Thanks for the TJ data Data! This is one more data point about UChicago’s widening geographic reach, which I personally applaud. It’s not quite deep into the South like I imagined, but I take it as just another data point.
With so many public Us represented, TJ’s data also shows the value aspect. At least there aren’t a bunch going to West Virginia (party!) but it’s a bit surprising that Maryland doesn’t snag more of the class.
Harker is a very expensive STEM focused school. I was just showing that at one STEM dominant school, Chicago doesn’t do as well.
Chicago’s incoming stats appear similar to Carnegie Mellon’s (below) but Chicago has a stronger international reputation.
CMU has 12% more undergrads than Chicago so it should get 25 from TJ instead of 39? MIT should have 15 based on its % of undergrads. For UIUC, one would need to consider how many are admitted out of state.
Chicago is doing a fabulous job with economic and geographic diversity with top students. How is it accomplishing that while moving up the rankings and competing favorably with Ivies?
They just work super hard to leave no stone unturned. We saw this just in the number of visits by the regional admissions officer to my son’s high school, an urban prep with a lot of first gen and low SES. Despite sending a few kids to the Ivies or Stanford every year, mainly as recruited athletes, I don’t recall anywhere near the number of admissions visits from these other places. One sent a “freshman rep” who had attended an area high school and happened to be home on break, so there’s that. UChicago has just made more of an effort to develop a relationship, and happily it’s starting to pay off with additional matriculants.
Some of the public colleges have an enormous amount of applications. For example, in most years ~80% of the senior class applied to UVA, and a good portion of the class attends I expect Maryland primarily gets much fewer due to being out of state. As listed below, a good portion seem to apply to Maryland, but with only a 9% yield, not many attend.
A list of applications, admit rate and yield for 2017 is below (latest year for which I could find # applicants and # accepted for all discussed colleges). Among selective privates, the most applied to colleges were Cornell, CMU, and Stanford. The highest yield colleges were Stanford, MIT, and Harvard/Princeton (tie). And the lowest admit rate colleges were Stanford, Harvard, and Princeton. All of these highest… colleges are known for CS/tech ( Harvard less than others). The techy slant probably contribute to why Chicago and Yale had fewer applications than some of the others below. Note that some of the colleges listed below have <10 admits, making it a small sample size that may not be representative of multi-year averages.
TJ Class of 2017: Ordered Most to Least Applications
UVA: 79% applied, 56% admit rate, 32% yield, 14% attended
VA Tech: 55% applied, 78% admit rate, 23% yield, 10% attended
William & Mary: 45% applied, 74% admit rate, 27% yield, 8% attended
Cornell: 37% applied, 16% admit rate, 52% yield, 3% attended
CMU: 32% applied, 26% admit rate, 42% yield, 3% attended
Michigan: 31% applied, 46% admit rate, 25% yield, 4% attended
Stanford: 28% applied, 6% admit rate, 83% yield, 1% attended
Penn: 28% applied, 13% admit rate, 40% yield, 1% attended
GA Tech: 26% applied, 32% admit rate, 3% yield? (may be misprint)
Princeton: 25% applied, 8% admit rate, 67% yield, 2% attended
Duke: 23% applied, 13% admit rate, 54% yield, 2% attended
Berkeley: 23% applied, 35% admit rate, 32% yield, 3% attended
MIT: 22% applied, 11% admit rate, 80% yield, 2% attended
GMU: 22% applied, 96% admit rate, 8% yield, 2% attended
Harvard: 21% applied, 7% admit rate, 67% yield, 1% attended
Maryland: 20% applied, 62% admit rate, 9% yield, 1% attended
VCU: 18% applied, 98% admit rate, 14% yield, 2% attended
Pitt: 17% applied, 100% admit rate, 14% yield, 2% attended
Yale: 17% applied, 11% admit rate, 50% yield, 1% attended
Purdue: 17% applied, 65% admit rate, 15% yield, 2% attended
Chicago: 16% applied, 18% admit rate, 50% yield, 1% attended
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Great data. UofC seems somewhat comparable to Cornell and Duke at this STEM focused HS. It may be attracting better applicants and admitting and yielding at similar rates.
One of the big factors that people are ignoring is geographical distribution of wealth, effects of geography on matriculation, and the relationships between wealth and attending an “elite” college.
Wealth is concentrated in the East Coast, and, to a lesser degree California. Overall, East Coast kids prefer East Coast schools, and West Coast kids prefer West Coast schools.
So based on these factors alone, we would expect a higher matriculation rate to East Coast “elite” colleges, followed by West Coast “elites”, with Midwestern “elites” trailing.
That is why UChicago often has fewer matriculation from high schools which serve the wealthy than do the Ivies and Stanford, as does Vanderbilt, and that is why U Michigan has lower yield than UCLA and Berkeley, and why WUSTL has lower yield than similar colleges in the Coasts, and why colleges like Carleton, Macalester, Kenyon, or Grinnell have lower application numbers and yield than do similar East Coast LACs or the Claremont Colleges.
In short, about 70% of all students attending all the colleges mentioned here are from the top 20% by income, and the vast majority of these families live closer to the Ivies or Stanford than they do to U Chicago, and students tend to attend colleges which are not too far away.
You can also add the disregard that many people on the coasts have for every state from Ohio to Nevada (and south of North Carolina).
So no matter how good U Chicago is, it will not have the same popularity at high schools (public or private) which serve the wealthiest families that the most popular Ivies and Stanford have.
Agreed. Which is why UChicagos increasing geographic footprint is remarkable, and to me, the right move. It should widen its scope in the south, California and the east coast where it is less talked about. The Midwest and mountain west are already a lock. The southwest is somewhere in between but I would like to see more outreach to the non-TX portions.
Because there are “life of the mind’ types everywhere.
UChicago, because of some unique characteristics, doesn’t have to go head to head with H and S all the time.
What is the source for Chicago having fewer matriculations from HSs that serve the wealthy? The first post in this thread emphasized Chicago’s relatively high matriculation rate from Beverly Hills HS. Beverly Hills is not exactly known for lack of wealthy kids. Later posts emphasized Chicago’s high matriculation rate from “top prep schools”, which are also known for having a high rate of wealthy students.
Chicago also doesn’t seem to do particularly well in measures of portion lower income students compared to HYPSM… type colleges. Some example numbers for Pell grants and freshman surveys are below.
Chicago – 11% Pell Grants
Harvard – 18% Pell Grants
Stanford – 18% Pell Grants
MIT – 19% Pell Grant
Yale – 20% Pell Grants
Princeton – 21% Pell Grants
Chicago 2020 Freshman Survey (most recent I found online with detailed breakdown)
2% report <$15k income, 3.6% report $15-$30k income, 7.4% report $30-$60k income (13% total <$60k income), 17% $200-$300k, 15% $300-$500k, 16% >$500k
Harvard 2020 Freshman Survey
14.5% report <$40k income, 19% $250-$500k, 16% >$500k
For its population, California has very few private “elite” college options. Cal Tech, Stanford and The Claremont Consortium are pretty much it. USC, and maybe Santa Clara, too? I don’t mean to offend by leaving any out. Point is combined, that is what? 7000-ish spots for any admission year? And how many of those are filled by out of state students? Half? For a state of 40 million, the pickings are slim.
Not everyone wants the big UC experience, as great as those schools are. It is no wonder that UofC sees California, especially its higher SES high schools (public or private), as a fertile hunting ground.
I am not seeing anything that contradicts that theory in any of the data presented.
I am guessing the OP is delighted by the reaction to his (to me obviously) tongue in cheek posts. But hey - it is a great discussion!
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Pell data is outdated and I wouldn’t rely on the student surveys as they haven’t been updated for a few years now. UChicago launched Empower a couple of years ago (for class of 2023) and pulled in a higher number of kids in the Pell-grant income group ($60k? Can’t recall the exact cut off) but that information isn’t publicly available yet. UChicago probably doesn’t have the number of Pells as HYPSM (still) but it’s getting closer. Class size and efforts to diversify have been moving targets for a few years and both figures impact the numerator and denominator of that percentage. We need to see how the dust settles to understand better the impact of some of these newer initiatives.
Also, fyi UChicago admits about 20-25% of their class as Odyssey Scholars which entitles the admit to full tuition and R&B. Family income in that group is only a bit higher than those qualifying for Pells, and there will be a large crossover. If you are admitted you will qualify automatically; it’s a need-based program so separate from merit aid. That’s why it’s a bit inaccurate only to look at Pell data. UChicago’s need-based program is more continuous across the lower income groups than some of the peer schools.
I would not assume that wealth is concentrated on the coasts. And you really need to examine wealthy families with HS aged kids. The fact that lots of billionaires end up in Texas to retire doesn’t tell you much about the location of the surgeons married to the law firm partner in the suburbs of St. Louis, Minneapolis, Cincinnati, Nashville, etc.
Nonetheless- among the “merely affluent” and uber-wealthy families I’ve known throughout the years (yes, in some of those non-coastal cities) there is a clear divide between First Gen wealth (striver or entrepreneurial family, sometimes first Gen American as well, sometimes first Gen to college) and families where there is multi-generational wealth. Often the children of multi-generational wealthy families “don’t want to work that hard” (to be delicate). They aren’t applying to Chicago-- because. And they aren’t applying to Harvard or Princeton either. There’s a long list of schools much beloved by the guidance counselors at second tier prep schools because that’s where the old “Gentleman C” kids need to be.
Chicago? Not happening. If you’re used to spending every vacation in Gstaad or taking off for long weekends to visit the family compound in St. Barts, do you really want to be grinding away to pass your classes at U Chicago?
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Ooops - I meant yield, not matriculation. I miswrote (is that a word even?).
You may have miswrote, @MWolf , but you wrote good. Hard to measure those geographical/wealth correlations, but they are part of what’s going on here. Even more hard to measure is a sort of feeling that while the coasts each have a sort of glamour cum status, the midwest, with its winters, its earnestness, its Lutherans, and its murders, lacks glitz. You’ve got to be sort of hardboiled to see the charm.
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The Pell numbers I posted are for 2018-19, which is the most recent in IPEDS and other federal reporting sources. The previous 8 years are all +/- 1% from the listed 11% for Chicago. It looks like Chicago increased to 13%-14% more recently, depending on source. The Empower program you mentioned and other initiatives have been credited as a key factor in the increase . It’s good that Chicago is taking steps to improve SES diversity. Nevertheless, 13-14% is still significantly below the listed other colleges, so the general point still remains. I do not see any evidence of Chicago struggling to get matriculations from wealthy kids and instead getting more matriculations form lower/middle income kids, compared to peers.
The yield information that has been posted in this thread is very limited. Chicago seems to have a very high yield in recent years at Beverly Hills HS, has claims of a high yield at College Prep HS, and has a respectable yield among a few kids at TJ (Chicago’s 50% yield was same as Yale).
I see no reason to assume Chicago’s yield suffers among wealthy kids or wealthy HSs. If I had to guess, I’d expect the opposite relationship. Wealthy kids are more likely to apply ED (has been demonstrated in numerous studies), and yield is highest for ED applicants. In contrast, kids who attend less wealthy HSs are often less knowledgeable about the benefits of applying early and sometimes avoid applying ED for FA reasons.
Yep - things changed beginning last year and my estimate would be about 14% Pells as well now. On that metric alone they lag HYPSM. However, again the Odyssey program which is unique to UChicago might be providing funds that aren’t captured just by looking at the number of Pells. I’d also look at total % receiving financial aid. There’s evidence that the push to increase enrollment beginning in 2017 skewed the class a bit more wealthy but we’d have to see the impact overall post ED/enrollment push/Empower/Covid. So check back in about three years’ time. 
So again, UChicago is a bit outside the norm here and may not fall under the general trends defined by everyone else. Due to the funding guarantees provided for families below a certain income level under the various initiatives, there is no reason NOT to apply ED. Some students may opt for non-binding because they wish to try their luck elsewhere as well. But for those who have a clear preference for UChicago for reasons other than financial funding, ED is the way to go especially if your family income qualifies you for full tuition or full tuition and R&B. There are a higher number of students of need getting admitted this way than people might be aware.
It looks like U Chicago has upped its yield substantially in the past few years. From around 40% in 2010, to 60% in 2015, to 77% in 2019. It also coincides with (as much as I could find), increased number of students from the Coasts attending (from 41% in class of 2020 to 52% in class of 2024, couldn’t find earlier than class of 2020).
Interestingly, in the Chetty data, which was mostly from before U Chicago became as popular as it is today, it had a smaller percent of high income kids (58% in the top 20%, compared to Harvard’s 67%). This does indicate a relationship between yield and popularity among wealthy.
However, there are also colleges which have high yield because they are popular for other reasons than being “elite” (like BYU which is popular among LDS applicants everywhere). These would have different constraints than distance from the wealthy communities.
Is this related to Chicago having both an ED I & II option more recently which maybe they didn’t have in 2010? Might explain some of the reason for increase in yield?