<p>Admissions</a> yield for College grows to 47 percent, with greater diversity | UChicago News</p>
<p>“As a result of the yield increase, the size of the incoming class is projected to be about 1,525, representing a one-time increase in the number of first-years. Admissions officials had anticipated growth in yield, though the final figure represents a record increase.“The passion of these students for the University of Chicago exceeded all our expectations,” Nondorf said.”</p>
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<p>Admissions yield for College grows to 47 percent, with greater diversity
By Jeremy Manier
May 18, 2012</p>
<p>The proportion of admitted undergraduate students who chose to attend the University of Chicago increased this year from 40 percent to 47 percent, reflecting greater diversity and broad enthusiasm for educational opportunities in the undergraduate College.</p>
<p>Such a large increase in admissions yield is unusual, and it is one indication of growing interest in the College among students of high ability around the world, said John W. Boyer, dean of the College.</p>
<p>“This is a sign of the College’s extraordinary strength,” Boyer said. “Students are increasingly attracted to the University’s unique combination of intellectual rigor, robust commitment to the liberal arts, and attention to student success after college, all set in one of the world’s great cities.”</p>
<p>Measures of diversity and academic accomplishment increased across the board for the class that will enter the College in fall of 2012. The class includes record proportions of Latino and African American students; overall, students of color account for 42 percent of the incoming class, also a new high for the College.</p>
<p>More students from families with low to moderate incomes will enter the College as well. Such students have additional incentive to choose UChicago because of the transformative Odyssey Scholarships program, now celebrating its fifth anniversary. The scholarships reduce or eliminate student loans for those with annual family incomes of less than $90,000. Nearly 2,000 students have benefitted from the scholarships, launched with an anonymous gift of $100 million and maintained with smaller donations.</p>
<p>Growing awareness of the Odyssey Scholarships has helped increase applications and yield, said James G. Nondorf, Vice President and Dean of College Admissions and Financial Aid.</p>
<p>“Students of all backgrounds and all income levels have more ways to choose UChicago now,” Nondorf said.</p>
<p>Diversity of thought is a central value at the University of Chicago, and a prime reason why the growth in diversity of the College is so vital, officials said.</p>
<p>College faculty members also contributed to the increase in yield, Nondorf said. Faculty in the College participated in more on-campus events for prospective students than ever before, helping to convey a distinctive sense of intellectual life at the University.</p>
<p>Enduring values, new initiatives help attract students</p>
<p>As a result of the yield increase, the size of the incoming class is projected to be about 1,525, representing a one-time increase in the number of first-years. Admissions officials had anticipated growth in yield, though the final figure represents a record increase.“The passion of these students for the University of Chicago exceeded all our expectations,” Nondorf said.</p>
<p>The increased yield comes in a year when the College also attracted 25,307 applications and lowered its acceptance rate to 13.3 percent — record figures for the College. Increasing numbers of prospective students and their families have chosen to visit the University as well.</p>
<p>Factors that may have contributed to the increase in yield include the continuing appeal of the College’s Core curriculum, increases in financial aid, more opportunities for study abroad and career preparation, and other recent initiatives that have contributed to student life in the College and across the University.</p>
<p>For example, the new David and Reva Logan Center for the Arts began its preview period in March, adding abundant new spaces for students interested in music, dance, theater, film, and the visual arts. The new Institute of Politics, announced in January, will be led by inaugural director David Axelrod, AB’76, who will help students pursue career opportunities in public service. The new institute will add to the success of career preparation initiatives already underway for students pursuing careers in business, journalism, health, science, technology, law and the arts.</p>
<p>The University’s Center in Paris and Center in Beijing have enjoyed widespread popularity among College students in recent years, as have the Civilization Programs in global cities such as Vienna, Barcelona, Pune, Oaxaca, Rome, Athens, and Jerusalem. Last year also saw the opening of the innovative Mansueto Library, which has become a campus hub for study and research.</p>
<p>All of those initiatives are adding to the University’s established reputation as an intellectual destination for preeminent scholars and practitioners in many fields.</p>
<p>“A lot went right to attract this extraordinary class of incoming students,” Nondorf said. “What’s most encouraging is that they’re coming because of who we are as a university community. That’s a permanent strength.”</p>
<p>Yes. The official yield is 46.8%. It is confirmed.</p>
<p>[2012</a> College Admission Yields](<a href=“http://thechoice.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/18/2012-yield-and-wait-list/]2012”>Early Word on 2012 College Admission Yields and Wait-List Offers - The New York Times)</p>
<p>Wow holy mother of God! UChicago overenrolled this year by a wide margin… It has close to the same yield as Dartmouth, which practices Early Decision.</p>
<p>UChicago could easily have had a lower admit rate this year if it wanted --or known the yield would be this high. This just confirms UChicago is rocketing upward and admit rate will fall even further–with even higher yield next year.
I’m assuming that means no one from the waitlist.</p>
<p>This is so bizarre. I am really curious why UChicago was not more conservative with its acceptances this past year. UChicago accepted 3344 students this year. While maybe they didn’t expect 47% of students to accept the offer, why did they accept so many students in the first place?!</p>
<p>Over-enrollment by ~150 students really puts a strain on the physical plant of the school for no good reason. Doubles will be converted into triples, makeshift housing may be created, etc. It very well could have an adverse effect on some students’ experiences. </p>
<p>I’m not at all sure why this happened in the first place when the clear solution was simple - admit fewer students and take a few off the waitlist, if needed. UChicago’s accept rate this year should have been ~11%, not 13%. </p>
<p>I guess, with so much over-enrollment this year, the next couple years of admissions will be really difficult. I’d imagine the classes of 2017 and 2018 will maybe have ~1300-1350 kids to compensate for the massive size of the Class of 2016. That means the accept rate should be ~11% for the next couple years.</p>
<p>Unless, of course, the goal is to make each class massive and stay at ~1500 per year, which is huge, and MUCH bigger than the classes were only ~6 years ago.</p>
<p>It is really good news. One most important factor for the highest ever yield which Manier did not mention is Harvard and Princeton’s reclaim of restrictive early action programs. Harvard prospectives applied to Harvard, Princeton’s prospectives applied to Princeton. Once some of those folks get accepted in the early round, they don’t have to apply to other schools which will lose them otherwise.
Some of us talked about UChicago’s admit rate in the beginning of this year, predicted a healthy 12~13% admit rate, but admissions office just ignored our suggestions, maybe they just like a big class, maybe next year, they will have a class over 1600 students.</p>
<p>I predicted UChicago would get to a 50% yield rate within 5 years. Instead it got close with in 1 year. (Probably higher next year.)</p>
<p>The entering class won’t be “MUCH bigger than the classes were only ~6 years ago.” My daughter’s entering class in 2005 was around 1,300, and my son’s two years later was close to 1,400. The entering class in 2006 wasn’t much smaller. My son was assigned to a forced triple in the Shoreland that had been a triple the year before, too. That’s not to say that 1,525 isn’t a meaningful increase, but it’s a 10-12% increase, not more than that.</p>
<p>The big jump in class size happened a few years before that, basically when Max Palevsky Residential Commons opened. They had a planned increase from about 1,000 students/class to what was supposed to be 1,250 students, but they started missing that target almost immediately, and it became apparent that the real target was more like 1,350.</p>
<p>I don’t think they have a lot of places they can use for forced triples anymore – no more cavernous Shoreland doubles. My understanding is that they are going to create at least one new undergraduate house in International House, in the rooms heretofore used for visitors, and maybe another in the new graduate student housing near South Campus and BJ. The main effect will probably be to delay the demolition of Pierce by a year or two. I think they were planning to use those spaces as temporary undergraduate housing anyway while Pierce was being replaced, but this means that they will need the alternative spaces AND Pierce for a while.</p>
<p>I note that Yale is budgeting more than half a billion dollars for dorm space to increase target class size from about 1,325 to 1,525 – after spending that much or more renovating all the existing residential colleges – and Princeton spent not much less than that for a new dorm in connection with expanding its class size from 1,100 to about 1,300. So far, Chicago has spent less than $120 million on new dorm space to go from 1,000 to 1,525, and part of that was offset by selling the Shoreland. (Chicago, of course, only houses about half its students anyway.) Students can be forgiven for continuing to prefer Yale or Princeton to Chicago on that basis alone.</p>
<p>The trouble is if you continue 1525 for 4 years, you get a college of 6,100 students. 1300 students a year gives you 5,200.</p>
<p>I would prefer to see the college reduce enrollment. I think the college should be a more intimate environment. How is anyone supposed to get into a small class with a renowned professor when 6000 other people are bidding for it? It also means more competition for research positions and grants. Also, having more graduates means each graduate is less “special” on the job market or in going into academia. I’d be totally fine with the college having only 4000 students</p>
<p>If they were getting such a high yield, why were they admitting 15 people of waitlist in the middle of April? That does not make any sense.</p>
<p>JHS,</p>
<p>My apologies - I was ballparking figures a bit. In doing a bit more research, it appears that UChicago had ~1000-1100 students per class in the early 2000s, not the mid-2000s, as I previously thought. See:</p>
<p>[Admissions</a> sees increase in College selectivity – The Chicago Maroon](<a href=“Behind the scenes of new exhibit, our reviewer gets Smart to the art of the print – Chicago Maroon”>Behind the scenes of new exhibit, our reviewer gets Smart to the art of the print – Chicago Maroon)</p>
<p>At the same time, I think we’re on the same page. In ~9 years (you’re right, not 6 years, as I said before), UChicago’s College has gotten MUCH bigger. It’s probably about 40% bigger now than it was in 2002-2003. </p>
<p>I don’t know of any other top college that has grown by about 40% in under a decade. </p>
<p>Yale and Princeton, as you said, have spent close to half a billion dollars to grow their colleges, and the growth of both of these schools has not been as dramatic. </p>
<p>UChicago’s encouraged all this growth at a bargain basement price, comparatively. Even if viewed liberally, I doubt anyone could argue UChicago spent much more than $200M to grow the college by about 40% in 9 years. </p>
<p>It’s disappointing to note that, in terms of dollars spent (which does signify attention and care to a particular group), it doesn’t seem as if UChicago has invested all that much in such significant growth. The size of the faculty has not increased in commensurate fashion (JHS, you may know the stats better than I, but in the 90s, I’m pretty sure there was about a 4/1 student/faculty ratio at UChicago. Nowadays I imagine it’s about 8/1. There are more dorms and a larger gym, but, outside of the arts center that is just being finished, the size of the physical plant has not increased all that much. </p>
<p>I highly doubt that classroom space has been increased by ~30%-40% in 9 years, the size of the faculty certainly has not increased by that amount, and it’s not as if the other areas for student life (Hutch Commons, Ida Noyes, etc.) have gotten any larger.</p>
<p>Perhaps the culture of this (now significantly larger) college is the same as it always has been, perhaps it’s different. The size of the school alone, however, makes it considerably different now than ~9 years ago. A college with ~900-1000 graduates a class (say, what was the case in 2001) can reasonably be called an intimate learning environment. 1500+ students doesn’t quite have the same feel. </p>
<p>Bigger isn’t always better - especially if growth in the size of a college isn’t accompanied by other areas of growth (faculty, facilities, physical plant, etc.).</p>
<p>I’m guessing that there were special circumstances involving those 15 people</p>
<p>It is a much larger class than last year and it did sound like they were having a bed problem last year.</p>
<p>apparently they did not take any off the wait list for this year but offered to take those 15 if they took a gap year…but since the admissions situation will most likely only be tighter next year as UChicago’s popularity grows, and the college is over-enrolled again this year, I wonder why they took anyone at all from the waitlist.</p>
<p>This is how rumors spread. If the quote in the Chicago Sun Times article is accurate, they took 15 off the waitlist; as Doinschool wrote, probably special circumstances like needing the left-handed oboist, or the crew coxswain or some such. THEN near to or after May 1, the made some gap year offers. I understood that both things happened.</p>
<ol>
<li> I don’t know anything about this year’s waitlist admitees at Chicago, but a few years ago I knew a kid who was admitted to Harvard off the waitlist in mid-April, in a year when Harvard hardly used its waitlist. The kid was an athlete who had been being recruited by the Harvard coach, but who wasn’t an enormous star (no other serious D-1 recruitment) or an academic slam dunk. But by mid-April they knew that a number of the other people admitted from the coach’s list in that sport were going to go elsewhere, and the coach was supposed to get at least x kids from his list, so they immediately went to the waitlist to fill the gap.</li>
</ol>
<p>That’s the kind of thing that gets you off the waitlist in April in a year when no one gets off the waitlist.</p>
<ol>
<li> The difference between 5,200 and 6,000 is somewhat less than the difference between Harvard, Brown, or Stanford (~6,500) and Yale or Princeton (~5,200). Does anyone really notice that Brown is that much bigger than Yale? I doubt it. And Brown’s and Stanford’s student:faculty ratio is 50% higher than Yale’s or Princeton’s, which should be noticeable. </li>
</ol>
<p>At 5,300 students, Chicago has about the same student:faculty ratio as Yale or Princeton. At 6,000 students, the ratio would be the same as Harvard’s, and still much lower than Stanford or Brown.</p>
<p>In other words, faculty probably isn’t the critical issue. They shouldn’t let themselves lose too much ground, but they almost certainly won’t. Because of the design of the Core, they are going to have to hire some additional faculty to handle the larger class (or let their USNWR ranking get shot to hell by having a huge increase in the number of classes with 20 or more students). </p>
<p>But housing probably is pretty critical. Boyer et al. have spent their careers trying to provide a better undergraduate experience to college students. Right or wrong, they believe better on-campus housing is an essential component of that. Sticking kids on the fifth floor of I-House violates everything they stand for.</p>
<p>Here’s the plan to accommodate the additional students:</p>
<p>As you may have already heard, the incoming class of students in the College is going to be higher than was originally expected. In order to accommodate the expected size of the class we will be expanding the House System.</p>
<p>As you may know, a community of transfer and upperclass College students have lived in a College House community called Phoenix House, on two floors in International House (I-House) the past two academic years. Phoenix House has all the elements of the House System program, including an RH, an RA, a House Table in the dining hall, and other community based activities. In fall 2012 we are adding a second College House to International House, in addition to Phoenix House. We will now also assign first year students to live in these two Houses, along with the upperclass and transfer students – as we do in the other Houses in the House System. </p>
<p>International House is a dynamic program center and residence hall with residents from over fifty countries. It consists of all single rooms and community bathrooms and accommodates both undergraduate and graduate students. It serves as a residence for visiting students, scholars and visitors to campus. In addition to the House System staff and programs, I-House has a broad range of community amenities available for all residents, including lounges and meeting rooms, study rooms, a courtyard patio, a fitness room, a community kitchen and dining room, a caf</p>
<p>Looks like Phuriku nailed both the yield and the possible complications:</p>
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</p>
<p>JHS:</p>
<p>There’s nothing wrong with growth, per se, as long as it’s done carefully and logically. In about 9 years, UChicago has gone from being a little smaller than Dartmouth (~4000 students), to larger than Yale or Princeton, and not terribly smaller than Harvard or Duke. That’s a pretty significant change. </p>
<p>(With next year’s class of 1500+ students, combined with the Class of 2015 being 1400+, UChicago should have about 5500-5600 undergrad students on campus next year.)</p>
<p>So, in less than a decade, UChicago has gotten about ~40% larger. </p>
<p>Now, a student/faculty ratio of 4/1 or 7/1 isn’t terribly different, and yes, still puts UChicago on great footing in comparison to its peers. It has, though, lost a bit of an edge - in my day, one of the biggest perks of a U of C education was the excellent student/faculty ratio, and the fact that we felt like we were at a semi-small college with a faculty that rivaled our bigger peers. Such a feeling is probably gone now. </p>
<p>So, ok, while perhaps faculty doesn’t need to grow in line with college growth, the rest of the portions of the school should. For example, it’s not as if UChicago’s physical plant for the college has increased, or that the number of playing fields or student spaces have increased. Reynolds Club was squeezed for space when I was at UChicago, and there was already a lack of ample theater space and general student recreational space THEN. What’s going on now? </p>
<p>Again, it just seems as if the growth has been haphazard. Why not look to grow after putting better housing in place (e.g. destroying Pierce and building a nicer dorm, and also building more space for student clubs/orgs)? </p>
<p>From my perspective, this looks like the administration doing what the UChicago administration has always done: make decisions without careful care and investment (and consideration) for what the College is all about. Generally, the administration’s moves have been good, but they could avoid a lot of growing pains by being more methodical about the process. In ~10 years, when UChicago has fancy new dorms, more student space, and maybe ~6000 students overall, everything will look great. In the interim, though, current students will bear the costs of growth that has not been conducted carefully enough.</p>
<p>(In short, UChicago should follow the Yale/Princeton model for growth, rather than this haphazard model they’re following now - especially if they want to appear that they are as invested in their undergrads as their peers.)</p>