<p>Chicago admits quality students. They are not able to attract some of them to show up because of FA package difference between Chicago and the some of the top Ivies. I have read the EA threads for Chicago and threads started by students admitted EA and several are stating that they will not be able to make it because Chicago is offering them zero FA. The same students at Princeton will get 30k or more.</p>
<p>Chicago can cut the admissions down to 2500 next year and reach your numbers, if they can match the financial packages offered by Princeton and Harvard. Increasing the applicant pool to 30,000 to pick 3000 and get down to 10% or below admit rate will take a while. Most of the top schools are reaching a plateau and are already reversing the numbers now.</p>
<p>Although I am happy that Chicago is finally getting the respect it deserves, I can’t say I wasn’t more fond of the Chicago of old which didn’t concern itself with trivial things like acceptance rates and rankings.</p>
<p>“Although I am happy that Chicago is finally getting the respect it deserves, I can’t say I wasn’t more fond of the Chicago of old which didn’t concern itself with trivial things like acceptance rates and rankings.”</p>
<p>Many would claim to love the spirit of the old Chicago, yet most of those people wouldn’t have even considered Chicago in the same category as the lower Ivy Leagues a few years ago. It’s much easier to be fond of a school when it doesn’t pose a challenge to your own school.</p>
<p>Plus, although acceptance rates might be “trivial” in their own right, a high acceptance rate was the reason a lot of students used to pick Northwestern or Wash U over Chicago just 5-10 years ago. The school was losing a lot of good candidates that way (high schoolers are inherently shallow, you know), which is why Chicago is now concerning itself more over acceptance rates. Same goes for rankings. Acceptance rates and rankings are tools for improvement, not ends in themselves.</p>
<p>@texaspg I should clarify. I do realize that endowment can affect money available for financial aid and to that extent can have an affect on admissions. But what I meant when I said endowment doesn’t directly affect admissions, I just mean very few students (except the completely insane ones) make their decisions about what schools to apply to based primarily on the size of a school’s endowment.</p>
<p>Indeed, several schools that have a lower admit rate currently than UChicago have a smaller endowment:</p>
<p>1) Dartmouth 9.0%, $3.4 billion
2) Brown 9.4%, $2.5 billion
3) Duke 11.9%, $5.7 billion</p>
<p>Comparison of UChicago to a few other school’s endowment on a side note:
Berkeley, $3.15 billion
Cambridge, $6.8 billion
Oxford, $5.2 billion
Columbia, $7.8 billion
Northwestern, $7.2 billion
Penn, $6.6 billion
UChicago, $6.3 billion</p>
<p>Truth - You have to see how they have a lower admit rate though. It is purely due to ED binding decisions which reduce the number of open seats to fill.</p>
<p>Chicago can get there with ED too but I just don’t see them taking that route.</p>
<p>The real test about what is going to happen to UChicago concerning admissions will be what happens in the next year or two. If UChicago has (as I personally believe) a continued rise in applications for the next year or two, then UChicago will be virtually unstoppable in becoming one of the top few most selective schools in the country.</p>
<p>What some people don’t realize is that UChicago is very close to making a change from ‘catching up’ to instead moving into a much more competitive ‘taking over’ position. That chart from the Duke Chronicle gives a very clear picture of this. And even now there is increased ‘chatter’ at other schools (comments in Duke’s and Penn’s and Northwestern’s papers) about what is going on at UChicago.</p>
<p>If for any reason admissions do slow in the next year or two, then it will be a longer term process (based on increases in yield rate) that will drive admit rate lower. </p>
<p>But based on the experience other schools have had about how their applicant pool grew over time (Duke, Penn, Columbia, Northwestern), I expect UChicago still has at least two years left of decent application increases before things slow down. That increase in applications alone (even with no change in yield rate) would result in significantly tighter admissions.</p>
<p>Whether it takes 2 years or 5 years, you will see UChicago breeze past Cal Tech, Penn, Duke, MIT, Brown, and Dartmouth as its admit rate drops below 9%.</p>
<p>Yes, it’s all a game and I won’t even waste time going into my theories about human intelligence, etc. But I will say it’s nice to see UChicago winning at the game, no matter how silly it may be.</p>
<p>Another eye-opening trend affected private-school choices for the Class of 2011.</p>
<p>Boom times for Trevian alums at U. of C</p>
<p>“Last year was a boom year at the University of Chicago with 21 freshmen there,” Conroy said. “It’s beyond unbelievable [because of admissions competition there].”</p>
<p>Following were DePaul (17), Vanderbilt (16) – “you can drive to Nashville in one day,” said Conroy – Northwestern (14), Loyola-Chicago and the University of Denver (11 each), and New York University, Marquette, Tulane, and University of Miami (nine each). DePaul, Northwestern and Vanderbilt traditionally have been the top-ranked private schools.</p>
<p>So here is my guess about the number of applications UChicago may get over the next two years. I’m assuming a 10% increase both years, based on the experience other schools have had in how their applicant pools grew over time:</p>
<p>@saint2009 definitely! Go UChicago! by the way, NONE of the top schools would have as many apps as they do if it weren’t for the common app (not just UChicago.)</p>