@goingnutsmom Thanks. I took your advice. The warm California sun, did me a lot of good. And yes, I know how hard it is to get into Stanford. My son got denied there too, but that didn’t upset him too much. He is now trying to decide between a private school or a free ride at a state school with a great honors program both in the south. He is a little nervous about attending school in the south given his West coast roots, but we are heading down there in April and hopefully he will like one of them.
We are slowly seeing him make the transition and we are feeling much more relieved and much less bitter.
It’s amazing how a smile from your kids can completely change your perspective. Now that there is less hurt in his eyes, we are feeling much less stressed
Just like the above kids whose families we know- he will do awesome because he’s an awesome kid!!
The south has some great gems. I always encourage kids to go somewhere different if they have that opportunity. I think it can be a great learning experience. My S went OOS and I can tell you that it taught him so much about how a different part of the country sees things. He seems to really appreciate having done this. What other time in life is it this easy to uproot and experience this?
Also, travel. Travel lots when young. You can travel cheaply. You won’t regret it.
That does sound wacky. I wonder if they under accepted on purpose and will have a big waitlist activity. Will be interested to see what they say at the admitted student event on campus later this week.
They defer almost everyone who doesn’t get in. Relatively large early pool + many early deferrals + large regular pool = very low regular acceptance rate.
It’s much more impressive when Stanford has a 3% regular acceptance rate after barely deferring anyone.
@mattyhan Do you have a source? I wouldn’t doubt that statistic but I’m curious to see where such data might be published (it is notoriously difficult to find for UChicago)
Assume 30K apps, 10K early.
1K accepted early, 1K rejected, 8K deferred.
28K in RD
3% of 28K is 840
Total accept = 1840 = not enough to fill class of 1500
Assume 30K apps, 15K early.
1.5K accepted early, 0.5K rejected, 13K deferred.
28K in RD
3% of 28K is 840
Total accept = 2340 = need 64% yield to fill class of 1500
I wonder at the large disparity between EA and RD acceptance rates that this would suggest in terms of acceptance rates. Esp considering all the presumably well qualified students who SCEA/ED’ed unsuccessfully and threw their hat into the RD ring.
However one slices it, I’m so so so glad to be done with college application process for my progeny!
Well, but they SCEA’d or ED’ed unsuccessfully. Meaning they didn’t make a cut similar to U of C’s EA (and that they weren’t kids whose attraction to U of C was compelling). I don’t see why you’d expect that particular demographic to raise the acceptance rate of Chicago’s RD pool. Also, ED and Chicago EA aren’t mutually exclusive pools, right? So the most interested ones already were in the ring, so to speak.
But ITA that it’s great to be done with college admissions!
I also attended one of these receptions and there was a key piece of information left out; of the over 31,000 applicants, 10% of the 12,000 EA were accepted. Then, from the RD, 3% were accepted. The likelihood of a large draw from the waiting list pool isn’t great.
^^i think those numbers could be close for ED if you count the deferrals as RD. Still a little low though. I think you need a total admit pool of at least 2,300.
@FStratford I think the 31,000 applicants referenced in the above post accounts for both EA and RD applicants; hence 10% of the 12,000 EA applicants were accepted and 3% of the remaining 10,800 EA + 19,000 RD applicants were accepted (assuming all EA applicants made it to the RD pool). The math would then work out to:
EA: 10% rate ==> 0.1 x 12,000 = 1,200 accepted students
RD: 3% rate ==> 0.03 x (10,800+19,000) = 894 accepted students
Total = 2094 accepted students (6.75% acceptance rate)
Expected yield to fill 1,500 seats in the class = 71.6%
The end result overestimates selectivity and yield, and perhaps underestimates the number admitted from the RD pool (894 seems low), but it it would also make room for the college to utilize its waitlist. >:D<
There have been reports that yield in the EA pool was up sharply (the source, IIRC, was another of the admitted student receptions). So the above scenario is extreme, but a trend in that direction is plausible.
The RD accepted number is seems way low. 800+? For that to be real it implies that EA yield is 80+% (assuming RD yield is not lower than 60%).
Imagine if RD yield goes up half-way to 70% then, yikes, they could be overenrolled by almost 100 students. If RD yield matches EA yield, then that’s 200 overenrolled
I think this is the right time to use the waitlist.
Chicago has a good idea of its EA yield already (mostly; a few students still have decisions to make). I suspect (though I can’t say for sure) that the disparity between EA and RD acceptance rates will be considerably greater this year than in the past. This is because many of the previous estimates, trying to judge how reasonable acceptance rates are based on yield, ignore the fact that EA yield informs RD acceptances.
I don’t think the university will be overenrolled. It’s quite possible that EA yield was over 70% (or is on track to hit that number with a few more students’ decisions), which with 1,200 acceptances would mean about 840 students enrolled through the early round. That leaves a little over 650 spots to fill, and 30,000 applicants in the RD pool to fill them. I can imagine Chicago might accept 1,000 students (3.3%) and use the waitlist to plug in any gaps.
This would mean a yield between 65% and 70%. The rate was 60.4% two years ago, up 20% over 5 years, so another 5% increase would be significant but not implausible.
It’s hard to believe that yield would go from 60% to 70% in one year. An increase of applicants to over 39,000 doesn’t seem right either. I’d wager that the most plausible explanation is bad information or a misunderstanding on the RD acceptance rate. I guess we’ll see.
It seems I need to clarify what I said; the 12,000 are included in the 31,000. This information was given to those of us attending the admitted students’ reception, by a senior admissions counselor. It seems like @ramboacid has the most accurate math.
@kaukauna Yield was 60% in 2014 (couldn’t find 2015 figures for some reason). Any increase would be over two years, rather than one, making a 10% increase more believable.
I think that’s unlikely, because it would be ahead of the furious pace of 2010-2014 (+4% a year). The law of diminishing returns also says it should be harder to go from 60% to 70% than it was to go from 50% to 60%. But who knows.
@ramboacid has a pretty thorough estimate, but I have two quibbles. They’re pretty unimportant overall - this isn’t exactly rocket science - but could have an effect even so.
Firstly, as I’ve already noted, EA yield affects RD acceptances. We don’t know what EA yield has been in the past - it may have been 70% or more last year - and an increase would reduce RD acceptances further. EA students probably have a higher yield - many of them have chosen Chicago over SCEA schools, though some will be claimed by other EA schools (MIT or Caltech) and ED schools (Upenn, Columbia, etc.).
My second point is a lot simpler. I doubt admissions is saying the RD acceptance rate is exactly 3%. They’re likely rounding down a rate of 3.3% or 3.4%.
The actual admit rate is 8.4% after counting everything - summer melt, gap year, wait list.
I remember last May they had admitted about 2365 students and eventually admitted 2521 - an increase of 156 that should include some gap years.
Class of 2016 - over enrolled about 100 - no wait list
Class of 2017 - 1425ish - no wait list
Class of 2018 - 1425ish - sort of big wait list
Class of 2019 - purposely enrolled about 100 more than previous year - big wait list
Looks like they are still figuring out what is going on …