estimates are for the 1991 cohort (approximately the class of 2013). Rankings are shown for colleges with at least 200 students in this cohort, sorted here by the ratio between the two income groups.”

And the table entitled “Elite colleges that enroll the highest percentage of low- and middle-income students” is immediately preceded by this statement: “But the new estimates show that much of the increase in Pell recipients stems from the expansion of the program. The students at elite colleges, at least as of 2013, were not actually much more economically diverse than in the past, though there are some exceptions.”

Yes, this data is slightly older than the stat Cue7 cited. It’s also of much better quality (based on income tax returns vs Pell grant recipients). And all of the data both of us have cited is pre-ED. Not sure what significant admissions policy changes happened between class of 2013 and class of 2020 that skewed toward affluence – what, specifically, did you have in mind @Cue7? The one initiative I’m aware in that time period (“UChicago Promise”) has been targeted toward making elite college educations more accessible to the children of people who work in Chicago’s public schools, police departments, and fire stations. Not Pell recipients per se (though some may be eligible), but also not kids whose acceptance would raise the median HHI of UChicago undergrads.

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@exacademic - yes, the class of 2013 data is too old. This was the last class admitted by the old admissions Dean (Ted O’Neill), and before the admissions regime changed. I think this class had maybe 12k apps and a 30% accept rate.





The very next year under Nondorf, the school had 20k apps and a 18% accept rate, and we all know where things went from there.





So, class of 2013 was basically the final year of the “old” Chicago. After that, marketing increased, numbers of prep students matriculating went way up, the school climbed the rankings, and, it looks like, pell recipients went down.





I’d be much more interested in seeing data from 2015 or 2016, and certainly post ED. Chicago’s landscape has changed a lot from the class of 2013.

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Quite a number of big things happened during that period, perhaps cutting in different directions: (1) The class of 2013 was Ted O’Neill’s last class as Dean of Admissions. That explains a lot of the other differences. (2) The class of 2013 had about 12,000 applicants, I think. The class of 2020 had around 30,000. (3) While I think the Odyssey Scholarship program (debt free college for students from families under a certain income level) may have been in place for the class of 2013, it was expanded and promoted significantly for subsequent classes. (4) The percentage of total acceptances that were EA acceptances for the class of 2013 was below 40%. For the class of 2019, it was around 65% I think, and I am not certain they ever publicly disclosed the number of early acceptances for the class of 2020. (5) They went from a system where there were two categories of merit scholarship – $10,000/year and full tuition (although at that point they may have scaled it back to $25,000/year), which were offered to a limited number of applicants chosen by a faculty committee, to a system where the Admissions Department determined much more variable merit offers to many more students.

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Thanks – glad I asked! Hadn’t realized Nondorf’s arrival was so recent. Also, it looks like Common App was first offered as an option for applying to UChicago in the Fall of 2014. Interesting (to me, at least) that the 68% to 30% drop in admissions rate occurred pre-Nondorf and pre-Common App.

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@exacademic

So the drop from 68% to 30% happened much more slowly - from 1995 to 2009 (about a 15 yr period). The drop from 30% to 8%, on the other hand, took a whopping 4 years (from about 30% in 2010 to 8% in 2014).

The 68-30% drop can be explained by a few things - there was a “baby boom” that resulted in more seniors applying to colleges in the late 90s, and that brought up apps at many places. Also, the late 90s was the infant stages of hyper-competition at the HYP schools, and Chicago benefited from some of that fallout.

In the mid-late 90s, Chicago also started advertising a bit, and recruiting a little more. Read: not a LOT (nothing like what happens today), but they finally started to get their head out of the ground. They also got some good press in the late 90s (Newsweek ran a big article on Chicago admissions - does anyone remember that old article? Bill Clinton came to campus, etc.)

This lead to modest increases in apps almost every year for a 15 year period. So I think Chicago received like 5500-6000 apps in 1995 (and accepted about 4000), and then about 12000 in 2008 (and accepted about 3500).

Also, the College improved a LOT from 1995-2008 - they build a new gym, expanded the class size, improved career advising, etc., and applicants responded. Yield also went up modestly (from maybe 25-30% in late 90s to 35-40% in late 2000s).

IMO, this was fairly predictable, fairly sustainable growth. Ted O’Neill said he loved his office giving each application a “painstaking” read, and that was true for the bulk of his tenure. An office of 15-20 can review 6-8k apps quite carefully. That amounts to each admissions officer reading about 400 apps over the course of a season.

Now, the Office has gotten larger (about 40 people), but apps have gone up 3X. Each officer would probably need to read 1000 apps over the same period of time. There’s much more sifting applications into piles now.

In the current climate, the changes have been so much more extreme. Yield went up from 35-40% to 65-70% in 4 years. Accept rate plummeted from 30% to 7-8% in 4 years.

Yes, the college now is better than it was in 2013, but has it really improved so much in 4 years?

No - my theory is that this is just admissions gaming - inflating numbers to make change look much more extreme than it actually is. I’d love to see Nondorf’s marketing budget in comparison to O’Neill’s, and also average time spent on each app.

(Note, as always, I am ambivalent about this change - I want Chicago-style education with a Harvard-like brand. Is this admissions strategy the road to that goal? I’m not sure - but I’m pretty sure ED/EDII/RD is NOT the way to go.)

Here are a couple good Ted O’Neill articles:

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2008-08-03/features/0807280170_1_admissions-gatekeeper-new-students

https://thepointmag.com/2016/examined-life/admissions-failure

He was really loved on campus - and a bit of a celebrity - in a way that Dean Boyer is now. Deans Boyer and O’Neill were quite a formidable, quintessential Chicago pairing, actually, in a way that Nondorf is not.

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Cue, your comment “Accept rate plummeted from 30% to 7-8% in 4 years” does not sound right so I took a cursory look at the sources. Here’s what I found on UChicago admit rate over the last ten years. Feel free to verify.

2017 (not released yet, but street estimate 8%)
2016 7.8%
2015 7.8%
2014 8.4%
2013 8.8%
2012 12.6%
2011 15.8%
2010 18%
2009 26.8%
2008 27.8%
2007 34.9%

It took UChicago nine or ten years to drop the admit rate from 30 some% to 7-8%, not 4 years. A decade is a long time and positive changes can happen.

.

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@theluckystar

You’re being a bit nitpicky with the data, no?

In 2009, UChicago had about a 30% accept rate (26.8%, to be exact, per your data), and in 2013 - just four years later - it had about a 8% accept rate (8.8% to be exact, per your data).

So, the bulk of the change happened over just a four year period - not a decade, as you assert.

What exactly happened over those four years at the College to generate such drastic change? I can point to one change, and it rhymes with the word “momdorf.”

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@Cue7 Good for Nondorf !

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Well, but the way to achieve a Harvard-like brand is, in part, marketing. If you are already an excellent university with impressive faculty and the ability to attract top graduate students, what’s left is publicity directed to broader markets (undergrads, international students). Is that gaming the process or outreach or leveling the playing field? Harvard’s been such a staple of mainstream culture in the US for so long that it has name recognition and signifies “elite” even among people who don’t give a damn about education or know much about theUS system. And, of course, if you want a more economically and culturally diverse student body, you’ve got to cast your net widely when you market. FWIW, I do think there was a fair amount of truth in advertising in the materials we received from UChicago – some serious nerd-casting going on there.

All that said, I agree that for Chicago to remain Chicago, the admissions process has to stay distinctive and attentive and that 30K+ applications is more than a reasonable-sized admissions office can handle. And I agree (even more vehemently) that ED is the wrong way to go. I appreciated EA (but probably would preclude people applying ED elsewhere from using it – to keep numbers down and to focus on actually available applicants). And I think it’s important to have an Uncommon app that requires thought and effort, that reveals more about the candidate, and that provides potential applicants with a taste of things to come. Given the pervasive and extreme inequalities that characterize secondary education in the US, you have to choose your barriers to entry carefully.

In the end, the whole US college admissions and financing process is unsustainable. Fixing it will take some form of collective action. (Maybe some ranking system – ala Questbridge or Canadian universities – would be the best way to go). In the meanwhile, the challenge is to find the applicants who will appreciate/make the most of what you have/want to offer. Some element of self-selection is probably crucial to meeting that challenge – insider knowledge wasn’t optimal, economic rationing/first come-first served is a giant step in the wrong direction, the virtual locker idea strikes me as downright sadistic in the current climate (not to mention counterproductive), so we’re left with the essays. Any better ideas? I guess what I’m asking is what would “doing it right” look like in this competitive environment?

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@Chrchill - Good for Nondorf, good for Chicago’s USNWR ranking, and bad for applicants, bad for economic diversity at the college (more ED leads to less economic diversity), bad for Chicago’s past-principled admissions image (many now view it as off the deep end). Also, negligible difference in quality between what a more principled admissions dean could do, and what Nondorf has done.

@exacademic - I think “doing it right” in this environment would look like this:

Open EA/RD (NO ED/EDII games)
More measured marketing, and attempted outreach in different ways (e.g. sponsor Chicago math/science fairs, humanities comps at the HS level, really galvanizing alumni to interview - right now, Chicago does a horrible job with alumni interviews - it only interviews maybe 15% of applicants - I know because I get the stats as an alumni interviewer)
Using Admissions funds, combined with College Advising, to create more bridge programs for first-gen college students (e.g. summer classes, summer camps before 1st year to get students acclimated, etc.)
Expanding connections between student groups and applicants/post-acceptance group (e.g. have clubs do outreach, woo students)

  • All this takes a lot of time and elbow grease.

I still contest that a more reasoned admissions dean coulda got us from 12k apps in 2009 to 25k apps in 2017, with maybe a 10% accept rate and about a 50% yield (with NO ED/EDII). SAT averages could probably be in the top 5, but maybe not top 2.

Instead, in exchange for ED/EDII games, we get Nondorf, an artificially inflated 8% accept/70% yield, maybe a slightly more competitive class - on paper - and a loss in Chicago’s past standing.

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Wow, you really see the Nondorf effect in those numbers. A 9% drop in admit rate – more than 1/3 – in his first year, and another 9% drop – meaning twice as difficult to get in – by his fourth year. The components of that were both vastly increasing the number of applications submitted, and also roughly doubling the yield of admitted students enrolling. They used to accept about 3,400 applicants to fill a class of 1,300 (although they were regularly exceeding that enrollment number in O’Neill’s last years). They are now around 2,200 acceptances for a class of 1,500.

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There’s likely quite a lot of engineering in those numbers, @JHS - perhaps never more so than this year with ED/EDII…

It’s why I think they should change Nondorf’s title from “Dean of Admissions” to “Chief Executive of Enrollment Management.”

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@Cue7 These interminably repetitive arguments are getting us nowhere. You are a glass half empty, nay glass entirely full of a vacuum, kind of dude. GO NONDORF !

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Where are we supposed to “get” to @Chrchill ?



And someone needs to counter your cheerleading. I thought the hasty pudding club was more than a cheerleading club, no?

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lols… U of Chicago is just playing the same game everyone else does. including every single ivy. they are just doing it better. btw… U of Chicago also has the academic chops to back it up. try the same marketing at other schools and you won’t get nearly the same results.

U of Chicago is what we call a value add play… the marketing basically added value to an unpolished gem. and the U of Chicago student body now has the highest SAT scores right behind Caltech in the nation.

fire away gents:)

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@sbballer said:“try the same marketing at other schools and you won’t get nearly the same results.”







Sure you will - look at vanderbilt. They have a DRASTICALLY less prominent academic history, and here’s where more marketing, merit aid, and ED1/ED2 got them:







10.5% Accept rate



50% yield



Top 7 in nation SATs







AND they don’t have EA to drum up more applications, AND they don’t use ED as heavily as Chicago is presumed to have done.







My my those numbers look pretty close to Chicago’s, and from a school that has less academic stature and resources.









Really what is with some of you Chicago boosters? Is the admissions office paying you?

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lols… Vandy is a very good school too… not like it’s all due to marketing.

every school is doing things to boost yield… “merit aid”, EA, ED, lower admit rates via marketing etc. etc.

Chicago is just doing it better. and has the second highest SAT scores in the country after Caltech.