@Chrchill How am I putting down Chicago now?! I am just describing how students at elite prep and boarding schools on the east coast make decisions. I have seen it first hand and anyone familiar with that environment like @DeepBlue86 would agree.
I am not singling out Chicago, I definitely put Penn and the other non-HYPSM elite schools in the mix. For example, in places like Exeter, Andover, Choate etc there are a few kids that do Penn ED because Wharton or one of the dual degree programs is their absolute first choice, but most of them who apply Penn ED do so for practical reasons (legacy, they are not at the tippy top of the class so they are being strategic etc). These kids would jump at the chance to pick one or more of the HYPSM schools of their choice. The situation is practically the same for all the other non-HYPSM schools.
This might not the reality in most high schools, but in the hypercompetitive and prestige-conscious microcosm of the elite prep/boarding schools HYPSM is the dream.
In my experience and based on knowledge of what’s happened in elite NY privates, only Wharton undergrad gets invariably picked over UChicago for folks would apply to both. You are still fighting UChicago’s assent in US News. But interestingly you are quite happy with the recent world university ranking where Penn came in 10 and Chicago 9th. MIT does not really belong in this fight. Sui generis.
@Chrchill I think you are really missing my point here. I never said that at elite schools Penn is invariably picked over Chicago…Yes Wharton is picked practically always over any non-HYPSM school,but the rest of Penn is not always picked over other non-HYPSM places. Never disputed that.
Anyway that is irrelevant to what i was saying above. I am not fighting anything, just keeping it real and telling you how elite school kids view colleges. Perceptions do not change just because a school is ranked higher on USNews, no matter how much you want it. non-HYPSM schools have been ranked in the USNews top 5 before for several years but that hasn’t changed the perception. It is very much the case that HYPSM is seen as the pinnacle in those circles. This is not controversial, it is common knowledge.
Your point about the recent world university ranking has nothing to do with what I am saying here. Btw MIT belongs in this conversation. it is the school of choice for the very pointed/ nerdy STEM/Econ kids from the east-coast elite schools.
Hi @Penn95…When you say that Wharton is picked practically always over any non HYPSM, that is a lie like a cathedral. It could be true, only if the student wants to do business (how many top students want to do business by the way?). Among top top students that want to do Econ for example, only Harvard and MIT are considered superior than UChicago. In that area, Yale is miles away from UCh. https://www.crimsoneducation.org/us/blog/best-economic-schools
And here we go…back to the first page of this thread, which is just like most other UChicago threads, where @Chrchill and others start quoting this or that ranking to prove that UChicago is so much better than some portion of the population believes it to be…next, @Cue7 will show up to debunk it. The same arguments, over and over again.
@DeepBlue86 You are forgetting the peace treaty between @Chrchill and @Cue7 . The disputants exchanged eternal vows of friendship. It was a grand synthesis in the best traditions of dialectical discourse at the University of Chicago. (I believe the key provision had something to do with Harvard.)
Rankings are not “proof”. However they are evidence from a reasonably objective third-party with little, if any, axe to grind against any particular school. As such they have have a little more credibility than the anecdotes that many of us have posted on this thread.
When you get 13,000 early apps for a class of ~1,700 (according to @Chrchill’s information) and admit ~3/4 of the class early (the great majority ED1/2, as has been estimated because UChicago hasn’t published its stats: http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/university-chicago/1961894-sobering-statistic-ea-ed1-class-of-2017-university-of-chicago-p1.html ), you can cherrypick to a high-stat average with a great deal of precision. Especially if you waitlist a lot of other high-stats kids from the 15,000 who applied RD and hand out offers on the condition that they’re accepted.
You can certainly cherry-pick. However, if your ED applicants turn out to be duds, you can only get so much from that group stat-wise so probably wouldn’t be choosing such a large number of them for admission. Your yield would suffer - or would turn out not as high as you had hoped - but at least you’d maintain your stats.
Based on the large number of ED (and possibly EDII) who were admitted, UChicago probably didn’t have that problem this past round. They seemed thrilled with the number of high-stats ED kids (ie kids who would probably have been admitted anyway and who also very kindly removed any uncertainly of commitment). That means either that enough kids applied ED as to allow them to cherry-pick quite well, OR the ED pool was a conveniently smaller set of high-stats kids so choosing among them was more like picking all the nice ripe fruit right off the tree w/o much effort. Either way, a bountiful harvest.
Waitlisting high stats, obviously capable kids would mean they either were perceived as low-interest or didn’t have a wow-factor to their application. In that case - yes, you can cherry-pick from among them if need be. But seriously, given the large numbers of waitlisted kids at ALL elite schools, UChicago is by no means alone in that tactic. It’s the actual acceptance rate that is touted, not how many they’ve rejected (or even waitlisted). Surprised they reject anyone.
more importantly, I agree with you!