<p>Phuriku - ya, it’s really interesting. For the first time I can remember, the Chicago administration seems to have a tone I never ever associated with the school: aggression. The Maroon article stated: "But those [admissions] statistics don’t mean the U of C is trying to emulate the Ivies, Nondorf said. “I’m not gunning for them by any stretch of the imagination,”</p>
<p>Hmm, I sort of get the sense Nondorf IS gunning for them. The outreach campaign this year was quite aggressive, and with such a boom in applications, and most of the ivies seeing a lot less growth, all of a sudden direct admissions numbers competition seems like a game the administration is much more willing to play. For the first time ever, Chicago’s college received more applications than Dartmouth, Cornell A&S, and UPenn’s CAS (assuming consistent growth at these other schools). Columbia is certainly within striking distance (to use the “gunning” metaphor), and Brown probably would be as well. </p>
<p>Phuriku, maybe you’re right - I think Yale will wind up getting around 26K apps, Princeton maybe around 20K, so who knows what the plan is for the next 7-8 years?</p>
<p>As a Chicago alum from the height of the “self-selective” era at Chicago, some of the statistics from this year are just mind-boggling. It’s funny, 5-7 years from now, I think Princeton will still look quite similar to how it is today, Yale will too, as will Duke or Brown. I really have no idea what the student body composition at Chicago will be like in the years ahead.</p>
<p>If Nondorf can attract more students to “the life of the mind”, more power to him. Making a rigorous liberal arts education attractive to more prospective students can only be a good thing and may be just as self-selective, but from a larger group of “Chicago-type” students who previously did not get the message.</p>
<p>Newmassdad: It’s great (and necessary) for Boyer to push for improvement at Chicago, but directly claiming that one school isn’t better than another just isn’t done as much. Either way, I mean, this is Dean Boyer, so he’s hardly incendiary. The quote was either taken out of context or Boyer was just kind of rambling on as he does and the reporter fixated on that off-handed comment.</p>
<p>When my son chose to attend Chicago he went there for the sports. Not UofC sports, to be sure, but the fact that Chicago was in a “major league city.” Not Second City sort of major league city but major league professional sports city – with no fewer than two major league baseball teams, hockey, basketball, football.</p>
<p>So in June after his first year we were driving home to MI and I asked him whether he had managed to get to any baseball games. I knew he was decidedly NOT going to find himself holed up in Regenstein Library til all hours – or really any hours. But I figured he’d manage to get off campus at least a little bit.</p>
<p>“Yes, I went to some games,” he said.</p>
<p>“How many?” I asked</p>
<p>“Oh, about ten,” he answered.</p>
<p>“TEN games between the start of the season and the end of finals!? Did you ever cut class to go to a game?”</p>
<p>“No,” he said. </p>
<p>“Except on opening day,” he added.</p>
<p>“So you went to opening day. Which opener was it? Sox or Cubs?”</p>
<p>“Both,” he said.</p>
<p>Moral of the story is that UofC draws kids for all kinds of reasons. For my son it was also the academics, but the city was at least as important. “Q. How do you like living at Chicago?” we asked him when he made his first trip home. “A. I’m not living AT Chicago, I’m living IN Chicago,” was his reply.</p>
<p>And I’ve known other kids who chose Chicago because of its fraternities! Its wrestling team! It’s softball team! And they got a damn good education there as well.</p>
<p>Back in the early mid 70s I lived less than a block from Wriggly Field. The Cubs were so bad and had such poor attendance that in the bottom of the 5th they opened the gates allowing free admittance and one could sit anywhere one chose. I found a job where I worked nights, so it was perfect. I love Wriggly Field. I also like the Sox. I am one of the few who root for both. I can think of no better reason to attend UofC. Perhaps if Nondorf can get a UChicago ticket package together, he could increase applications another 42%. (Ted O’Neill is a big time Sox fan and would never consider a Cubs package, I doubt Nondorf knows the difference between the two.)</p>
<p>just out of idle curiosity, has there been any other college/university that saw this level of jump in one year, or is this a record breaking number?</p>
<p>Hyeonjlee - I’m pretty sure this is record-breaking. I’ve never heard of another major university seeing this sort of jump. I think Northwestern had about a 20% increase a few years ago, but 42% is pretty crazy.</p>
<p>Well, obviously, Chicago’s selectivity is far behind those of HYPSM at the moment, prodigalson. But considering that Chicago just had perhaps the largest increase in applications ever for a highly-selective school through the course of one year, I think that the admissions office probably has very high goals for the future, ones that probably don’t seem very realistic at the moment.</p>
<p>I remember when I matriculated (3 years ago), I heard that Zimmer had a goal of boosting the number of apps to 15,000 in 5 years. At the time, it sounded crazy to just about everyone. How do you increase 10k to 15k over the course of 5 years? Well, Chicago went from 10k to 19k in 3 years instead, and this is perhaps the biggest change in selectivity over such a short time span ever - from 35% acceptance rate to 19% acceptance rate in 4 years. Is it really such a big step to go from 19% down to 10% in a decade? Well, yes, frankly, it is a big step. But one in which I think the current admissions office has a very good potential to attain. With Ted O’Neill, I don’t think that there was a chance at hell at that happening. With Nondorf, I think it would take an extremely amount of hard work, but I think he could make it happen over the course of a long time.</p>
<p>Of course, you’re absolutely right that it’s way to early to be making comparisons between Chicago and HYPSM. First comes Columbia, which Chicago is still lagging considerably behind, and it will take a while to catch up. But you can’t deny that the admissions office probably has HYPMS in the back of their heads (as is the case with many highly selective universities, I’m sure).</p>
<p>While we are giving attributing for this amazing jump to the common app, this year’s Nondorf marketing savvy, smart policies by recent college administration, etc, we should acknowledge that no amount of such “window dressing” would have made this kind of jump possible if the university had not been been an outstanding academic institution with a deepest reservoir of respect among the peers in the world of higher education. </p>
<p>At an expert’s hand, a diamond in the rough can finally shine brilliantly, but no amount of polishing and cutting will turn a glass into a diamond.</p>
<p>I give a lot of credit to the faculty, the students themselves past and present, and the myriad of those who worked for a long time in the past to build this institution to be the bedrock of higher learning. </p>
<p>I hope the school does not lose its focus on the intellectual zeal and pursuit for the life of the mind. The day U Chicago starts to admit significant number of athletes and celebrities with seriously sub par intellectual qualifications is the the day I will be sorry to see this institution becoming just like another “luxury brand name goods”.</p>
<p>Is there another CC Top University forum with this level of discussion? Give yourself some credit guys (and gals) for the buzz U of C is generating.</p>
<p>On one of these Chicago application threads in the past couple of days someone mentioned that the FA budget had increased this year. If Nondorf is indeed paying attention to CC what his ears-to-the-ground folks are telling him, he’s got to realize that his job (and image) can be burnished by getting more FA on board as part of increasing yield.</p>
<p>We got a preliminary FA estimate from Chicago yesterday and I have to say I’m shocked…in a good way.</p>
<p>Well, no one knows about (2). Frankly, I don’t think Harvard and Yale could ever get their accept rates under 5%. 6%, maybe, but I think that’s as far as it goes. I think if Chicago could get its acceptance rate to about 10%, this would be about equivalent to the selectivity of HYPSM. Of course, acceptance rate isn’t everything, so one would also have to assume that Chicago starts winning more cross-admits, which means increasing its FA packages significantly (or the converse, that is, if HYPSM started decreasing their financial packages significantly, which seems somewhat more likely at this state of the economy and with endowments slipping).</p>
<p>As for (1): I’m just looking at Nondorf’s track record. A healthy bit of skepticism is indeed necessary, but Nondorf increased the applicant pool at RPI by about 120% in 3 years. Also, his actions led to a very significant change in yield at Yale. (Look at their yield stats, noting that Nondorf left in 2006.) What can I say? His record is very impressive. </p>
<p>Now, do I think Chicago will have a 42% increase next year as well? No, I don’t. I think Chicago will probably have something akin to a 10-15% increase in applications, and I think this will continue over the next few years. Chicago has had 10% or higher total application increases for 3 straight years, and one of these was a 19% increase and one was a 42% increase. The university has mentioned that it wants to catch up with Columbia, which will probably be getting around 22k apps this year. I wouldn’t be surprised if Chicago catches up in a year or two. Chicago’s got quite a lot of momentum coming from Nondorf, and he’s only been in the office for something like 8 months. Although I’m perhaps being over-optimistic and I do welcome your criticism, Nondorf seems like the ideal admissions officer to boost Chicago up the selectivity rankings.</p>
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<p>I said this the other day. I’m not sure of the validity of my statement, though, since the article made clear that merit scholarships made up about 10% of the $70 million figure. Which means that Chicago has about $59 million annually in aid. Now, if I recall correctly, last year this figure was $49 million according to the admissions office. I could be wrong since I haven’t been searching for the exact figure from last year, and I don’t know if it’s even published.</p>
<p>I certainly hope that financial aid is being fixed (and for the older students as well). It would do wonders for the popularity of the university, and even for student life.</p>
<p>We’re talking over the next decade. Nondorf was probably brought into the admissions office more for increasing yield than for boosting applications, so I don’t see why over the next decade Chicago couldn’t boost its yield to the 45-50% marker. The 65-80% of HYPSM is out of reach over the next decade, more than likely, but boosting yield by 9-14% over a decade isn’t something terribly unheard of. In fact, Chicago did this THIS decade, if you’ll recall. I think Chicago can do the following things over the next decade:</p>
<ol>
<li>Boost applications to around the 25K mark.</li>
<li>Move yield from the 36-38% its been hanging around to 45-50%.</li>
</ol>
<p>I am also assuming that:</p>
<ol>
<li>No Ivy League school will have its accept rate drop below 6%.</li>
</ol>
<p>If Chicago can do this, it will be essentially as selective as the upper Ivies in 2020. That is 3 assumptions, prodigalson. Frankly, I don’t think these are terribly difficult to accomplish over a decade. Chicago went from 10k apps to 19k apps in 3 years. Can it not go from 19k to 25k in 10? Chicago went from sub-30% yield in the early 2000s to 36-38% in 2009-2010. Can it not then reach 45-50% by 2020 under an admissions head known for increasing yield (and in particular, increasing Yale’s “most desired student” yield from 10% to 33% over three years)?</p>
<p>I don’t find my predictions overly ambitious. They are indeed difficult to accomplish, but observing current trends, I don’t feel like I’m overdoing it.</p>