At @sbballer - no, not every school is playing Chicago’s game, because they have other quotas they want to hit, like more economic diversity, better work with URMs, etc.
You realize, again, right, that if every school wanted to play Chicago’s game, Chicago would be obliterated in the competition? You think if Stanford went ED/ED2 and emphasized SATs, the best it could do is 8% accept/70% yield/1500 SATs?
Not everyone is playing Chicago’s game. If they were, Chicago would lose badly.
they all are… when you have EA… you are gaming… when you have “merit aid” you’re gaming, when you’re advertising on FB for apps you’re gaming.
btw… the one school I will say does the least amount of gaming is MIT. the others are all guilty as sin.
Chicago just does it better.
@sbballer - as @Cue7 has stated, if HYPS marketed like UChicago and put ED1/2 in place, they would crush UChicago on yield and selectivity. Do you doubt this?
And as I’ve pointed out upthread, using the average of 25th and 75th SAT percentiles as a proxy for the SAT average of the entire student body is an inaccurate heuristic highly susceptible to gaming - especially by a school that can use ED and has a lower-level athletic program, of which there’s only one among these five schools.
I don’t think anyone on this thread doubts that UChicago is academically comparable to the other four schools; it’s that they’re going to far greater lengths than any of the others to seem so, through marketing and the use of ED. The other schools hold back for three reasons: (i) their admit rates and yield are in equilibrium relative to each other and close to natural limits, so there’s little potential benefit; (ii) if they fill >2/3 of their classes ED, they know they’ll each lose a lot of tip-top applicants that they’d like to be able to compete for against each other in the RD round; and (iii) they also know extensive use of ED would be genuinely bad for applicants, particularly many lower-income ones that they want to attract.
@sbballer - tell me your prediction - if HYPS do ED/ED2, what happens to their numbers?
Because until they do that, they’re not playing Chicago’s game.
yup… Chicago is doing a better job at gaming the system… and now has the second highest SAT scores in the country after Caltech.
if the other schools did the same thing… the biggest losers would be Y and P… less so Chicago.
How would Chicago not lose to all of HYPS, MIT, and probably Columbia, Duke, etc? In what world would Y and P be bigger losers than Chicago here?
Also, you know how you said MIT does the least gaming? Do you know which school used to have the exact same policy as MIT? I’ll give you one guess…
"It’s why I think they should change Nondorf’s title from “Dean of Admissions” to “Chief Executive of Enrollment Management.”
Nondorf’s full title is Vice President for Enrollment and Student Advancement and Dean of College Admissions and Financial Aid. These responsibilities include overseeing admissions, enrollment, and career placement/advancement upon graduation. So - he manages both the comin’ and the goin’, and as long as both are perceived as success stories then that speaks to real, substantive change as opposed to trickery. Nondorf has certainly optimized the admissions process - and that, by the way, is his job. It remains to be seen whether there are any tactics left to improve those numbers further on admissions policy alone.
We have academic friends - including alums - who believe that UChicago students are still much more intellectually curious, more engaged with their subjects, and generally more interesting than their Ivy counterparts. Most of these people also complain that in general the academy is slipping into the realm of silly - or worse. UChicago is changing too, somewhat, but is still considered a standout (perhaps even more so now given the significantly increased recognition). If university professors who are themselves UChicago grads are delighted to send their kids there, then it’s highly doubtful that the school is in danger of losing its identity.
@Cue7 - he (not @JBStillFlying) is just doing something that rhymes with “bowling”. Probably best to step away from the computer for a while - you’re dealing with someone impervious to rational argument and incapable of acknowledging proven error.
I reckon it’s time for me to chime in and put in a good word for ED. As to whether that move was a function of Nondorf’s empire-building I’m agnostic. Even cue admitted a while back that Chicago’s rise was due to a lot more than the scheming of the wizard. Others have pointed out many factors that have contributed to, if you will pardon the phrase, the meteoric rise - better amenities; more pleasure, less pain in student life; some relaxation of rigor and some grade inflation; marketing; the self-perpetuating rise in rankings; improvement of the neighborhood; greater fashionableness of the urban life; even the Obama presidency. I would add a greater desire in a minority - but a significant one - of today’s talented students to study at a serious University. There are probably one or two other factors missing from that list. But there’s no doubt that the College has become much more popular in a relatively short span of time. Whether, absent Nondorf shenanigans, the result would be less, even considerably less, than 30,000 applications or greater than an 8 per cent acceptance rate doesn’t interest me. Whether Chicago’s proper ranking should be lower than third also doesn’t matter much. I subscribe generally to exacademic’s cri de coeur on these questions a day or so ago.
For me the problem in all this is a different one: how to recruit and foster the intellectually ambitious and independent-thinking student that Chicago has always, in good times and bad, been known for. The reason I favor ED is that I want students to choose Chicago first, not as the consolation prize for not getting into an ivy. I don’t even want to see Chicago treated as an ivy-look-alike, going into the hat along with the true ivies, with the school offering the best financial deal being the winner. If ivy prestige is what a kid wants, Chicago will always lose to the true ivy, anyhow. I want there to be a plurality of kids at Chicago who are not pining to be somewhere else and therefore judging Chicago harshly for not being that other place. That means first and foremost that Chicago has to continue to offer a true Chicago education. But it also means that it needs to attract students who know what they are getting into and who want that sort of education. That is what ED offers and that’s why I’m for it. Beyond all the gaming and even the financial effects we have to ask ourselves what kind of student we want in this place. For me the resounding answer is, a kid who sees it as different from other places and wants to be here and not anywhere else. Talk is cheap, but a kid who chooses Chicago ED is making a true decision. That’s the kid that always came here in the past, when the College was not so popular and was easier to get in to, and that’s the kid we want to cull out now from among the horde of 30,000 (or 25,000 or 20,000) and bring to the College today.
On this board little good is ever heard about ED. Yet there must be other defenders of ED out there.
btw… do you know which school has the second highest SAT score in the country after Caltech.
I’ll give you one guess:)
lols… and I’m hearing about ivies being div 1 from the peanut gallery… FBS power conference is div 1… ivy is like div 1 light. just saying:)
The thing is, @marlowe1, it appears that a not-insignificant number of kids were admitted ED2 (to which they switched after being deferred or denied early by an Ivy), or agreed to accept a spot off the waitlist as a condition of being offered one (effectively ED3). Yes, they chose UChicago, but I don’t think this is the kind of choosing you have in mind. If there were one round of ED, or, better yet (because fairer to lower-income applicants), single-choice early action, you’d see who really always wanted UChicago more than anywhere else.
@marlowe1 I have been following this interesting thread for a while. It is good to know different opinions about the school my daughter is going to attend and the one she chose two years before graduating from HS. She was accepted in EA, and being one of the best students in her class (in the 3%, or less. Her school does not rank, but the top eight students were announced, her being among them), and after seeing the college acceptances of her group, I could tell that it is very likely that she could be accepted in any other school if she would have applied EA. However she did EA in Chicago (she was accepted in 7 schools (RD), Columbia, Cornell, UPenn, Duke, Vanderbilt, UMichigan and UVA). Why UChicago? I wrote a thread explaining that decision with detail, but in fewer words I can say that UChicago did a great job of making her feel like they REALLY wanted her: personal hand-written cards from the AO, merit scholarship, emails, etc, etc. On the other hand, the other important reason that was crucial for her decision was the location. She would not survive in a school located in the middle of nowhere. Having a city like Chicago as close as it is, is impossible to beat. The possibilities for internships, jobs, cultural life: concerts, museums, amazing restaurants, are all important aspects as well (at least for her). The widely criticized marketing has worked pretty well because every person I know that visited the university, after receiving cards, posters with spectacular pictures (me included), could not believe her eyes once there. UChicago was not properly known. That is why the school has had a “meteoric rise”. Many people simply don’t know the beauty of the architecture, the breathtaking campus, its amazing people (students, teachers, employees), the housing system (parallel to only Yale), convenient location, modern dorms and the academic rigor (she will do Econ and Poli Sci).
One of the best things about UChicago is that it has nothing to do with Harvard. UChicago is unique and I don’t think that anybody there wants to emulate HPY. At least, I hope not.
EA induced kids to choose UChicago first/not as a consolation prize (at least wrt HYPS); add a proviso that you can’t EA at UChicago if you ED elsewhere and Marlowe’s mission would be accomplished while still allowing families to compare financial packages before committing.
I think what switching to ED did was create a situation where kids who recognized that they had no realistic chance of getting into HYPS found a way of significantly increasing their odds of getting into the #3 ranked school, which they could then claim was just as good/essentially the same as HYPS.
It doesn’t matter whether families are fans of ED or not. ED applications are increasing at schools that offer this option, and from what I’m hearing the percentage of ED accepts isn’t exactly declining. Thus, colleges see a benefit to offering ED, and families are more than willing to opt for it.
Colleges aren’t in the business of being “fair” and I’d ague that Harvard and Stanford aren’t offering SCEA because they want to be “fair” but because they don’t have to offer ED to keep their yields high. If a high yield is positively correlated with good outcomes for the university, and if the lowest-cost way to increase that yield is to offer ED, that’s what schools are going to do.
As for ED2, this was a smart move on UChicago’s part, IMHO. I’ve been reading how increasingly hard it is to get accepted in the RD pool at these top schools once you’ve been deferred from SCEA or ED or EA (UChicago wasn’t the only one with a very low effective RD-admit rate). Would love to see how many of those EDII admits were deferred from UChicago EA as opposed to SCEA somewhere else. I’m guessing the majority were UChicago-deferreds. My kid was one of those, btw. UChicago was her top choice but she wanted to keep her options open if able to. Kids don’t apply to these elite schools with tunnel-vision mentality, obviously. UChicago understands that as well as we do. They also recognize that a financial commitment is typically sufficient to express a genuine desire to attend.
I agree entirely with your first paragraph, and think your characterization in the second paragraph is pretty much on the mark, @exacademic, except the way I’d phrase it would be: “I think what switching to ED did was create a situation where generally high-stats but unhooked kids who recognized that they had no realistic chance of getting into HYPS found a way of significantly increasing their odds of getting into the #3 ranked school, which they could then claim was just as good/essentially the same as HYPS.”
No question that “colleges aren’t in the business of being fair”, @JBStillFlying, but I would suggest that there are reasons that HYPS see it as being in their interest to avoid ED if they can.
Their yields are already >70% - >80%, so they pretty much already get who they want. They’re the richest schools, offer the most financial aid and don’t need to increase the number of full payers, either. Accordingly, the two big reasons, yield enhancement and financial strengthening, aren’t forcing them to consider ED, at least not right now.
If one of these four moved to ED, began to use it for a large proportion of the class and it was perceived to offer a big admissions advantage to applicants, then all four would probably end up adopting it, because the equilibrium would no longer hold and the school that had broken ranks would be able to lock up a bunch of students that the other three would want a shot at getting. This is a version of what happened at HYP a few years back, before they all went to SCEA.
But none of them wants for all four to adopt ED, because if they’re all locking up a large chunk of their classes early, it would mean that most of the top candidates would feel they had no choice but to apply ED somewhere, which would frequently result in the other three schools having no chance to compete for them. And, it would be unfair to the lower-income kids, which counts for something - particularly since all these schools are trying to increase their numbers of first-gens.
So, because none of HYPS is feeling the pressure to move to ED (and I don’t think UChicago doing so changes things), given that they’re at a stable equilibrium and the prospect of all four adopting it is undesirable, I doubt any one of them does it. Maybe I’ll be wrong, but I don’t see Yale or Princeton trying to use ED to make a case that they’re equal to or better than Harvard or Stanford. They know it would only make everyone worse off in the end, whatever small, temporary advantage they might hope to gain.
It’s different for UChicago, which is trying to establish that it clearly belongs in the top tier while working to distance itself from everyone else below. What the UChicago escalation will prompt, I predict, is a re-evaluation of tactics in the next tier (Penn, Columbia, Duke, Northwestern, etc.). I would think they’re all considering multiple ED rounds now, if they don’t have them already.
@DeepBlue86 - It’s quite possible that Penn and Columbia, to name two, will choose more than one round of ED to push their yields higher than current (which are in low 60’s with one round of ED). Not sure what factors are in play for those schools but it’s quite possible they will follow UChicago’s lead at some point. No need for HYPS to change course, as you are saying.
Again, it’s about the positive aspects of having a higher yield, not about ED specifically. ED is a means to an end so if you are there anyway, ED doesn’t really have to be considered in the admission strategy. Therefore, highly doubtful that HYPS are even giving this option much thought one way or the other. While they all keep an eye on one another surely, it’s also the case that if any of them thought it would benefit from changing admission policies, it would gladly break free from the equilibrium state in order to one-up the others. Regardless of how they feel about first gen. or other demographics, their collusion-like behavior is a result of self-interest. And, by the way, pretty much all the top schools - including those with ED - publicize that they are increasing the number of first gen. students. If HYSP has somehow managed to convince everyone that they are staying SCEA in order to be more fair to first gens, they’ve done a better job with the tricks than has Nondorf! 
Anyway, all this discussion just underscores how differently UChicago views it’s own journey to the top. There’s more fun in being a maverick.
I don’t insist on - nor even think it desirable - that ONLY Chicago first-choicers make up the entering class. I simply want there to be a way for those who DO have Chicago as their first choice to be able to demonstrate this to the admissions people by a decisive act such as choice of ED1 constitutes. I assume that the consideration given these ED1 applicants involves the same range of factors as will later be applied to applicants in other categories. I wouldn’t advocate that an otherwise non-qualifying ED1 applicant be accepted merely because that applicant has Chicago as first choice. However, across all categories there will be many similarly qualified applicants. In these coin-toss situations (hypothetically speaking, inasmuch as the later applications are not yet on the table) the ED1’s should get the benefit. Not because it makes the yield numbers look good as if that were an end in itself but rather to admit as many kids as possible who are both high-caliber and demonstrably have Chicago as their first choice. That is good for the esprit of the place and ultimately helps to maintain its special identity.
The ED2’s aren’t showing the same level of absolute devotion to the cause, but it’s still not nothing to have chosen Chicago above every other school in the second round. Some of these kids may have fully embraced Chicago only as the process played out, as in the way JBStillFlying’s daughter did. The psychology of making a commitment is good at any stage, not excluding the last one in which some talented RD kids with many offers in hand will make their own choice of Chicago.
That the College has in recent years raised its profile and upped the quality of its student life means there likely will be fewer kids admitted from all applicant groups who end up dragging around campus pining for the lost paradise of Harvard. Certainly those kids lower the esprit. For the ED1 kids Chicago IS the paradise. With other applicants the challenge for the admissions people is to identify and accept those willing and able to be shaped by a Chicago education and to reject those who will carry their disgruntlement with them throughout their college years and doubtless beyond. Whatever yield arises from this process matters not.
Under the previous system, ED2s would have applied as RD candidates. Such candidates had a chance to be admitted and this approach meant UChicago had an incentive to maintain comparable standards across early (EA) and regular pools and not to overcommit early and render RD applications almost pointless. That’s an important incentive because kids with fewer resources (money, information, assistance assembling applications) are more likely to be in the RD pool.
I’m pretty convinced that the right kids will choose UChicago even if they have a chance to compare it to other offers. (The demographic Marlowe mentions – highly-qualified kids for whom UChicago is a true second choice – will, by definition, say yes to an RD offer.). And there’s no reason to believe that kids who made a fully-informed choice are going to be more likely to wonder what might have been than kids who felt pressured to commit early or write off UChicago completely and didn’t get to see what their alternatives actually were.