University of Chicago Admissions' statistics

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of Chicago ✅
261

Yes, UofC and other elite universities in the US use admissions (and hiring and, to some extent, investment) decisions to advance their institutional agendas. If, in UofC’s case, that agenda is to gather together a diverse group of undergrads who are intensely interested in academics and do so in a way that enables the school to provide FA to those who could not otherwise afford to come/participate fully, would you find that an objectionable form of social-engineering?

I think there are a lot of problems wrt university admissions these days, but I’m just not seeing conspiratorial admissions offices as the source of those problems and, honestly, I can’t imagine what goal admissions officers would unite behind, unless it was that of promoting the interests of their school. Which is what private actors do in our society.

262

Darth - your system is not too bad in my opinion. Has some good things about it. Regarding another post you say, “I would expect to find biases, prejudices, unfair judgements, and even borderline questionable decisions.” Yes you would. Just as you would expect to find these things at any meeting including public forums such as school board meetings and the U.S. Congress. Admissions people are people, and as a result these things will happen.

263

UofC as a private institution is well within its rights to use any social engineering goal they want to pursue. Having said that, they should be required to be transparent about these goals and not couch them in “Politically correct language”. For example, let them tell their alums that “Hey, we want you to contribute, and we will use some of those funds so that a poor kid can go to school free here, and that could mean that your kid may be denied admission, even if he is well qualified. Now can you write us a $1000 check please” and if the alum chooses to do that great.

Again, all I am after is complete disclosure. Then let the chips fall where they might. The problem is the Universities are hiding the methods they use to achieve their real “institutional agendas” and are feeding us “Happy Horse S**t”. I suspect that if their methods were public, they would feel ashamed.

Its like I am renting my home and a bunch of families put bids, but I quietly reject all applicants who are not Mormon, but never tell them that. I instead give them a song and dance and conceal my real methods.

264

Exactly. And since entrance into an elite university is a precious scarce resource, you are doing students a disservice when you allow people’s limitations to dictate your results, while at the same time refusing to show us how flawed these people can be.

265

They are being disingenuous. They say something publicly and do something behind closed doors. That’s all.

266

This is the most entitled post I have ever seen. You are the applicant. School applications are like any other applications - like for visas, immigration, contests, loans, etc. You are asked to provide stats, as well as provide context to your application. Thy will give you guidelines on what makes a good application. But neither the result nor the process of deliberation on your application is something that you can claim as your right.

Getting accepted is a privilege, not an entitlement.

267

@FStratford Oh please get off your high horse. Nobody is saying that admission is a right, but one could follow your absurd logic to claim that colleges can deny admissions to Jews, blacks, women or anybody they wanted because you know “getting accepted is a privilege, not an entitlement”. What nonsense!! Read the posts carefully. All I am asking for is full disclosure and transparency.

I can’t believe you are defending the current smoke and mirrors admissions process. Thousands of well deserving students are being denied admissions to these institutions because they have the wrong last name, race, family background etc and then are being lied to about the real reason they were denied admissions because these admissions offices never disclose anything that goes on behind those closed doors nor are there any meaningful disclosure requirements on the process We never tolerate this kind of secrecy in housing, loans, court cases, or any other public sphere. That is why an entire industry has emerged around college admissions claiming to know the secret sauce to get you into the right colleges.

268

darth: Are you a current student at UChicago?

Another question. If you believe the process is flawed, over the long haul, do you think the answer to improving the process is to have someone (e.g. Federal Government) develop rules for admissions committees or do you think the answer is more along the lines of making the marketplace more efficient and let competition drive the results you seek and why?

269

But these universities are candid about the fact that they want a racially and regionally diverse student body, as well as one that is relatively gender-balanced (and LGBTQ-friendly), and that they are trying to recruit first-generation college students and to make the education they offer available to low-income families. I’ve certainly known that when, as an alumn, I’ve given money to my college. And I was aware of those facts when my kid applied to U of C. To achieve these ends, admissions officers must/will take race, gender, family background, etc. into account as they make decisions about who is offered a place in the class. And schools are generally pretty explicit about whether there’s a legacy advantage and for whom. Ditto re athletic recruitment.

My daughter was attracted to Chicago not because of the median SAT scores or GPAs of its students, but because of its institutional culture/ethos. And she was much less interested in the two Ivies where she would have had legacy status, largely because she perceived them to have different kinds of student bodies and different value systems. Random selection/distribution of high-stats kids would seriously undermine, if not destroy, the distinctiveness of all of these schools. Personally, I don’t think that’s a good thing.

I do think it’s important to have excellent, well-funded public universities with enough capacity to ensure access to higher education to everyone who aspires to it and is capable of it. I loved growing up in CA where (and at a time when) colleges and universities were so easily accessible (cheap, nearby, easy to get into, offering courses night and day, as well as PT options).

If the claim is we shouldn’t have private universities at all or that we should have (more?)(a national system of) elite public universities, those are different and potentially interesting arguments, but I just don’t see the truth-in-labeling issue here, nor do I see any evidence that elite private universities are making animus-based admissions decisions.

270

I think this system would lead to issues like those described in the below thread. It immediately came to mind, reading some of @darth1289 's points.

http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/1871095-the-growth-of-intl-students-too-much-of-a-good-thing-p1.html

No doubt there are students who check every box (grades, scores, president of 9 clubs), but aren’t admitted because the university wants to avoid a “critical mass” of internationals from a certain background, and the self-segregation that results.

My main quibble, however, is this: there are also students who are academically brilliant, but seem like extremely poor fits for UChicago to their readers and the admissions committee. How do you train outside consultants to measure a student’s “fit” for a university?

271

My preference would be to have the light shine on the process and let the chips fall where they will. Let the market decide. But I strongly believe now that Mandatory and extensive disclosure should be required of ALL colleges. Also, any applicant should be able to petition the university and have access to his/her admission file to see how it was marked and there should be strict penalties for destroying notes and other information that was discussed during the admissions process.

If I apply for a loan and the bank runs a credit check on me and denies my loan, I have the right to get the free credit report. Applicants should have the same rights with the application file. This is just a question of fairness.

No

272

Actually they are not really candid. They talk in terms of generalities and are careful to avoid any statements that would get them in trouble. For example, is it coincidence that as the Asian college eligible population is increasing, the percentage of Asian kids in elite schools is staying steady at 20% or so? Could there be an unwritten quota that is being managed in a sly way by these colleges? Who knows, we can’t tell right now

Lets just have a thought experiment here.

lets say, the admissions committee is looking at two applicants, one is Asian and the other is Jewish and the admissions conversation goes something like this:

“We have already admitted four from this school. We can probably take one more. We already have 18% of Asians here. How many more are we going to take? If we don’t manage this, we could have 40% of our class as Asians. What about diversity? I think 18% is plenty. This kid is just like the 700 others. Blah Blah immigrant family, Studied hard, BORING!! I vote to reject him. Instead look at this Alum’s kid. Yeah, his scores are not that good, and his extra curricular activities are not great, but his Dad is a big supporter of this school. We can’t afford to reject him. And I really liked his essays. I could relate to them being Jewish myself. Our student body is only 10% Jewish right now, and I hear murmurs of us being anti-Jewish, because our peer school has 25% of their student body as Jewish. We need to mirror our peer schools”

“I hear you. I had lunch with a close friend who runs XYZ bank and he was asking me why our Jewish enrollment had stalled, He was saying that many at his bank want to cut recruiting at our school because they don’t’ see progress with our Jewish enrollment”, says the Dean of Admissions, then calls for a vote

"Lets vote. The Asian or the Jewish kid.?

Now. Should these and other such candid conversations be available for public scrutiny? Or should they have this conversation, vote and send out a form letter to the Asian kid about how he was not selected not because he is not qualified or a good fit, but “Oh, it was a strong pool and we struggled mightily. Good luck”. There are a lot of these conversations happening behind closed doors and then all records are being destroyed with no one any wiser.

Mind you, The school is within its rights to make that decision, but should they be forced to divulge how they made this decision? or should they be allowed to hide behind “the mystery of subjective admission process”,

If I were Asian, I would want to know that this school makes its decisions this way and maybe sue them in court. Instead I never find out, except for a sinking suspicion and the school always denies there is a quota.

Think this is a far fetched scenario? Harvard is being sued exactly because of this issue. Are they doing this? Can’t tell right now, because we don’t have any data.

273

No system is going to be perfect. I understand that. However, I think names need to be anonymized, the same criteria needs to be set and applied to all applicants and then to prevent human biases from entering the picture, final admits should be determined thru a lotto for all those who “qualify based on the criteria”. Let them use any criteria they want. Once 20000 kids get past that gate. Then you admit 2000 based on a lottery. I think that is a fair and equitable system.

274

Are you advocating purely stats-based admissions? Because you can have holistic admissions, or you can “prevent human biases from entering the picture,” but you can’t have your cake and eat it too.

Any objective criteria to evaluate aspects of an application beyond GPA/test scores - “number of leadership positions” or “number of volunteer hours” or “$ raised as a volunteer” - reward a poisonous attitude towards college admissions: the belief that whoever has the most leadership positions, or volunteer hours, or AP classes, “wins” the admissions process. More holistic measures, like “impact of an activity,” introduce the biases you’re looking to eliminate. And good luck evaluating an essay in a purely objective manner.

Even if the above weren’t concerns, I think a lottery system that gives an Intel ISEF winner or a bestselling author the same odds of admission as applicant #19834, who’s “qualified based on the criteria,” is neither fair nor equitable.

275

I personally would prefer objective criteria, where most reasonable people who see two applications will agree which one is stronger. Objective criteria don’t have to be “Score based” only. But that is just me. I don’t have a problem with Universities using all kinds of silly and subjective criteria for admissions AS LONG as they are forced to openly disclose their decisions in the court of public opinion.

But I have come to the conclusion that if what the Universities say is true, whatever criteria is used, there will be many more applicants than seats available and since the Admissions team claim that many would indeed be well qualified to attend their Universities but they are reluctantly turning away well deserving candidates, humans should not be making the decisions on who gets to attend, because we are by nature biased and let our personal prejudices influence our decisions even when we don’t want to.

So I want to anonymize applications, remove all Personally Identifiable information (PII) from the apps, force the humans to only look at the data presented on paper without knowing the gender, race, geography, ethnicity, legacy status etc of the applicant. For those who qualify, you move them on to the next stage and assign admits randomly.

As long as there are enough qualified applications from men, women, minorities, Martians ( insert your favorite category here) randomly selecting candidates will ensure the same percentage in the pool of admits.

Now if you are telling me that “there may not be enough qualified applications” in the pool from a certain community, then you are just deceiving everybody when you admit from that pool into the school. Either the applicant is qualified or not. If he or she is, then they are all equally qualified to be given a seat. Don’t kid yourself that just because a human is making the decisions, they are able to optimize the process better. they are just using their biases and prejudices to play God and decide that A is actually a little better than B.

Create your criteria, but apply it equally to all apps. Then let the chips fall where they will. I would prefer objective criteria, but if the University wants to use subjective criteria, so be it, as long as it is not based on (PII) which incents the ad-coms to unfairly skew the scales for certain applicants.

Anyway, I don’t think anything will come out of this. It is all just an intellectual debate. No University is going to head down this path, unless the court forces them to, but I think that time may be coming soon, with the lawsuits that are being filed against a number of them

276

Wow, what is going on here? It seems that you are pretty bitter about something. And it seems directed at UChicago. Did you have a child who applied and was denied? I don’t think I’m off base to be really picking up some angry vibes about UChicago.

277

I noticed some of your other threads/replies. It seems that your kid was interested in applying to one school ED and and UChicago EA. You had some questions about that. I hope your kid is happy wherever she decided to go.

278

Bull sh1t.

You say, “Thousands of well deserving students are being denied admissions to these institutions because they have the wrong last name, race, family background etc”

Really? Prove it. I bet a dime you can not.

You have an axe to grind and you are looking for someone to blame. That much is apparent. That you dont have facts to justify your anger, makes you feel like your only option is to demand to watch every second of every day that admissions officials spend at work. Your sense of entitlement is overwhelming. And please dont use the race card… there are great ways to prove or disprove race quotas and none of them involve putting admissions officers under surveillance, like you propose. Authoritarian, much?

And while you are at it. How about justifying why a lottery system is better than admissions people picking among the “pile of qualified applicants”? Qualified applicants are not interchangeable like you seem to assume - one can be qualified based on excellent Math skills, another can be qualified based on excellent background in Languages.

And yes, it is important to gauge that the applicant really wants to be in that school. The worst thing that can happen to a school experience is to end up with a class where most really did not want to be there. If your child applied to another school ED and applied to UChicago EA as a backup, then perhaps that showed in his essays.

Lastly, your proposed system is not a good system. It is what they use in China, and that selection system has proven to be horrible, in totality, especially when compared to the American university system. And its effects on society and overall social mobility is negative at best.

279

@goingnutsmom

Hahaha, you are very perceptive. Indeed.

Here is our story. I hope it helps others. Maybe it will, Maybe it wont. At this stage I am past caring. I am an alum. I really loved UChicago, even when it was not popular, even when people barely knew it. My Chicago education gave me the tools and the skills to be quite successful. My son was interested in attending UChicago from the time he was a small kid. He has always been fascinated by the school for its fiercely intellectual culture, and thought it was the best school in the world to attend.

Unfortunately as he was growing up, the school became quite popular. By the time he was ready to apply, it had become insanely competitive with all kinds of students applying that simply were attracted by its prestige. The College also incessantly marketed to everybody and drove up its application numbers.

My son worked really hard to get into this school. He made straight A’s, took a ton of AP classes, scored in the 99% percentile in his standardized test and had a respectable and meaningful set of extra curricular activities that spoke to his intellectual interests

He never wavered in his interest for UChicago.

He poured his heart into his Chicago essays and his teachers have given him good recommendations.

He is what UChicago claims they want as a student. I was also a wee bit nervous because of the sudden rise in the school popularity, but I was cautiously optimistic. He applied EA at UChicago and ED to one other school. Well the other application was a rush job and not very polished. When he got deferred at the other school, my son was actually relieved. He had his heart set for his #1 choice

The Admissions office at my Alma Mater failed my family and my son. He is the quintessential UChicago student. Trust me, having attended the University, I know. The apple did not fall far from the tree. He is a great fit for the school and he showed it in his application. I am convinced something in their process went wrong somewhere. He has fallen through the cracks. Somehow in the flood of applications, he got overlooked and cast aside.

He is totally broken hearted. So yes we are angry and bitter at the school. A school that I love. Yes, he has other admissions to good schools and will go on and be successful, but Chicago denied our family an opportunity to celebrate the school even more and have a multi-generational connection with it. My confidence in Chicago’s unique approach to selecting students has evaporated.

The admissions office at Chicago turned out to be just like any of the other schools

I still believe Chicago is a fantastic school, but if your admission process cannot spot a kid like my son, there is something wrong with your system. Its just that simple. And this is not entitlement speaking. This is just the anguish of a parent who knows that my son would have been a great student at UChicago, had the credentials to go there, showed consistent interest in it, poured his heart into applying and still could not make it past some ridiculous staffer on the Admissions committee who either had it for legacy admits, his ethnicity, his race, his gender or had some other issue with his file. Or maybe he just fell through the cracks. Either way, others with clearly less emotional connection with the school, some with poorer credentials, some who consider Chicago their second, or third choice will be courted and allowed to enter the University. To me that is tragic.

So there you have it :slight_smile:

We will get past this. My son is intelligent, smart, hard working and it is Chicago’s loss that he will not be attending Chicago. But right now, yes, we are pi**ed off at the University.

280

Darth – It is interesting how your love for your alma mater can be soured if you think your kids have somehow been wronged by it. I had a related, slightly different, experience with my alma mater which soured my attachment. I hope the feeling comes back as strong as it was because I have always loved my alma mater, and that love was an enriching part of my life.

One bright spot on the horizon! Both son in law and daughter are expressing serious interest in graduate school at my alma mater! I’d be very proud if that happened, and I expect some of the old feeling would be restored. Best of luck to your son.