UChicago Derangement Syndrome

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of Chicago ✅
21

Going back to my two questions as OP, I believe the first one has been fairly conclusively answered: there is agreement that Chicago arouses more negativity than do its peers. As to why this is the case - my second question - it sounds like there is something approaching agreement that it is because it has all these idiosyncratic (at least among its peers) marketing and admissions policies AND continues to claim that it is uniquely devoted to the life of the mind, etc. Do I have that right?

I agree that something like that is what’s getting up the noses of non-Chicago people. I have no desire to argue them out of their derangement (or call it irritation in the cases of JHS and DeepBlue). The phenomenon itself is, however, interesting. I wonder whether, if Chicago ceased to claim that its educational experience was any different from that of the peer schools, people associated with those schools would welcome the marketing, the ED, the free speech, the test-optional and the rest of the package. I highly doubt it. The revulsion against these things is part of a piece with Chicago’s continuing emphasis on its distinctly intellectual brand of education.

We are dealing here with the Brideshead Revisited Syndrome. You go to Harvard, you’re a smart kid, you may even (though that’s a big “may”) be really intellectually ambitious and curious - but the culture of the place requires that you hide all that under a veneer of aristocratic sprezzatura. Don’t show you’re working too hard, don’t show the effort, don’t really get too obsessed with trying to figure out the meaning of things. Breaking a sweat about stuff like that is, well, that’s for the likes of the drudges at the University of Chicago.

We know that breaking a sweat about exactly these things was for at least the latter half of the 20th century the experience of a Chicago education. That must have been so at least as late as the late 90’s, if the testimony of our friend, Cue7, is to be believed. He didn’t like it all that much, but he would hardly deny that it was very different from what he later experienced at, I believe, Penn. We know the culture has changed in the last 20 years. The detractors make these changes Exhibit A to their thesis that the intellectual pretensions of the place are a thing of yesteryear (but then they didn’t like what Chicago was in yesteryear either). My thesis is that (a) the changes, though not all to my taste, were essentially necessary, and (b) they have not vitiated in any essential way the underlying culture of intellectual aspiration at the University of Chicago. Its offence is to claim both (a) and (b), but if both are true, neither should be denied. Therefore, let the mockers mock.

22

No one in our real life universe is a detractor of UChicago. The people we know who have heard of the school have only ever responded with reverence or admiration when my son tells them he chose UChicago. (As in “wow…. he’s going to the University of Chicago,” or, word on ‘the street’ is “those guys can write their own ticket…” etc.)

Of course, that’s only our world, anecdotal to everyone else, but it’s the one that we’re experiencing. So what, yes, he’s interested in working on wall street, can’t he be both an intellectual and work there? Already, he has caught the eye of people who want to mentor him because they hear that he will be attending UChicago, one of them a Harvard alum (not brandishing the name, but since we’re talking about the perception of UChicago from outsiders…)

Maybe people who are passionate about something is just more vocal, even if it is passionately against something, and with every step that UChicago makes, there’ll be much debate and conjecture. Maybe a step will set it back a little, or perhaps ahead a little. Who knows. Whatever opinions people may have on this board doesn’t affect our lives, but it’s entertaining to read for a few minutes a day.

On a side note, the marketing material was great. Interesting how it bothers some people. (what?? Is that a thing now??) Maybe we just received so much of it from all schools combined that we didn’t notice UChicago necessarily had more. All universities, as entities, have a job to do, and it’s as self-serving as all of us as people are.

I’m not saying UChicago is the only great institution, as there are so many, and we don’t care what HYP are doing, but we do see UChicago as standing alongside them, in a league all its own ;).

Our reality in no way reflects what is said on cc. In real life, he’s ecstatic, as are we, secured in the knowledge that he will receive a high quality education at UChicago.

23

I’d phrase it somewhat differently. I think, given the longer history, greater name recognition and prominence in the culture, visibility and pervasiveness of alumni networks, etc., that HYPS do indeed get more of the applicants that both they and UChicago are focused on, with less effort than UChicago, and there’s evidence that they typically beat UChicago on cross-admits (the Parchment data suggest that HYPS all win over UChicago handily). This accords with my experience; I know a lot of kids who have gone to UChicago, and am not aware of any of them turning down any of HYPS to do so (although I’m sure some number of kids do every year, and your mileage may vary). Accordingly, in response to your question: even though they get similar numbers of applicants to UChicago, Yale and Princeton don’t follow UChicago in trying to fluff up their app numbers because they already get enough of the applicants, and win enough of the cross-admits, that they and UChicago both want.

Of course, if UChicago keeps playing games, to the point that the situation changes and it causes enough issues for Yale and Princeton that they feel they need to respond, they’ll do what they think they have to do. I don’t think that will happen anytime soon, though. What I think is more likely is Harvard doing something to remain on par with Stanford, putting additional competitive pressure on Yale and Princeton, who may then feel required to take some action in response.

My turn: where’s your evidence for that? I don’t know where you’d get the information to make that assertion with confidence. Anyway, my point is that if you apply ED to any school, and are admitted, you pretty much have to take what they offer you unless you can prove you can’t pay, and then it’s pretty hard to apply anywhere else. On the other hand, if you’re admitted to one of HYPS SCEA, you can apply to any number of other schools RD and play them off against each other in negotiating aid offers, often getting significant improvements as you “clarify” your situation. There are lots of stories about that on here, and it’s remarkable how elastic “demonstrated financial need” apparently can be, and the different assessments schools can make based on the same set of facts (this is the only financial aid HYPS give - no athletic scholarships or “merit money”). If you need financial aid, you are unambiguously worse off with ED than any type of EA, because you have much less leverage.

Regarding your last para:

I never said that vibe and culture don’t matter; Princeton feels very different from Harvard, and Stanford feels very different from Yale, for example, although they, and UChicago, are all academically fantastic. I certainly agree that things like the Core, and the quarter system (and location, and size, and living arrangements and strength of various departments, and importance of sports, and social scene, and relative presence of racial/ethnic groups, and a thousand other things) will affect whether you’re attracted to the school in the first place. A school’s culture does indeed “impact your experience and how much you enjoy being there and what you take with you when you leave”. My point is that the Platonic ideal of a Chicago kid could be happy at any of these places, and a whole bunch more, because there’s intellectualism to spare at all of them.

How many UChicago students are specifically attracted to the UChicago set of attributes (including culture), and would choose it above all other universities given the option, is unknowable. Using ED to lock in more than half the class, with an admit rate far higher than that of EA or ED (as it apparently is) makes it even less clear, because you can’t say with any degree of confidence how many kids are applying ED strategically, committing early because they think it’s their best probability-adjusted chance to get into the top school possible.

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This is only 1 data point, but my son did not find at least YP interchangeable with UofC. He was put off by the eating clubs arrangement at P (“culture”), preferred UofC’s Core vs Yale. He felt H was too much of a crap shoot and had no desire to put himself through that. He didn’t bother applying to HYP, and is happy as a clam with Chicago. He was also interested in Stanford but was “captured” by Chicago’s ED. He had classmates with lower GPA’s who were admitted to each HYPS, so I don’t think his academics would have been an issue.

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You made me giggle, @marlowe1, at the thought of Harvard being filled with Sebastian Flytes. Oh sure, you’ve got a fair few fancy-pants alumni children, celebrities, Olympic-level athletes, performing artists, children of foreign potentates and assorted other shiny objects, but there are an awful lot of undergraduates who work REALLY **** HARD there, and compete ferociously (albeit often with respect to climbing the greasy pole at the Crimson or other extracurricular activities). If you want to find some of the smartest kids in the world, working like dogs as they prepare to move forward the frontiers of human knowledge, check out some of the libraries at Harvard on a Saturday night. Not a lot of sprezzatura there, I gotta tell ya.

26

“Small observation on the advertising: like many, my rising senior has received her fair share of mailings from U of C. However, the 96-page booklet that arrived today from Yale is far bigger than all the U of C mailings put together. (Also, after the ACT, all of HYPSM sent mailings; I can’t imagine the criteria - maybe everyone. I wonder if U of C uses SAT mailing lists more than HYPSM).”

My S19 just received the 96-page Yale booklet and he never took the ACT but is participating in College Board’s College Search for his SAT score. But it’s always possible that they are sending out to everyone. This is WAY more info. than he has received from UChicago - in fact, he really hasn’t received much of anything from UChicago in the regular mail. (I think he’s receiving e-mails, however, as he says they sent him the 2018-19 application essays.). He’s been on the UChicago list for over a year because he attended an open house as a sophomore. We also noticed that our D stopped getting regular mail from them once she attended an admissions event. So maybe once you are on their list they cease and desist the mass mailings?

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@marlowe1 : We have had this discussion before. My children’s experience at the University of Chicago was very, very much like that my wife and I had at Yale. That’s part of why we love Chicago so much. The intellectual/academic part of the experience was almost identical. (Down to the same core texts, by the way, some of which were a lot edgier 40 years ago than they are now. I had never heard of Walter Benjamin before I got to college. My children, of course, grew up with him.) Both parents did Directed Studies, which is quite a bit like a voluntary version of the Core. The amount of “fun” was the same, maybe even tilted a little to Chicago.

More: Two of the faculty members who were most important to one of my kids now teach at Harvard. A third was a fresh hire out of UCLA, and a University of Houston facbrat whose BA was from Rice. That child’s fourth big faculty mentor is so associated with Chicago that he might as well be a gargoyle there . . . but he was a Harvard undergraduate. The grad student TAs who most acculturated my kids to Chicago were each two years removed from their undergraduate years at, respectively, Princeton and Harvard.

A close friend of one kid’s from high school has spent the last 8 years getting a PhD at Chicago, and no doubt initiating dozens of undergraduates in the mysteries of Chicago, but he spent his undergraduate years at Stanford. He was super-intellectual in high school, super-intellectual at Stanford, and he’s still super-intellectual, though now a bit chastened and jaded by the economic realities of academic life. He adored Stanford and adored Chicago; he made the transition from one to the other seamlessly.

That’s because, for all their real differences, there are enormous overlaps between the institutions. It’s true that not all Stanford students would thrive at Chicago, but lots would, and most Chicago students would be absolutely fine at Stanford. (One of my law school housemates at Stanford was a Chicago AB from Iowa. He was a classic Chicago cliche – really smart, really analytical, a lovely person, and almost incapable of normal minor social interaction. We didn’t know about a “spectrum” back then, but he was on it. He was not miserable in the least in the Stanford environment, even though he could not have been further from the Stanford mainstream socially.)

@JBStillFlying : Some of the discussion of financial aid in your post #19 is really confusing. HYPS does not have any merit aid, so of course no SCEA acceptee can negotiate for any merit aid there. Same with RD acceptees – no merit aid for any of them.

Chicago uses merit aid extensively – a large percentage of its classes get merit aid, some people in large chunks, many in small ones. Chicago has used merit aid from time immemorial, but it used to be given to far fewer students. One of Jim Nondorf’s first innovations was to break up the available merit scholarships into much smaller pieces so merit could be used more effectively to bring in the students they wanted most who were not eligible for financial aid.

I don’t know what is going on now, but at least in the past this is the kind of difference that would be reflected in the different universities’ financial aid calculations. The University of Chicago would look at the balances in 401(k) plans and assume that 100% was available (at 25% per year) to fund the college education of any child(ren) currently in college. If an applicant was the oldest child, the parents were expected to be willing to use 25% of their 401(k) balances for first year expenses. Harvard would assume that families should be willing to use 4% per year of their 401(k) balances to all children’s education. Guess what? Harvard’s financial aid packages tended to be richer.

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“My turn: where’s your evidence for that? I don’t know where you’d get the information to make that assertion with confidence.”

I have the same anecdotal evidence that you do, @DeepBlue86. In fact, we have many aquaintences whose kids have applied and been accepted to HYMPS and 100% of them wouldn’t apply for fin. aid. precisely because they didn’t want to hurt their admission chances. C was different until they switched to ED - they really tightened up the merit after that (my kid was expecting $4,000 per year due to national merit but they eliminated that AFTER she had applied. However, they more than made up for it with need-based).

“Anyway, my point is that if you apply ED to any school, and are admitted, you pretty much have to take what they offer you unless you can prove you can’t pay, and then it’s pretty hard to apply anywhere else.”

This is inaccurate. How, for instance, is a very low SES admit penalized by an ED application to UChicago? The latter would be covering a huge chunk, if not all, of the student’s direct costs.

UChicago’s use of ED might be distinct but it’s not all that hard to figure out. First - and this is true for all the schools, btw - you don’t need to pull your other apps till you’ve reviewed the Fin. Aid. package and have no follow up questions or issues; every school offers an appeals process or a way to connect and work something out. Schools aren’t in the business of trying to ruin young lives, and they know who’s acting in good faith vs. the opposite. Second, name-sharing is now at an end given the DOJ investigation :slight_smile: so even the bad faith kids probably got released from their ED agreements with no consequences this year. Third, in the case of UChicago specifically, “full demonstrated need” is not a surprise to anyone who files for Fin. Aid so it’s not like they come up with a surprise and too bad for you, sucka bwahahahahaha. And if there are any surprises - they release you! That’s the information that’s been posted on CC and I believe those who have been through the process.

The real issues that I’ve seen from the occasional poster who is afraid of applying ED - or who has so applied but then decides to switch to EA - is committing to a program of study that they feel they might not be academically prepared for or aren’t quite looking for as a college experience.

“On the other hand, if you’re admitted to one of HYPS SCEA, you can apply to any number of other schools RD and play them off against each other in negotiating aid offers, often getting significant improvements as you “clarify” your situation.”

If that were true for the bulk of SCEA admits, we’d see yield rates for this group that were by and large similar to the overall yield. While I have no proof of this, my understanding is that SCEA yield rates are exceptionally high relative to overall yield. Practically speaking, they tend to select candidates who were planning to commit and who do, in fact, commit. Are they given a ton of aid in order to make this decision? If yes, then you have a valid point. As fin. aid. probably doesn’t come out till March or April (with the RD group) then there definitely is the theoretical potential to bargain, assuming you’ve been accepted to peer schools in the regular round (most aren’t).

So who are these SCEA candidates? Some, like at UChicago, are going to be price sensitive and will negotiate. Most others are not going to bother because they are price insensitive - they didn’t get into another top school because they were restricted to the regular round, or this was their number one to begin with, and so forth. Just because they don’t offer ED doesn’t mean they admit a bulk of price sensitive admits.

"There are lots of stories about that on here, and it’s remarkable how elastic “demonstrated financial need” apparently can be, and the different assessments schools can make based on the same set of facts (this is the only financial aid HYPS give - no athletic scholarships or “merit money”).

Yes - it’s “need” based in that sometimes they “need” to give you more so you attend. Guess what? Athletes get more “need based” than others at some of the Ivies (YMMV regarding the particular sport). We found that Uchicago’s aid package is pretty generous, as mentioned above, even without the negotiations. In fact, my D explained to them when she switched her app. from RD to EDII that she was hoping at first to get merit but now she just wanted in. And still, the package was generous.

“If you need financial aid, you are unambiguously worse off with ED than any type of EA, because you have much less leverage.”

  • Understand the thinking here, but for the bulk of students this isn't really true if looking at SCEA (regular EA - different story). What sort of leverage does the student have in the admissions process if they apply to all their other top in the regular round? Most are shut out as a result. At least with ED you can also apply unrestricted and negotiate with those if you are deferred.

We know a few kids who have gotten into all 8 Ivy’s. They applied to one of those SCEA and then made some choice down the road, hopefully with LOTS of negotiating along the way. But this isn’t the case for most. They get in SCEA and they enroll once they are satisfied with their fin. aid, just like ED. In other words, both decision plans make you think carefully before proceeding.

Incidentally, in our case D’s net cost turned out the be the same applying ED as it would had she applied EA under the old admission program (based on calculations I was doing at that time before the policy change). As mentioned above, she got less merit than expected but more generous need-based. So it’s DEFINITELY not the case that she was “unambiguously worse off” under ED. In fact, as she discovered, she needed ED to be accepted in the first place (she had been deferred EA so switched to EDII).

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@JHS at #26 - my apologies as I don’t mean techincal “merit” aid for HYPS - I’m using the term in a practical sense. We know athletes and other hooked kids who are effectively getting merit at an Ivy. No, they don’t call it that.

“I don’t know what is going on now, but at least in the past this is the kind of difference that would be reflected in the different universities’ financial aid calculations. The University of Chicago would look at the balances in 401(k) plans and assume that 100% was available (at 25% per year) to fund the college education of any child(ren) currently in college. If an applicant was the oldest child, the parents were expected to be willing to use 25% of their 401(k) balances for first year expenses. Harvard would assume that families should be willing to use 4% per year of their 401(k) balances to all children’s education. Guess what? Harvard’s financial aid packages tended to be richer.”

UChicago currently does not require 401 K or equivalent info. for their fin. aid. decisions. I think they used to accept the CSS Profile and probably still do, but a FAFSA and completing their own Fin. Aid. form is sufficient. I know that FAFSA has a field for any contributions you make to retirement plans but different plans vary wildly in terms of what the employer contributes and we weren’t required to specify any of that nor a balance. I believe they have tightened up the merit as the historically generous merit of previous years seemed not to exist once they switched to ED (surprise!). But that might be because they’ve shifted funds over to the need-side. I’ve no doubt that HYPS has a LOT more flexibility w/r/t fin. aid. but I seriously don’t think we’d get more from H. than from UChicago. Maybe I’m wrong but based on my calculations I don’t see it.

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@JBStillFlying - let me see if I can first summarize your points and then respond. I think you’re arguing:

  1. Lots of kids who apply to schools that supposedly offer need-blind and only need-based financial aid don’t apply for aid because they think it will hurt their admissions chances.
  2. ED applicants are very likely to be offered an appropriate amount of financial aid at such schools, in the rare cases where they’re not, they can negotiate further, and if that doesn’t work they can be released with few or no practical consequences.
  3. If, as it appears, the yield on SCEA admits is much higher than RD admits, it implies that SCEA admits aren’t price-sensitive because the SCEA school was their first choice or they didn’t get in anywhere else RD.
  4. What’s described as need-based aid is actually highly negotiable and there’s greater room for movement with highly-prized candidates such as recruited athletes.
  5. Most SCEA applicants aren’t better off than ED applicants because they’re not going to get in anywhere else anyway, and with ED at least you can apply elsewhere if you’re deferred.
  6. Your daughter was better off applying ED because she would have got the same aid either way but applying ED was what got her admitted.

My responses are:

  1. The assumption of you and your friends seems to be that top schools that claim to be need-blind are lying, and that, notwithstanding that these schools pay out nine figures in financial aid, and the average student pays around 50% of sticker price, they penalize applicants who can demonstrate true need. Absent any evidence of this, I am skeptical. I think if you really need aid, you should apply for it and no one will hold it against you.
  2. An “appropriate” level of aid may mean different things to the school and the applicant, and wriggling out of an ED offer is a complicated endeavor that makes applying to other colleges difficult. If you get an ED offer in mid-December, the operative assumption is that you’re going to withdraw all those RD apps (assuming you’ve already submitted them - otherwise, you may have a blue Christmas when you write them) that the other schools are starting to read in January. Unless the fin-aid offer is an egregious injustice, your guidance counselor is leaning on you hard, because she’s worried the high school’s credibility with the ED school will be blown, and she’s not motivated to be pushing your case with adcoms at the RD schools. Some of your classmates’ families who know you’re trying to get off the hook are up in arms, thinking you’re jerking the ED school around and ruining things for everyone, etc. It’s not straightforward, to say the least.
  3. The yield on SCEA admits looks likely to be much higher than for RD admits, but the reason for that isn’t necessarily that SCEA admits are price-insensitive. Certainly many of them are, notably the full-paying wealthy legacies for whom the school’s their first choice. I think the athletes also are well-looked-after. If you really need fin-aid, though, you’re price-sensitive, and if the school doesn’t treat you right, you’re not going. As for the notion that SCEA admits generally get shut out in the RD round, plenty of kids (especially academically-elite URMs and kids who are distinguished in some way) are cross-admitted among the elite schools. There are Stanford Faculty Senate statistics that show 100-200 cross-admits between Stanford and each of its top-tier peers every year.
  4. We agree.
  5. We disagree. If you’re admitted somewhere SCEA, you can apply to any number of peer schools and, as discussed, many are admitted to one or more of these schools every year after landing an SCEA admit. ED basically prohibits that. With SCEA, you can negotiate your fin-aid package for months, keep all your other apps in and play one against the other if you get into an equivalent school RD. SCEA and ED are not equivalent.
  6. You trusted UChicago to give your daughter the right amount of aid, and took the risk of applying ED in the hope that this would give her enough of an edge to be admitted, because applying ED gives a big boost (some would argue because it reveals who the true “Chicago kids” are, others would suggest that UChicago really likes the elevated yield that’s the product of admitting most of the class ED). Congratulations on it working out for her.
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@DeepBlue86 - pretty good summary of my points.

  1. "The assumption of you and your friends seems to be that top schools that claim to be need-blind are lying, and that, notwithstanding that these schools pay out nine figures in financial aid, and the average student pays around 50% of sticker price, they penalize applicants who can demonstrate true need. Absent any evidence of this, I am skeptical. I think if you really need aid, you should apply for it and no one will hold it against you."

I agree! In fact, I’ve been making that point w/r/t ED. But that doesn’t stop a whole lot of other families from “playing it safe”. Whether a family “really needs aid” isn’t so cut and dry - I’d recommend that if they think they need aid, they should go for it.

  1. "An “appropriate” level of aid may mean different things to the school and the applicant, and wriggling out of an ED offer is a complicated endeavor that makes applying to other colleges difficult. If you get an ED offer in mid-December, the operative assumption is that you’re going to withdraw all those RD apps (assuming you’ve already submitted them - otherwise, you may have a blue Christmas when you write them) that the other schools are starting to read in January. Unless the fin-aid offer is an egregious injustice, your guidance counselor is leaning on you hard, because she’s worried the high school’s credibility with the ED school will be blown, and she’s not motivated to be pushing your case with adcoms at the RD schools. Some of your classmates’ families who know you’re trying to get off the hook are up in arms, thinking you’re jerking the ED school around and ruining things for everyone, etc. It’s not straightforward, to say the least."
  • Hahaha not sure that all this information gets around at my kids' schools to the same extent. Perhaps there are regional differences. My kids also tend to apply to more competitive schools than their classmates so perhaps my family is given some leeway ;) (kidding).

The way it works for ED is that you are required to enroll within a few weeks of getting accepted. I think it’s about a month from acceptance date. Within that time frame (hopefully soon after acceptance) you receive your Fin. Aid. Not sure what happens next if there’s a surprise but if it were us I’d be on the horn with Fin. Aid in order to better understand their position relative to what we were seeing. We wouldn’t have expected this conversation anyway given that we had talked to Fin. Aid BEFORE signing the ED agreement, but the possibility of a surprise is always there. If the unfortunate occurred, the GC’s and other families simply would have no cause for complaint if we are acting in good faith. The ED agreement doesn’t bind you to the school if you are going to be bled dry; that’s why you are allowed to review the fin. aid. package and respond. But it does bind you unless you have a good faith reason to be released (hint: being bled dry counts as a “good faith reason”). The school has the upper hand here, obviously but it is bound to be reasonable and fair, just as we are. And of all the instances I’ve heard where someone ended up not getting released, these tended to be someone changing their mind about the school. No one should count on that actually working for them.

We’ve known a few families having a “blue Christmas” (vacation in FL spent applying to the backups). My D had all her apps in before break; however, not sure that S19 will do the same.

  1. "The yield on SCEA admits looks likely to be much higher than for RD admits, but the reason for that isn’t necessarily that SCEA admits are price-insensitive. Certainly many of them are, notably the full-paying wealthy legacies for whom the school’s their first choice. I think the athletes also are well-looked-after. If you really need fin-aid, though, you’re price-sensitive, and if the school doesn’t treat you right, you’re not going. As for the notion that SCEA admits generally get shut out in the RD round, plenty of kids (especially academically-elite URMs and kids who are distinguished in some way) are cross-admitted among the elite schools. There are Stanford Faculty Senate statistics that show 100-200 cross-admits between Stanford and each of its top-tier peers every year.
  • No doubt that the academically elite URM's are cross admitted! I actually think of them as "price sensitive" - I know I'd be!!! But those others who are full-pay don't have to be wealthy to be prince-insensitive. They just have to be willing to allow the school to gobble up all the consumer surplus :). We know people like that. That's why you can apply for fin. aid and ED. If the school is your first choice and you are going there as long as you can afford it, obviously you aren't expecting to get the best "deal" when strictly looking at "price" (my kid, for instance, was looking at very low net costs elsewhere due to various scholarships etc.). In this kind of case, the school has unique factors that make the higher cost worth it.

Perhaps we weren’t the only family who felt this way, given the significant number of ED’s that the school admitted for the Class of 2021.

  1. "We disagree. If you’re admitted somewhere SCEA, you can apply to any number of peer schools and, as discussed, many are admitted to one or more of these schools every year after landing an SCEA admit. ED basically prohibits that. With SCEA, you can negotiate your fin-aid package for months, keep all your other apps in and play one against the other if you get into an equivalent school RD. SCEA and ED are not equivalent."

You can apply during regular round but you ability to apply anywhere else for early round. Most don’t end up getting cross-admitted and if you don’t get admitted early you are stuck with nothing but regular round decisions. Obviously there are going to be correlations (decisions aren’t exactly randomly decided, though they might seem so), meaning that someone might get into several peer schools, while others get into nothing. To me this is a total trade off between more choices to apply to early on (thus maximizing the probability of an early acceptance and/or getting a bump with a favored school) vs. minimizing that early acceptance probability in order, hopefully, to pick up a few more choices later on. Maybe this is also about risk aversion as much as price sensitivity.

  1. "You trusted UChicago to give your daughter the right amount of aid, and took the risk of applying ED in the hope that this would give her enough of an edge to be admitted, because applying ED gives a big boost (some would argue because it reveals who the true “Chicago kids” are, others would suggest that UChicago really likes the elevated yield that’s the product of admitting most of the class ED). Congratulations on it working out for her."

Exactly! We were more risk averse than price-sensitive by that point. And yes, thank you she loves it there which we knew she would.

I think the decision to go aggressive on ED is about both yield and fit. If the resulting class were of poor quality relative to prior years I’d take the more cynical viewpoint and agree with you. Early options - whether it be single choice, other kind of restricted, or binding, encourages bargaining power to remain with the schools at the expense of students and families. The top schools are no different from any other industry with a few large players: they like to divvy up the customer base amongst themselves. They can’t quite call each other up and take of that, since that’s blatantly in violation of anti-trust laws, but they can set their admission policies to achieve the same overall outcome.

This is getting WAY off topic so I’ll probably stop now. But interesting discussion!

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This is a nice luxury for pretty wealthy people, IMO. Most families who need FA cannot make that “choice”. It also suggests that these people do not believe that all the colleges that claim to be need-blind, really are.

Does UC package loans? That’s one way. What is the expected student contribution? There’s another - both variables in even a full tuition+R&B situation that would be very important to poor families.

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I wasn’t sure there was such a thing as UChicago Derangement Syndrome. Until today. In another thread a rather worked up poster labeled UChicago the North Korea of higher education. I’m now a believer; UCDS is real. But I still have no idea what causes it.

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Hmm semi-related fun fact: when I was in HS I was sad I didn’t get any UChicago mailers I put myself on their mailing list. Your mailed ad results may vary.

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@milee30 #32

Antagonism or even hatred against U of C is nothing new. I was in the Graduate School of Business in the 1980’s and I took graduate classes at the Department of Economics. I also had my undergrad degree from a lower Ivy. I eye witnessed the intense hostility of the East Coast elites against the Chicago School even though the U of C faculty members then were making paradigm shifting research. It might be professional pride or jealousy from the East Coast establishment. But the end result was that phenomenal scholars like Professor Gary Becker (Nobel 1992) and Professor Robert Lucas (Nobel 1995) were “treated like crap” (in Professor Sherwin Rosen’s words) by the East Coast elites. Actually to these days they still have not fully acknowledged their intellectual debt from the Chicago School.

In short, I am not surprised by UCDS. It has existed for a few decades.

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It’s funny, though. Some of these people get incredibly nasty and worked up over a college they don’t attend, profess to respect for its academics and declare they don’t care about.

Reminds me of a jilted ex who shows up at the old GF’s house at 2 AM and stands on the lawn yelling nonsense. “Yeah, I haven’t showered in three weeks since I’m too occupied with stalking your every move but tons of other women really, really want me! I don’t care what you’re doing or who you’re doing it with, you skank. I don’t love you and never did!!!” [Pause] “Could you please come outside? All I want to do is talk to you for five minutes.”

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A propos @85bears46 's observation, John Kenneth Galbraith (Harvard) used to refer sneeringly to “the fine old 18th century minds at the University of Chicago”. While Galbraith was writing witty take-downs of them these antiquated fellows were winning Nobels.

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@OHMomof2 UChicago is “loans free” - my kid discovered that for her this meant $3,000 in work-study which is about 10 hours/week at $10/hr (not sure if that’s what work study kids earn). However, she opted not to work her first year due to a 4-course load each quarter. Surprisingly, her work study was NOT reduced when she was awarded her NM scholarship so conceivably she could have saved whatever she was earning and apply it to her summer earnings amount, but that wasn’t necessary; she was asked to contribute $2,000 from summer earnings which was achievable as she had (and still has) a summer part-time job.

So, to recap, $3,000 work study and $2,000 summer earnings. That’s approximately equal to the amount of federal loans you can take out. We opted not to take out loans; however, it’s certainly possible to and UChicago will process those for you. A $5,000 loan / year for a UChicago student is not at all unreasonable, given the expected earnings those kids achieve upon graduation. Even the unsubsidized interest rates are pretty low, and very low income would get subsidized anyway. So there are options to assist with making this choice a reality.

I’ll agree with your point that families might not trust the system. There’s been good reason not to. Do we really believe that UChicago is “need blind” when they accept applicants via QuestBridge - a screening organization for talented low SES? Also, there is no doubt that they, at the very least, are “need aware” since you check off on the college application supplement whether you want your application fee waived. This, along with the information they collect: high school, parents’ education level and school, parents’ occupation(s), number of siblings and education level (including college), address/zip, etc. all help admissions offices understand your SES profile. Finally, schools in the past have been caught sharing fin. aid. information and policies.

Currently, colleges and uni’s that satisfy “need blind” requirements are exempt from congressional oversight on their tuition practices for the next few years so there’s a huge incentive for admissions offices not to mess that up. A large motivating factor for the push to admit low SES is to prove to the feds that they are economically diverse and admitting based on criteria other than ability to pay. Of course, that doesn’t mean they truly are admitting on a “need-blind” basis, especially if they make low SES a targeted group.

The “luxury” of avoiding fin. aid. isn’t restricted to the wealthy, although in general the likelihood of applying for fin. aid is going to be negatively correlated with income. A lot depends on whether your family considers “elite education” a luxury or a more necessary good. College education might be a good that’s more elastic over parental education levels than it is over income itself. Anecdotally, we see an awful lot of well-off families send their kids off to the state flagship while those of similar or a bit more modest means sacrifice to send their own kids to a top elite while foregoing the fin. aid application. Some in the latter category are in academia and they do NOT trust the system which might explain the decision not to try for fin. aid :slight_smile: But what we’ve also observed is that 100% the decision on where to send your kids depends on where you yourself were educated. Perhaps this is a phenomenon specific to places like the midwest, which is home to several public universities with good engineering and business programs, etc. Not sure (if so, this might also be something seen in CA: a good number of comfortable families send their kids to CSU/UC schools while the UCLA or Berkeley prof. sends his/her kids to Stanford).

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“A propos @85bears46 's observation, John Kenneth Galbraith (Harvard) used to refer sneeringly to “the fine old 18th century minds at the University of Chicago”. While Galbraith was writing witty take-downs of them these antiquated fellows were winning Nobels.”

Galbraith was a hack with a good PR manager.

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“But the end result was that phenomenal scholars like Professor Gary Becker (Nobel 1992) and Professor Robert Lucas (Nobel 1995) were “treated like crap” (in Professor Sherwin Rosen’s words) by the East Coast elites”

Actually, I believed Rosen used another four-letter word which is not allowed on this forum.