<p>I've been reading some old UChicago articles over the past 10 years, and it seemed that as recently as 2005, UofC had a 40% acceptance rate. Now it has a 8-9% acceptance rate. Has the institution changed significantly since then? </p>
<p>Yes, the institution has changed somewhat since then. But what really happened was that the institution made a series of major changes over a generation, really extending back into the 80s, and only started to market itself seriously in the early-mid 2000s. If you went back into the 90s and earlier, you would see acceptance rates above 50%. Essentially, they were accepting pretty much all qualified applicants. The University of Chicago didn’t draw a whole lot of unqualified applicants, because then (and now, but even more then) it was known as kind of an academic “boot camp.” Students expected a great education and a serious maturing process, but they didn’t expect to enjoy it at all. A lot of the self-deprecating slogans (like “Where Fun Goes To Die” and “Hell Does Freeze Over”) come from that era.</p>
<p>All through that time, Chicago’s faculty strength put it at the top level of American, and world, universities, but its undergraduate college was small, poor, and largely lacking in some of the elements of student life that made its academic peer institutions more attractive to 17-year-olds. Also, at that time, cities were less popular than now, and seemed more dangerous. That never affected Harvard or Yale too badly, but when I was growing up Dartmouth, for example, was seen as much more desirable than Columbia or Penn, and Chicago had some of their problems without some of their advantages.</p>
<p>After at one point considering seriously simply shutting the college down, the university worked hard over decades to build, slowly, a better quality of student life. It built new dorms, new classrooms, new athletic facilities. It funded more student activities. It made the Core Curriculum a bit more flexible and less burdensome. It cleaned up Hyde Park a lot and made it safer and more attractive. And, finally, it started trying to attract not just young scholars, but young leaders, athletes, and artists as well – people who would create the kind of student culture that the Ivies enjoy.</p>
<p>During the past decade, a few things really accelerated the pace of change: First, Chicago got a new president, Robert Zimmer, who had spent most of his career as a math professor there before serving a term as Provost at Brown. He had always been an ally of the college reformers on the faculty, but he returned to Chicago pretty determined to see the college get the level of respect that the university’s graduate and professional programs had. He, in turn, went on a building spree, with major elements improving the quality of undergraduate life, as well as a faculty-hiring spree. He improved scholarship and financial aid offerings. And one of the first things he did was to tell the Admissions Department to figure out why USNWR was consistently ranking Chicago in the mid-teens when its faculty was top five. It turned out that Chicago had been hurting itself by reporting some information about class size and endowment in non-standard ways. When it conformed its reporting to industry standards, it immediately jumped from the USNWR top 20 to its top 10, and people took notice.</p>
<p>Zimmer also hired Jim Nondorf as admissions dean. Nondorf was an alumnus, not just of Yale, but of Skull & Bones and the Wiffenpoofs, but he had been passed over to lead the Yale admissions office. Ever since, he has been on a mission to prove that Yale had made a mistake (which he has, many times over). In a few years at RPI, he totally turned their admissions around, and that was a second-tier institution in a really undesirable location. He has had a lot more to work with at Chicago, and he has done an amazing job of attracting not only more applicants, but more well-qualified applicants, and getting a much higher percentage of the ones accepted to enroll.</p>
<p>Four other things also contributed: The university had great investment performance on its endowment, basically pulling even with all of its peers except for HYPS. That basically preceded Zimmer, but gave him a lot to work with. Math and economics became much more popular than they had ever been, and if you were serious about either the University of Chicago belonged on your list. And people increasingly became convinced that ultra-prestigious universities were offering something especially valuable. All of the top colleges saw their applications zoom, and Chicago got its share of that. Finally, all those years of change were really paying off, and undergraduate student life was getting much richer and happier, and prospective applicants began to notice.</p>
<p>^^^^^</p>
<p>Basically, it’s Nondorf spending a lot of money on marketing.</p>
<p>Thanks! I just wanted to know if the acceptance rate difference meant a lot in the grand scheme of the current state of the institution.
Also, I get the feeling that out of all other top-10 institutions, UofC resembles Columbia the most (both in large cities, core curriculum, similar rankings). Would this be an accurate statement? </p>
<p>Dadinator,</p>
<p>If it was just marketing, UChicago would be in a perilous position right now. If you advertise a product that doesn’t live up to its billing, the market will respond. Trust me, as I graduated from U of C during the “dark days,” if Nondorf marketed the heck out of 1990s U of C, transfer rates out of the school would be sky high, there would be widespread parent complaints, and a serious drop in applications (e.g. apps down 30% in one year). </p>
<p>None of that, however, has happened. This indicates that while marketing efforts have certainly intensified, the “product” UChicago offers is increasing in quality as well. </p>
<p>On another note, one additional point to JHS’ very informative post:</p>
<p>In the past 5 years or so, UChicago has radically increased their general engagement with the community and society at large. Rather than being a citadel of learning, UChicago is attracting the “doers” in society to educate UChicago constituents. The new Institute of Politics, Henry Paulson Institute, Community Service projects, etc. are good examples of this. UChicago, quite simply, isn’t as esoteric and head-in-the-clouds as it once was. </p>
<p>Which is a good thing, and deserves mention in the “What Should UChicago Improve” thread.</p>
<p>Madglav: Superficially, Columbia and Chicago resemble each other a lot, for the reasons you state. If you go an inch below the surface, however, there are some very important differences, at least IMHO:</p>
<p>Columbia is very well situated in New York City, and it has a lot of people who are much more into being in New York than they are into being at Columbia. The city pulls people away from the institution a lot more there, I think. Both for leisure and for things like internships. Chicago is a bit more in its own little world, and although the city is available it’s a little more of a pain to get to anything interesting, so people are a somewhat less focused on it. Chicago students love the City of Chicago, but for all but a handful of them the university is the main event, both for academics and for work and extracurricular activity.</p>
<p>I think Columbia – and this is not the students’ fault at all – is very much afflicted with being the Most Important Academic Institution in the Most Important City In The World. As a result, people take themselves (and others) very, very seriously, and believe that everything they do has Enormous Consequences and that the Eyes Of The World Are Upon Them. The result of this is that reasoned, nuanced, civil debate about subjects that are controversial in the world at large becomes impossible, because people treat Columbia as a battlefield rather than as a negotiating table. People shout at each other a lot, both in and out of the classroom, and people are always being asked to choose sides. One of the greatest things about the University of Chicago is that everyone is basically committed to civil debate, to listening carefully to one another, to modulating their views to accommodate others’ valid points, to rejecting dogma in favor of data and analysis. In short, the two colleges are practically diametric opposites on this, and it makes a huge difference.</p>
<p>The Columbia campus is all compressed and shut off from the surrounding community. It’s actually raised up so that if you look out the windows you don’t have to see the neighborhood, and it has limited entrance points to keep the riff raff out. Chicago is totally different, sprawly and completely interwoven with Hyde Park. No one keeps the riff raff out. It is way more a jumble of styles than Columbia, too.</p>
<p>Columbia has a large-ish engineering school, whose students take only a limited version of the core curriculum. Chicago has no engineers and no exceptions. But the Chicago core is actually more flexible and offers more choice than Columbia’s.</p>
<p>A creative writing teacher who split her time between Columbia an Chicago once told me that her students at Chicago were mostly talented amateurs who wrote for personal pleasure, while the majority of her students at Columbia already had agents and book contracts.</p>
<p>I don’t believe anyone has mentioned the move to the Common App a few years ago. Thus making it MUCH easier to write an extra essay (to be fair, U of C’s prompts are quite “chewie”, so it is still some work) and toss an application into the U of C pool to see what happens.</p>
<p>@JHS “Chicago has no engineers” Not for much longer…</p>
<p>A major in “molecular engineering” is not the same as a separate school of engineering awarding ABET-accredited degrees.</p>
<p>And, while it’s entirely possible that over time Chicago will build up its engineering faculty and facilities, it will be a good, long while before it attracts and enrolls engineering-oriented applicants in great numbers who are as qualified as the kinds of applicants being accepted today. No one thinking about applying to Chicago now, and who ultimately enrolls at Chicago, will attend a university (of Chicago, at least) that has more than a token presence of engineers.</p>
<p>^^haha, i’m entering uchicago in the fall for its molecular engineering program and i was accepted into uiuc, case western, and minnesota for chemical engineering! </p>
<p>I believe UChicago only offers this new undergraduate minor in molecular engineering and “plans to propose a full bachelor’s degree program in the 2014–2015 academic year.” </p>
<p>You could see more details at: <a href=“http://news.uchicago.edu/article/2013/12/12/uchicago-offer-new-undergraduate-minor-molecular-engineering#sthash.C7dNWPqI.dpuf”>UChicago to offer new undergraduate minor in molecular engineering | University of Chicago News;
<p>yep, the major hasn’t been officially offered yet! however, first years are taking core classes, and not necessarily major classes, and the major is supposed to be announced this upcoming academic year, so the class of 2018 should have the opportunity to major in molecular engineering! </p>
<p>Congratulations, I suppose that would work, wouldn’t it?</p>