UChicago - Now a top recipient of Preppies?

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of Chicago ✅
41

@Cue7 I don’t really have an argument, I am reporting what I have observed.

Namely:
a) There are a lot of UChicago students who came from prep schools
b) They aren’t any different from UChicago students around them, and you’d never guess that they came from Choate, Andover, Horace Mann, the National Cathedral School, Harvard-Westlake etc. etc. unless they told you

They aren’t whiter, they aren’t richer, they aren’t preppier, they aren’t more likely to major in econ, and they don’t even seem to wear more Canada Goose than other students…

I don’t think it’s unreasonable to guess that if the shift is new, then the shift is a step before UChicago - and that this is a consequence of the elite prep schools making same transition away from rich, white and preppy that the Ivy League did, not a step for UChicago towards preppiness.

I’m very confused why you find this so hard to believe. You can report statistics until you’re blue in the face but that isn’t going to change the fact on the ground that you couldn’t pick out which UChicago students came from prep schools and which didn’t.

42

When we went to accepted student visits two years ago, there was a group of completely obnoxious prep students at the presentation by the admissions director They sat together, maybe 8 of them, and talked the WHOLE time, in spite of other students and parents on all side of them asking them to be quiet. It was just beyond rude. We were about 2/3 of the way back in a large room, so the head of admissions wasn’t really aware. Then when he came walking down the aisle to leave, one of them jumped up and high fived him, which he gleefully high fived back. It was the final turnoff for my kid after a less than stellar visit – she said, “If those kids are going here, I’m not”. Couldn’t blame her a bit. They were NOT the historical UC types. Heard them talking about how UC was the highest ranked school they had gotten into, so were planning to attend. My kid just rolled her eyes. I bet you would NOT have seen that crowd 10 years ago at an accepted student event.

43

JHS,

For your reference, I purposely left out Phila-area prep schools (schools that I believe you’re referring to) because they skew so strongly towards one undergrad, Penn. To give you an example, here are college matriculation numbers at Germantown Friends School, arguably the top private school in the Phila area:

http://www.germantownfriends.org/admissions/college-matriculation/index.aspx

Technically, Brown U is the third most popular choice amongst GFS grads, with 15 grads going on to Brown in the past 5 years. That number doesn’t hold a candle to the top recipient of GFS grads, Penn - which had 57 GFS grads matriculate in the past 5 years.

Those numbers are similar at lots of other Phila-area private schools (Haverford School, Episcopal Academy, etc.), so I didn’t even bother putting those schools on the list. Frankly, they are feeders to Penn first and foremost, with the rest of the top students scattering to a wide range of schools. In this way, they differ from the NYC prep schools and certainly the prominent boarding schools, where no one undergrad is so disproportionately represented. I’m not sure why the Phila schools are this way, but that’s how it is.

Re your broader point, yes, Chicago was certainly popular back in the day amongst a subset of prep school students. It never, though had the broad popularity and allure of schools like Georgetown, Brown, Yale, etc. Those were the schools that large swaths of the class wanted to go to, and the numbers backed that up. It’s why if you look back at old Andover/Exeter data, Chicago is popular (with 4-6 students every year going there), but behind Yale or Brown (8-12 every year, at least).

Now, Chicago - at many places - seems to have bumped up in terms of receiving broader interest. I don’t think, in the past 5 years, the subset of academically-minded students at Andover or Exeter has increased that much. Rather, Chicago seems to be targeting a broader subset of the A/E population, and succeeding in recruiting these students.

It goes toward my thesis that Chicago is succeeding in attracting a broader swath of these prep students. That has to make some sort of impact on the student body, which, in my day, was about as academic as you could get.

(Also, zinhead, Chicago is also making strides in attracting URMs and first gen students - it’s actually a market leader in terms of scholarships/programs offered for these students. I think the end result then, is that the classically quirky [probably white] Chicago student is not as well represented now as he/she was in the past.)

HydeSnark, a final comment - you said that the dorm can tell more about the student than anything else. In my day, ALL the dorms were known for being fairly quirky. Snell-Hitchcock may have been a bit more quirky than others, but Burton-Judson, the Shoreland, Breck, Woodward, etc. ALL had iconoclastic vibes. Now, it seems that not all dorms are like that, and that in and of itself is telling.

44

LACs also have a disproportionately high intake from prep schools. All this is telling me is that certain schools are becoming more focused on recruiting low income/1st gen students to increase diversity.

45

But has that proportion changed over time? And do those schools have a historical culture that isn’t really a great fit with typical prep school culture? Maybe specific ones (Swat, Mudd, Reed) could be examined for prep school intake – they are probably the most UC-like historically.

46

HydeSnark,

We’re talking about two different time periods (my time and your time) so visibility is lacking on both ends. This being said, I don’t think the prep grads are necessarily any different than the broader swath of Chicago students, BUT I do think the broader swath of Chicago students has changed - and the influx of the prep grads plays into that.

Put another way, I think the group hit hardest by recent changes at Chicago is the intensely academic, esoteric, and probably white (and probably male) student. Of all groups, THAT’s the group that is diminishing in its representation on campus.

I personally think this is a good thing, but the statistics on ALL fronts seem to back this assertion. Chicago now is more diverse ethnically than ever before. Chicago now is more athletic (based on the success of its sports teams) than ever before. Chicago students now pursue extra-curriculars with more verve than they ever have (given the growth of extra-curriculars on campus). Chicago students pursue finance/consulting jobs at higher numbers than they ever have before.

It may be that the prep students blend right in with the rest of the student body on this front. The influx of more prep students, though, reinforces and strengthens most of the differences over time that I outlined in the paragraph above.

To you, it may seem that most of the student body is characteristically quirky and academically intense, but you may lose track of how now, the difference between Chicago and other schools is a difference in degree, not a difference in kind. (I assure you, when I attended, Chicago was different in kind - it did not at all resemble the experiences found at other top undergrads.)

47

I went to an East Coast BS. In a recent letter from the head, he noted how the number of students admitted to the Ivies had fallen “significantly” over the years as a result of the universities desire to recruit a more diverse student body. Students are now actively discouraged from applying to some universities, while other students are being told to think more broadly.

Chicago is attracting more students because it is far from the “place that fun loves to die” of folklore and because it is actively seeking out students from diverse backgrounds. Fund raising has also enabled Chicago to offer FA that is the equal of its peer group.

I personally hope that Chicago does not lose too much of what once made it unCommon.

48

@Cue7: I’m not certain why you left out Philadelphia-area prep schools. Sure, they send a lot of kids to Penn (many of them legacies or facbrats), but they send kids elsewhere, too.

I stopped following Germantown Friends college admissions years ago, and I can’t tell you what a tectonic shift the list you posted represents. It’s not much of a secret that the school I was referring to in my post above was GFS. As of 2003, the top five colleges for the previous ten years (which is what they published then) were Penn, Harvard, Chicago, Yale, and Haverford. In what would have been my older child’s GFS class had she stayed there, out of a class of 95, 10 kids went to Penn, three to Chicago, two to Yale, and four to Haverford. Also three to Stanford, two of whom turned down Harvard, four to Brown, and three to Oberlin. A kid going to Pitt or Temple was very rare. (A kid going to Penn State was even more rare, and apparently still is.)

49

Anybody have the 2018 Class demographic information for Chicago. Can’t seem to find it anywhere. The 2019 information is available now and that seems to show a dramatic uptick in diversity, specially the Asian and International %. I don’t remember either being that high in the past years.

Would be interesting to compare with 2018 to see what the freshman class looked like for class of 2018.

50

@VeryLuckyParent https://web.archive.org/web/20150523000627/http://collegeadmissions.uchicago.edu/page/profile-class-2018

51

@HydeSnark Thank you! Looks like across the board increase!

52

VeryLuckyParent:

For an even broader view, compare the Class of 2012 (before the new Admissions regime) to the Class of 2019.

Here’s the Class of 2012: https://web.archive.org/web/20080911212831/http://collegeadmissions.uchicago.edu/admissions/classprofile.shtml

And here’s the Class of 2019: https://collegeadmissions.uchicago.edu/page/profile-class-2019

The biggest differences are the number of asian, hispanic, and international students in the class. Asian-Americans have bumped up from about 15% of the class to 28% of the class (!). Hispanics are up from, historically, 10% of the class to 15% of the class. Also, internationals have bumped up from 10% of the class to 13% of the class.

The most stark differences seem to be: there are a LOT more Asian-Americans at Chicago now than 5-7 years ago. Also, test scores have gone up a LOT - the score bands are higher and narrower.

I’m not sure what this means overall, but it supports the general assertion that Chicago is nowhere near as predominantly white (and skewing male) than it used to be.

53

@Cue7 What a treasure chest of interesting information! The Asian enrollment trend at UChicago tells me that there may be some merit to the case against Harvard that they and other Ivies are actively trying to cap Asian enrollment. Its one thing for a technical University like Caltech to have high Asian enrollment, but when a school like Chicago starts inching close to 30% while the Ivies do not, it looks very very strange.

54

Wish they’d make their Common Data Set available – that would truly be a treasure chest of info!

55

If you make some reasonable assumptions about the actual racial/ethnic composition of people who decline to identify their race or who identify as mixed-race, and of international students, I think most of the Ivies have somewhere around 30% Asian undergraduate students (including a few HAPA). Maybe even higher. That’s what it looks like walking around their campuses, too, although the presence of lots of Asian grad students may affect the streetscape.

56

I think the international students are not counted in the race mix statistics published by the schools. Those are only for US students. International Asians are accounted for in the International student mix. If you count international students’ races in the diversity numbers then UChicago will be even higher, since China, India, Korea are probably the top 3 countries (excluding Canada) sending undergrads to Chicago

I think till last year at least UChicago was similar to the Ivies and even now the overall mix is about the same, so maybe last year was an anomaly, but if this year’s trend also shows close to 30% US Asian Americans in the freshman class, then they are definitely marching down a different path than the Ivies.

57

@JHS - you asked why I left out the Phila-area prep schools. I did so because, unlike NYC-area prep schools or New England prep/boarding schools, the Phila-area prep schools do NOT have broad placement. Essentially, the phila schools place at Penn, and small handfuls of top students go elsewhere. These schools are totally skewed toward Penn, and it’s hard to see which other schools are popular.

Some examples:

At Germantown Friends: http://www.germantownfriends.org/admissions/college-matriculation/index.aspx

Nearly 60 grads went to Penn in the past five years - about 12 a year. In comparison, about 3 a year go to Brown, and 2 a year go to Yale. It’s hard to make determinations about what other top undergrads are popular - GFS primarily just feeds into Penn.

At Penn Charter School: http://www.penncharter.com/uploaded/ssexton/college_counseling/2013-14_profile_final.pdf

Nearly 60 Penn Charter grads went to Penn in the past five years - about 12 a year. No other top school regularly receives significant numbers of Penn Charter grads. PCS primarily just feeds into Penn - it’s numbers skew extremely hard in this direction.

At Episcopal Academy: https://www.episcopalacademy.org/uploaded/About/Forms/College_Profileprint.pdf

Nearly 50 Episcopal grads went to Penn in the past five years - about 10 a year. No other top school is represented.

At the Agnes Irwin School: https://www.agnesirwin.org/uploaded/Admission/Downloads/MatricList2010-2013.pdf

20 have gone to Penn in 4 years, with a few going to Harvard, a handful to Princeton, etc.

Contrast that with top NYC prep schools or NE Boarding Schools.

At Horace Mann in NYC: https://www.horacemann.org/uploaded/PDFs/Forms/2014_College_attended_List.pdf

Chicago was the most popular with 63 grads going there, but other top schools are at least in the ballpark - 61 went to Columbia, 40 went to Cornell, etc.

At Trinity School in NYC: http://www.trinityschoolnyc.org/Page/Our-Program/College-Counseling/Trinity-School-Matriculation

A range of top schools are popular - around 30 went to Cornell, Penn, and Columbia, with Harvard, Yale, and Chicago popular too.

At Andover: https://www.andover.edu/Academics/CollegeCounseling/Documents/PhillipsAcademySchoolProfile2015-2016.pdf

In the past five years, lots of top schools are popular - Harvard, Yale, Chicago, Columbia, etc. The numbers are much more spread out.

For Philadelphia-area schools, the numbers are so concentrated with one school that they skew the data. You could reliably call Andover or Horace Mann feeders to Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Chicago, etc. - to a range of schools. You couldn’t reliably call a Phila-area school a feeder for any top school other than Penn.

Put another way, in terms of placement, the Phila-area schools do NOT seem similarly situated to NYC or NE (or even IL) prep/boarding schools, so I didn’t include them in my analysis. It appears that popular exits from phila-area schools are quite different than at Andover and Horace Mann (Andover and Horace Mann seem to resemble each other, and the Phila schools do not resemble Andover or Horace Mann).

58

How many students does a high school need to send to a University a year for it to be considered a feeder school? Is there some universally recognized number. Will five a year qualify, 10, 20? Or is it measured by what % of the admits to that University are from that school?

59

@VeryLuckyParent - not sure, but if you’re sending 2-3 per year (even with a generally small class size), I don’t think you qualify as a feeder, especially if other schools are sending 10-15 per year.

In my view, none of the Phila-area schools qualify as feeders to a wide range of top colleges. The NYC prep schools, NE Boarding Schools, etc. seem to have more pronounced standing as feeders.

60

I think my D’s private school typically sends a few kids a year (range is probably 1-5) – which seems to be considerably fewer than @TrazCapDEV’s much smaller school in the same (as yet unmentioned) city.

Not sure what people think is at stake in the “feeder” designation, but my sense is D’s school is a known quantity to U of C but not a go-to source for things like waitlist admissions. And, conversely, that D’s school isn’t steering kids to U of C though the demographic is one where there will always be families that already know about Chicago and students who are seeking what it has to offer.