Sorry, you are reading that article wrong. The 8% was last years’s overall acceptance rate. They did not have class of 2019 EA numbers for the article.
So, when do y’all think we’ll know the official acceptance rate?
Well, Chicago hasn’t even published the final data for last year’s class–the College admissions site still lists the profile for the Class of 2017. But it does appear that one can obtain the Class of 2018 numbers on the College Board’s “Big Future” site, which indicates that its Chicago data is for students who entered in Fall 2014 (i.e. the Class of 2018). Chicago originally reported Class of 2018 stats as 27,503 applicants/2,304 admits/8.38 percent admissions rate/60.3 percent yield. The Big Future data lists applications as 27,500, consistent with the university’s report (3 out of 27,500 is insignificant). However, the site lists 2,409 admits (and 1,447 enrolled students). Thus, Chicago’s “actual” admissions rate for the Class of 2018 appears to have been 8.8 percent (2,409/27,503–27,500 rounds to the same number). It appears that the yield reported by the university in the fall actually did account for the extra admits: 1,447/2,409 is 60.1 percent (close to 60.3); while 1,447/2,308 would have been 62.7 percent. A few speculations informed by the data: 1. Chicago offered about 100 spots in the Class of 2018 to wait-listed students (2,409 College Board minus 2,304 original university report); 2. Chicago has been arguably disingenuous by publicizing the original “rack rate” admissions percentage (8.38), but not updating it even upon publishing yield data that reflected the extra admits. Finally, the College Board site shows SAT 25/75 percentiles of Critical Reading: 720-800; Math: 710-790; Writing: 710-780.
Sources: (original admissions number/rate): http://chicagomaroon.com/2014/04/04/admissions-rate-reaches-new-low-despite-drop-in-applications/; (yield rate): http://www.uchicago.edu/features/new_students_exude_uchicago_pride/
…I meant for the Class of 2019. (and I erred by saying “official” numbers. I just meant “numbers” in general). @ssn137
Is it possible that the extra 100 are transfer admits? If they accepted 100 from the waitlist, shouldnt the yield go up?
18,306 students applied to the MIT Class of 2019. As of today, and inclusive of Early Action, we have offered admission to 1467.
As of today I have offered admission to my clown college to 0% of all xiggis (0/1), which is just as relevant to the thread.
My understanding is that the college was severely overenrolled and encouraged deferments the last few years, which could account for the greater 2018 class size in comparison with the admissions numbers.
I agree, though, that it’s very strange that they haven’t announced application statistics this year, let alone the acceptance rate. Even if the numbers aren’t what they wanted, hopefully these will be out soon or they may start to suffer from a Streisand effect.
@kaarboer–UofC gave initial numbers for Class of 2018 in the first week of April last year, which may be a good estimate for when it might happen this year for Class of 2019.
@FStratford—Yield was announced when the Class of 2018 enrolled, so it seems fair to conclude that yield does include the students who got in off the wait list. Another way to interpret the data is to conclude that the yield was a bit lower for the students that the admissions office considered most desirable (i.e. the students who were originally “admitted” in the EA/RD rounds, and who enrolled at Chicago). The data indicate that 105 students were admitted off the wait list. If all 105 actually chose to attend Chicago (an assumption), then the EA/RD yield would have been 58.2 percent (if all wait list admits matriculated to in a class size of 1,447, then the class included 1,342 original 2018 EA/RD admits, which divided by the originally announced admit number (2,304) would result in 58.2 percent. I caveat the above by adding that I make no judgment about the quality of the people who were wait listed, or that I think that yield/admit rate or any of the rest of it make any difference regarding the quality of education any particular student might receive at any particular institution.
@Reallyinterested–Appreciate you using your first post to show some love to @xiggi, a CC’er who–for reasons known only to the X-dog–is a Chicago hater. All schools manipulate their admissions numbers to one degree or another; @xiggi just doesn’t care for how Chicago does it.
Did posting a single line about the release of the basic numbers for 2019 by MIT irritate such a sensitive nerve? For the nth time, this has nothing to do with “hating Chicago for no reasons” but everything with the continued unwillingness by Chicago to release the most basic numbers. A fact compounded by the presence of a resident adcom on this forum.
Before killing the messenger, should you not ask yourself why it appears so hard to emulate the process at MIT?
Seriously!
“All schools manipulate their admissions numbers to one degree or another; @xiggi just doesn’t care for how Chicago does it.”
That’s the message.
What is the relevance of data manipulation to an issue of releasing BASIC admission numbers in a timely numbers? Astute observers know that the numbers in March or April will be different from the official numbers released by most schools in October on various surveys. It is fully expected that WL admits and summer melts will drop the admission rates by various degrees. The fact that some schools count the number of applications differently is also a fact of life.
But NONE of that addresses the continuous unwillingness by Chicago to release numbers in a timely manner. be it in December, or April, or by making its CDS form public. Those numbers are not state secrets and are not expected to contain massive amounts of details. I posted the numbers of MIT to show that it is absolutely feasible to release data that will resist a modicum of scrutiny at an early stage.
It is really simple: schools that are still clinging to notions that hiding information deserve to be exposed. Full transparency is something that helps everyone make better decisions. With the rapid increases in applications at Chicago during the past decade, there are no reasons why Chicago has to cling to the bizarre MOI of Ted. The school has made changes in its marketing and positioning as a highly selective AND sought-after school. Why can’t its leaders adopt more transparent policies when there is no downside to release … basic numbers?
I think it should be important to remember that, while we here on CC want to know, the broader world isn’t going to look past face value on this. Sure, Chicago might release their statistics a few days later. Is this going to matter in any way, shape or form? No.
Though I do applaud MIT for releasing their information so quickly.
@xiggi That is a darned good question why Chicago won’t publicly release its Common Data Set information, when pretty much every other university does, at least based on ones I’ve looked for . . . this is generally readily accessible just by typing the school name and Common Data Set in a search engine.
I’ve looked these up for a bunch of different schools and the only other one I’ve come across that doesn’t post the information is University of Southern California.
I’m a big fan of Chicago . . . just puzzled by the secrecy around the CDS data when peer schools view it as public information.
I am befuddled by some commenters’ fixation with the CDS, because I’m not aware of any data in the CDS that is relevant to a prospective student or person concerned about higher education that isn’t already in the public domain. Here’s a link the the Registrar’s site that compiles links to various data sets:
https://registrar.uchicago.edu/page/enrollment-statistics
The university census reports list in detail how many students are in the university, what their majors are, how many degrees were awarded by major, etc. The U.S. DOE College Navigator data is closely analogous to the most useful data in the CDS (unless, I suppose, one really needs to know the percentage of enrolled first-year students who scored between 400-499 on a particular SAT section).
I’d personally prefer it if the school put out information in a more user-friendly format (and a more timely manner). But, nearly all the data one would want is already public, if one invests the effort to find it. Thus, if it meets its legal obligations, the school is free to pursue its own strategy, and comments about whether the approach is right/wrong or good/bad are misplaced. While all are entitled to their opinions, there is simply no normative ideal. Hyper-focus on irrelevant statistics detracts from focus on the college’s unique education and the overall university’s strengths (and, yes, weaknesses). Chicago would be a great experience for many–but not all–talented students. Indeed, it may well be that the school is wiser than we know–those who would choose Chicago for its (statistics-derived) place on some list are probably not the people who belong at Chicago.
So, one example of a piece of data that is readily available for other schools in CDS is, how many people were admitted off the wait list in prior years? I see a current thread on wait list so this seems like a timely question.
This may be available somewhere in the link noted above but if it is, I’m not sure where. In CDS the format is common so it’s easy to find data.
For Stanford for example, CDS shows 958 were offered a wait list spot last year, 695 decided to be on the wait list and 7 were admitted off the wait list. So it’s pretty clear that the odds of getting in to Stanford via the wait list are very low . . . this kind of information would be useful, I think, for those offered a waiting list spot at Chicago.
@bluewater2015–It’s not a bad point, but past waiting list data has limited predictive value, especially at a school like Chicago, where enrollment, admissions rate, and yield have been changing pretty significantly over the past few years. Other schools can be fairly confident that they can tailor their admissions rate to the projected yield and end up with about the class size they want. Stanford is an example, where almost nobody on the wait list gets admitted. Harvard is probably similar, although Harvard leaves wait list data fields blank on its CDS submission. Chicago has become more popular in terms of applications and yield (whether these are good things is a separate question), something that caused a strain on resources for a few years, when a higher than expected number students accepted their offers to go to Chicago. To guard against further such surprises, a rational approach for Chicago to take would be to under-admit in the EA/RD rounds, review the acceptances, and then fill from the wait list. For now, that would seem to favor more wait list admits. Additionally, it isn’t yet clear where Chicago’s steady state position will be in the constellation of desirability–not so much vs. Harvard/Stanford, but Chicago’s admissions peers (Penn, Columbia, Duke, MIT) and those who Chicago aspires to have as (Princeton/Yale). Chicago needs to be concerned with students who forked over their deposits getting picked up off of a Princeton/Yale wait list, as well as the risk that a student who gets picked up off both the Chicago and Columbia wait lists might actually choose Columbia (notably, I’m not aware that Columbia releases its CDS, either). Those factors also seem to favor a larger wait list and more admissions from the wait list. A larger number of admits off the waiting list seems to have been true for the Class of 2018, with about 100 admissions (see post #165 in this thread), compared with about half those numbers at both Princeton and Yale, schools that have about the same number of undergraduates. From Chicago’s perspective, it might be desirable not to put out the wait list annual data while things are in flux. One can see, especially in the CC bubble, where the numbers could be twisted or misread. For instance, some might argue that 100 wait list admits (a relatively high number) demonstrates that the school is less desirable or even less worthy. But a high number could be due to unique circumstances, as might well be the case for Chicago until it finds its steady state position among students admitted to multiple schools.
Chicago’s wait list size and admit numbers are highly variable, and what they were last year or two years ago has limited value in assessing how many will be admitted this year. Finally, it does appear that Chicago has at least published the number of wait list admits for last year’s class, if not the total number of students who were offered/accepted spots on the wait list.
@ssn137 Interesting analysis, and I can see how the rapid changes in the admissions picture at Chicago could make past wait list data less useful than at some schools.
Approximately 100 is a substantial number so if last year is any guide, that at least tells a student who’s really interested in Chicago that it may be worth it to see if a spot pans out from the waiting list, whereas at some places the numbers accepted off the wait list tend to be very low (e.g. Stanford last year) or zero (e.g. MIT last year).
I believe you’re correct about Columbia also not releasing CDS data (seven of the eight Ivies do and that’s the exception).
I don’t won’t to go through the whole thread and read every single post 
Can anyone give me an estimate of the admission rate a Uchicago this year?
My guesstimate is between 6.95% and 7.95%.
Acceptance rate of 7.8%. They announced it at an admitted student’s reception.