<p>I got a packet from UChicago that had a letter from the Board of Admissions + a poster. does this mean anything? I wanna know if they truly want me to send an application when I am a senior or if it was just a random send-off. (Btw I'm a junior about to be a senior) </p>
<p>No, it means nothing, it is just marketing materials to entire you to apply, but it is nothing personal. Chicago is very well known to be especially aggressive with mailings. Apply if you like it and if you are a viable candidate, it’s a great school for the right person, but don’t put any weight on college marketing.</p>
<p>@brownparent aggressive mailing is an understatement haha</p>
<p>You are about to hit the sweet spot for college recruiting where your mail box becomes a daily exercise in recycling of marketing materials. I told my son to keep them in a box but it overflowed pretty quickly and we just started tossing the ones that we knew he had no interest in.</p>
<p>If their market research is any good, they aren’t sending completely random mailings. They’ve profiled you. Yes, they truly want people like you to send applications … in hopes it will yield a stronger entering class, decrease their admission rate, and boost their ranking. </p>
<p>That’s what it means for Chicago. Does it really mean anything for you? That depends on whether you like what you see and are truly a realistic candidate. </p>
<p>On the visit we made to UChicago, James Nondorf, the dean of admissions basically said, “We think we are a great university and that we think that you should all apply so that we can reject you.”</p>
<p>He’s done a wonderful marketing job bringing down the admissions rate of UChicago from something like 40% to single digits. </p>
<p>It means absolutely nothing. Doesn’t improve your chances of being admitted by an iota. </p>
<p>You can expect to hear from Chicago weekly for the next 6 months. It’ll be a proud moment when you receive the thick congratulatory envelope in the mail from Chicago (though you hadn’t applied). Through aggressive marketing to high school students, they have been very successful increasing their applications and reducing their acceptance rate dramatically in recent years. Other schools do this but in my experience, Chicago has been the most aggressive in marketing to students with no realistic chance. (If you have any realistic chance and it’s a fit for you academically, financially and socially, disregard this post and apply - it’s a great University.)</p>
<p>“Several universities, including Stanford, Duke, Northwestern, Cornell and the University of Pennsylvania, had admission rates this year that were less than half of those from a decade ago. The University of Chicago’s rate plummeted to a little over 8 percent, from more than 40 percent.”</p>
<p><a href=“Best, Brightest and Rejected: Elite Colleges Turn Away Up to 95% - The New York Times”>http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/09/us/led-by-stanfords-5-top-colleges-acceptance-rates-hit-new-lows.html</a></p>