That’s what my athlete son did, worry about the reputation. While recruited by the d3’s he wanted to go to a larger R1 school and UChicago made sense academically. He was really happily surprised to find that there were many kids like him and he has had a great social time there. I think uchicago expanding its class size and building new dorms and facilities has really attracted a broader set of students than the old reputation formed when undergrads weren’t that important of a part of uchicago’s focus (it seemed). No way would he transfer to any other school now.
I think the reputation is already changing, at least among all the private day and boarding schools as more and more attend. It’s become an extremely popular choice from his high school though there was still some questions.
Any student that isn’t willing to do a little deeper research and find out what UChicago is really like isn’t really the type of student that UChicago is looking for.
To follow up on @Engineer9 and @arbitrary99’s posts - yes, the facilities improvement helped a lot, as did the additional student support, the better athletic program, more RSO’s, much better career advising, and so forth. But other top schools still beat UChicago out on a lot of this stuff - even better academic and career advising, dedicated time to explore your major, carefully planned housing assignments that respect the hundreds of years of tradition, and so forth. Something else about UChicago changed that I’d argue is more substantive: the point about the broader set of students is that they are also a better set of students and better able to handle the curriculum. The academic preparedness of those applying just shot up in the 2000’s, along with the number of applications. UChicago isn’t Easy Street now compared to a generation ago. The major requirements for my kids are the same now as they were then. The Core is shorter only by three courses and most would have noticed only minimal additional flexibility as a result of this modification.
People remember “where fun comes to die” but they forget that the College had a 70% admit rate at one point and was a third or fourth choice for kids trying to get into HYP. Now, the College is populated with kids who genuinely wish to be at UChicago. Admissions has been able to find them and bring them in, and the humane improvements that the university made were sufficient to keep them on campus and thus attract others. They are interesting, diverse, and bring a whole lot of flavor to the community. And they were always around just waiting to learn about UChicago.
That’s good news! I sent mine off a couple hours ago and it now shows that my admission officer’s opened it SIX TIMES loll. Not sure if I should take that as a good sign.
By the way, if you don’t mind me asking, could you please share what the reply was about? Not for word for word, of course; was it implicative of a yes/no or a feedback on your current application? Thanks!
It was essentially, “Thank you for such a wonderful letter! I’m glad to know you’re still so interested and will make sure the letter is used on your behalf in committee.” It’s definitely not an outright offer of admission, but it sure sounds like the AO is going to try to do what they can for me.
I finally received a reply today as well but not from my own admission officer; it was from Mr. Nascimento, the senior associate director of admissions.
He said, “Thank you for message, and for your continued interest in the University of Chicago. We’ll have your note below added to your file for the admissions committee’s consideration if a spot becomes available in the Class of 2025.”
I wonder why I received that response from him, not my AO. Any thoughts?
Simon Nascimento is an international counselor. He might have been your AO? (you’d know that better than anyone else). Or he could be filling in for an AO who is on leave or swamped with LOCI’s.
Yes. It seems reasonable to assume that my international admission counselor is swamped with LOCI’s because my mail tracker indicates that my letter is being read by multiple individuals. Not sure how I should take this LOL.