Has she visited Columbia? My son liked the campus and curriculum but the students did not seem like him. A bit more mature and serious perhaps. They were better dressed than any of our other campus visits too. He’s not 100% sure on U Chicago either though again for the other students being more serious when he’s got a very silly side. But I think he’ll be able to figure that out with another visit if he gets in.
She didn’t visit Columbia but knows a number of kids (some from school, some from her sport) who go there and, yeah, they aren’t her people. More pre-professional/competitive, less curious/intellectually playful.
Can you see now if you got accepted or not EA, or is it still not till Friday the 18th evening.
Still Friday
Can someone estimate what percentage of EA applicants are deferred?
Most estimates fall between 50% and 60%, although it’ll vary by year.
Last year, I received more than 25 separate mailings from University of Chicago. They then started sending letters saying there was no application fee if your are applying for financial aid. I got the sense they were driven by application numbers, wanting to beat Columbia. Sad.
What percentage of EA applicants are deferred?
I’d guess about half.
Bit sad that Chicago is trying to match the Ivy League in terms of stats. It’s become a follower and not a leader.
Essays still do a reasonably good job of weeding out disinterested applicants. Two essays - one of them a pagelong or two-page piece in most cases - and a third that, while optional, can be used to weed out students who don’t really care for the university, mean the applicant pool remains more self-selecting than at some colleges.
Stanford has made a protracted effort to lower its acceptance rate, moving below Harvard in recent years, but I wouldn’t call the university a “follower” purely on that basis.
What percentage of people applying to UChicago do you think are even academically qualified? I think their acceptance rate is artificially low because all of the advertising(especially PSATs) that they do along with nonrestrictive EA. Is it really as competitive as HYP or is it more like top 20 schools?
I think HYP’s acceptance rate is artificially low because kids apply on the off chance their 1700 SAT is enough. But what do I know?
Yeah, I do get the impression that lots of students with no chance of getting in apply to Harvard because (a) of the perception that admission is basically a lottery these days and “you have to be in it to win it” and (b) it gives their parents bragging rights for a few months (“Jr. got accepted at local U, but we’re still waiting to hear from Harvard and Stanford.”). U of C doesn’t have either of those dynamics fueling applications.
@NotVerySmart @exacademic Thanks, I didn’t think about it that way. Is it true UChicago also likes high scores more than the typical elite college? I’ve heard that a few times but don’t know how true this is.
FWIW, I think that U of C is looking for a type of person – intellectually playful, curious, intense – and that their admissions office has developed a fairly reliable method for finding those kids – Uncommon Essays and teacher recs. Coincidentally, such kids are generally likely to do well in school and on standardized tests, so median GPAs and scores are high even though they aren’t the deciding factor wrt admissions.
With the possible exception of CalTech, highly selective colleges in the US aren’t making admissions decisions based primarily on test scores. They’re using test scores to disqualify applicants and to provide reality checks for kids coming from places that the college hasn’t routinely found students. But, unlike Chicago, their next sorting mechanisms are less academic. They’re attempting to assemble a class that furthers a series of institutional objectives – diversity, alumni donations, success in sports, building a global network, etc. – and, as a result, some of the attributes they’re looking for are less likely to correlate with high test scores. Finding the intellectuals isn’t really their goal – it’s more like finding/anointing the future elite. And, as this Presidential election reminds us, the people who run things in the US generally don’t end up in positions of power based on their intellect.
These differences among admissions in highly selective schools in the US are differences of degree and they change over time. U of C seems to be getting more like the Ivies but, for the moment, it’s one of the last bastions of intellectualism in undergraduate education in this country. (We still have lots of great PhD programs in a wider variety of universities.) Almost 40 years ago, as a HS senior looking for the place where being smart and working hard would be valued, I went to Harvard. Today my kid, looking for the same thing, found Chicago a much more appealing environment.
@exacademic - How refreshing to read your post. Personally, because of my youth -and obvious inexperience-, I was strictly looking at the Ivys (can’t go wrong). U of C was just another school that I applied to from the Common App. (just in case) but I never thought for a second that I would attend if accepted. Now, I have heard that some schools are great for Graduate studies but not so much for UG because of the professors being there just to get their own credentials. When you mention that “it is one of the last bastions of intellectualism in undergrad ed in this country,” it really caught my attention. I thank you for the eye opener.
FWIW, I think that highly intellectual undergrads can find sympathetic and helpful profs at any major research university (not discounting SLACs here – just responding to what you said). You may have to ask/make yourself known, but often that’s just a matter of showing up at office hours to talk through a paper (before or after you’ve written it) or of taking seminars, coming in prepared, and having interesting things to say. It’s hit or miss (some profs are friendlier or busier or more/less social than others and there’s probably some interpersonal chemistry involved as well), but shared intellectual interests/enthusiasms go far in bringing people in academia together across age/status divides. At least that’s been my experience.
What can be harder is finding your peer group, since schoolwork is only one of many activities competing for the time and attention of undergrads – and, in most places and probably most of the time, it loses. And even the kids for whom intellectual life is central have different interests/passions. I think Chicago actively recruits a more academically-engaged cohort and then the Core works to bridge some of the disciplinary divides that might otherwise limit interaction among students. I’ll be curious to see how the house system plays out – it seems designed to be another kind of bridge (across ages and stages as well as departments), but it didn’t work that way for me in college. That said, Harvard’s houses are larger, you don’t enter them until sophomore year, and you can (and I think most people do) move into them as a bloc so they reinforce existing friend groups.
@exacademic - Truly thankful for your insights and taking the time to share. Extremely helpful.
@exacademic, I agree; thank you. Wise and encouraging words.