<p>The roughly $7,400 “rent” for 9 mo on campus housing is not excessive. You will pay just about the same for off campus housing when Furniture, Util, internet and cleaning are included. Its the cafeteria meal plan that you don’t have to be forced upon that makes the difference.</p>
<p>Living off campus is already cheaper. I don’t know what the current supply and demand situation is like for off-campus student housing in Hyde Park, but having a sudden increase in the number of off-campus students won’t magically create additional off-campus apartments. Most likely, rents will rise across the board and some students will find themselves living farther away from campus than has been typical in the past.</p>
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<p>Yes it is excessive. You clearly have no idea what kind of places can be had for $900/person in hyde park. It is outrageous what the university charges for room and board</p>
<p>Yeah, artslover - especially when you think that $7400 gets you - it gets you a double or maybe a small single for 9 months. So you’re paying $820 a month (sure, with utilities) for like 200 sq ft of space. With utilities/internet, you can get much more than that in the Hyde Park area in terms of apartments. </p>
<p>On-campus housing at UChicago is not cheap by any means.</p>
<p>They charge extra for a single/apartment, so $7400 is what you pay for the privilege to share a room with someone else!
Personally I find it morally repugnant how the university forces people to pay that much in their first year. The housing I can see as at least a little understandable, but I absolutely refuse to buy into their over-priced, low-quality dining plan. That is why I am moving out.</p>
<p>If you haven’t been to other schools’ dining halls (especially the Ivy League’s), you really don’t know what “low-quality” dining plans look like. I am staying in housing for all four years, and I love it. I come from a low-income family, so I am especially appreciative whenever there is food, any food, available. I don’t have any problems with food at Pierce, Barlett, or South, and I’ve been in housing for almost four years!</p>
<p>UChicago’s yield would actually decrease if it started offering engineering since the program would be of mediocre quality at first since its so new. Highly prestigious schools with decent but not great engineering programs like Penn, Duke, and Columbia lose a lot more cross admits in this area than in the Arts & Sciences division. This is part of the reason why MIT’s yield is higher than Yale’s; MIT has cornered a niche while Yale tries to appeal to a broader group of applicants. Prospective engineers seem to be concerned mostly with the reputation of the engineering program and industry connections rather than overall prestige.</p>
<p>I wonder if the increase in yield and drop in acceptance rate led to a statistically stronger class for UChicago. If the allegations of yield protection are true, then we will find out soon enough when we know where the 2012 National Merit Scholars and Presidential Scholars chose to go to college as well as when Chicago releases its new class profile.</p>
<p>Goldenboy:</p>
<p>Do you really think there will be a noticeable change in the number of merit scholars and presidential scholars at UChicago this year? As these are easily measurable metrics, I highly doubt that UChicago’s admissions committee would want to report a, say, 30% drop in these types of matriculants to the faculty and president. </p>
<p>I’d strongly argue that the numbers will look the same as the numbers for the past few years. Come on, how much of a drop do you think the rest of the admin and faculty would tolerate? They are probably more concerned with the number of merit scholars than they are with whether the accept rate is 13% or 12%.</p>
<p>There has been criticism in the past for Chicago doing this, and every year, Chicago’s stats have continued to rise. They’ll rise this year as well, quite obviously. Of course, that won’t shut some people up. After all, the vast majority of criticism is coming from two groups:
a) people offended at being rejected despite having high stats (which is bound to happen quite often at Chicago, a school with SATs at Harvard’s level and ranked #5 in the nation); and
b) students/alumni from supposed peer schools (I’m looking at you, D-ke and Northwestern) jealous of Chicago’s admissions success. I haven’t seen many complaints coming from Chicago’s true peer schools (Columbia, Penn, etc)… just saying.</p>
<p>‘supposed’ peer schools. Priceless.</p>
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Applications to Duke and Northwestern have risen tremendously as well so there’s no reason for students/alumni from these schools to feel inferior to Chicago. Duke and NU receive a lot more applications in the first place than UChicago. All of these schools (Brown, Dartmouth, Duke, Chicago, Cornell, Columbia, and Penn) are peers and should be treated as such. Some of these schools have slightly stronger faculties, others have higher endowments, and yet others have better graduate/professional placement. Overall, they are all the same and you should decide based on what avenue you want to pursue: finance, consulting, medical school, PhD, think tanks, etc.</p>
<p>UCHicago has some of the coolest architecture in this country.</p>
<p>Phuriku. Your lack of reasoning skills and bias is becoming ever apparent. You go around citing parchment, a flawed source, to argue that Chicago is HYPSM leveled, yet you selectively choose to ignore data contrary to your arguments. How can you claim that Duke is not a peer school, when parchment shows that it wins slightly more cross admits than it loses against Chicago. Seems like a peer to me.</p>
<p>And has it ever occured to you that Duke alum/students argue with you on this board not because they are jealous, but because you too often have an axe to grind with them? Notice how the schools you are claiming Chicago to be superior to are the same ones that are “attacking” Chicago. Hmm…coincidence? I think not. I’m willing to bet that if you claim that Chicago is superior to Penn or Columbia, they will become equally as defensive as Duke students. Its a natural response to deny statements that are blatantly false and unnecessarily provocative. I for one, have nothing against Chicago. Its only when you make ludacrious claims, that I find it necessary to take you down a few notches. I haven’t seen many Penn or Columbia student not acknowledge Duke as a peer, so the reason why you have this superiority complex is beyond me. Bottom-line is stop being provocative and all this so-called Chicago hate will go away.</p>
<p>phuriku, the so called true peer schools adopt similar techniques to make themselves appear more desirable. Right from Penn filling 50% of its class ED to Columbia refusing to reveal data for the school of general studies to Chicago’s systematic yield protection. Peers in pulling the wool over people’s eyes eh? 
Duke may not have the highest yield in the world (UNC being in state is partially responsible for that) but it admits every single applicant who deserves to be admitted. Whether or not he/she will likely choose Harvard or Yale over it. The record speaks for itself, and it is something that I take great pride in. I wish the same could be said of the U of C.</p>
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<p>To be fair to Phuriku, he wasn’t the first person in that discussion post to cite Parchment… it was actually a Duke student to do so I believe.</p>
<p>"UChicago’s yield would actually decrease if it started offering engineering since the program would be of mediocre quality "</p>
<p>Possibly but they are going to start slow like Harvard, one major at a time. Their applications will bump up because there will be people interested in only engineering. So if they start offering a major like Biomolecular engineering and move their computer science into the same school as the engineering major, they will start seeing a difference in applications as well as acceptances. Right now the adcoms go around saying our students are so bright that they don’t need an engineering major to be budding engineers and one built a nuclear reactor in the dorm room. Instead, they just have to say we offer limited engineering.</p>
<p>There are lots people doing engineering at Columbia, Duke and Penn. Not everyone can go to MIT and Caltech. Duke and Penn are ranked higher or same as MIT for Bio engineering and Columbia has one of the oldest engineering schools in the country. The fact that the school is small which makes it harder to compete with much bigger schools for ranking is lost on people who only look at the ranks.</p>
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<p>Yes I do, I just signed the lease for my DD, a third year student. $1350+ util+ internet for a two bed room, 2 bath. Yes, it is nice and comfy. Yes it is cheaper, but what about the Summer, lease is for the whole year. You say it can be subletted. Nevermind about the rent you are getting, what about liability? My DD has an excuse, she is going to stay at the school for fellowship, so is her roommate. We also looked into buying, its cheap, but I don’t want my DD to worry about fixing it up(1920 buildings), find roommates, renting, collection, eviction, landlord responsibilities… and resale in two years. She is not real estate, she is a student.</p>
<p>On a grander scale of things, its about $3000-4000/year difference between on campus housing and off campus apartment. Total 3 years $10,000 on the average. We carry a full load, so our burden is $250K for 4 years, $10,000 out of $250K is nothing. You are there to study, not to learn how to cook, clean, furnishing and other chores that distract you from your study. What about if your GPA slips from the off campus activities? Is it worth the risk of $10,000 difference?</p>
<p>In addition, you are going to miss all the social opportunities of on campus housing. The RM/RA’s help when you get sick…etc</p>
<p>Think about it.</p>
<p>Yep. I was actually the one, who first used parchment. But in the same post, I acknowledged parchment’s flaw. And notice the way I used it, compared to him. I cite parchment data to refute his claim that Chicago was destroying Duke in cross-admits. I acknowledged that parchment didn’t definitively showed that Duke won against Chicago and only made the claim that at the very least, it showed that Chicago wasn’t beating Duke as badly as Phuriku claimed.</p>
<p>Phuriku, on the other hand, uses it multiple time to make the claim that Chicago splits even with MIT and Princeton, without regard that the data might be flawed.</p>
<p>Completely different approaches to using the same source.</p>
<p>Sent from my HTC Vision using CC</p>
<p>^MIT had a yield of 70% this year, up from 65%. Princeton is expected to have an yield of 64% although they have been much weaker in the past few years. It is quite possible Chicago beats Duke but not the other two.</p>
<p>I totally agree with NocturnalOwl. UChicago will peer with other top 15 schools including Duke for a while, and has not reached the most of HYPSM’s level yet.</p>
<p>Princeton has a 66.7% yield this year.
[Updated:</a> U. overshoots Class of 2016 by more than 50 students - The Daily Princetonian](<a href=“http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/2012/05/14/30977/]Updated:”>http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/2012/05/14/30977/)</p>