<p>You’re underestimating the role that name recognition plays in attracting prospective students. This is why HYPSM is so untouchable…</p>
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<p>This eerily sounds like the kind of “irrational exuberance” that Greenspan warned everyone about, but no one listened. College admissions, like the stock market, is cyclical…</p>
<p>I actually think that the perceptions of high school students are very easily manipulable. I do see what you’re saying, though, and the plebeian name recognition of the school will probably have more to do with yield than number of applications. If you’ll notice, I never said that Chicago will surpass Harvard or Stanford in applications or even get near them in yield. I don’t expect that to happen in the next decade or, frankly, ever. However, I think that Chicago can approach upper Ivy selectivity by getting its acceptance rate down to about 10% in the next decade, while the upper Ivies should have acceptance rates of 6-7%.</p>
<p>In any case, arguing about this is a bit silly, since admissions is rather unpredictable sometimes. This is just my prediction, and it’s hardly based on a heavy amount of evidence. Anything that predicts the future by over a year in admissions is simply reckless, so I’m just making observations.</p>
<p>Why would you assume that no Ivy League will have its acceptance rate drop below 6%? Harvard’s acceptance rate will be ~6.5% this year and if it gets maybe 4k? more applications next year, it will be below 6%. As well, there is a rumor (but by no means is it official and hopefully is wrong) that Yale has 36000 applications this year, which would lead them to have a <6% acceptance rate.</p>
<p>I saw 42%… then I saw 19000 applications. </p>
<p>If it makes anyone feel better, Harvard, Stanford, Brown all received >30,000, and all the dream schools I applied to were well over 26,000.</p>
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<p>Actually, Harvard’s acceptance rate will be 7.32/1.05 = 6.97% this year. They would have to get their apps up by about five more thousand to get under 6%, and I’m unsure of how possible (and desirable) this actually is. Yale didn’t get over 36k applications; they received 26k last year and had an EA decrease, so that would be pretty absurd.</p>
<p>name recognition is not that hard to manipulate. All it takes is one hell of a good, focused marketing scheme implemented with proper resources and attention to detail several years in a row AS LONG AS the fundamentals are there such as academic excellence, etc, which U Chicago already has. </p>
<p>One of the best tools to achieve that is to go up in the USNWR ranking, which again is not that difficult to manipulate provided that fundamentals are there. A case in point: U Penn. Till 94, U Penn’s ranking hovered below top 15, then within 10 years, it went up to top 5ish. Don’t tell me that the school suddenly became that much better in such a short time in comparison with its peers. Last Sept, it was ranked as #4. see the following link:</p>
<p>[U.S</a>. News Rankings Through the Years](<a href=“http://web.archive.org/web/20070908142457/http://chronicle.com/stats/usnews/]U.S”>U.S. News Rankings Through the Years)</p>
<p>Everyone talks about the cross admit yield being contingent upon FA. Well, U CHicago does not have to woo many HYP cross admits. That’s probably not possible in a foreseeable future even if the FA is taken care of due to the HYP aura effect. What U Chicago can do is to boost the yield by winning the cross admit competition vis a vis Columbia, Penn, Brown, Dartmouth and such. So, the question is:</p>
<p>Does anyone know how U Chicago’s FA stack up against that of the lower Ivies, Penn, and Columbia? </p>
<p>On a related note (while we are talking about raising the ranking profile and what not), I wonder if the U Chicago admissions office will also think about ways to raise the incoming student SAT and class rank profile. Note that these two control 13.5% of the total score on the USNWR ranking system. This is in fact more important than the financial resources. See below: </p>
<p>[Methodology:</a> Undergraduate Ranking Criteria and Weights - US News and World Report](<a href=“http://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/articles/2009/08/19/methodology-undergraduate-ranking-criteria-and-weights.html]Methodology:”>http://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/articles/2009/08/19/methodology-undergraduate-ranking-criteria-and-weights.html)</p>
<p>And, this is again fairly easy to manipulate, given that U Chicago already draws very high caliber students to begin with. For instance, for the RD students, put more emphasis on the scores and ranks, and give a bit more FA to those with high stats.</p>
<p>What’s really hard to change and takes a generation or longer to change such as general peer reputation, academics, faculty, etc, U Chicago has them down to pat. What stands in the way of Chicago ascension is fairly easy to correct and manipulate. This is why I believe U Chicago has a tremendous headroom to climb up the rankings and prestige. </p>
<p>So, supposed I am a general manager, and have a product like U Chicago. I would say “Great, I can easily gain market share of this product and get an amazing bonus. This product has all the right stuff in terms of intellectual property, quality, amazing hardware platform, ample software applications tools, etc. All it lacked was a sophisticated marketing and sales tactic. Easy enough to fix.”</p>
<p>If Chicago had D1 sports, the application numbers would be even higher. My D received mailing from Chicago and she would have been a double legacy but she did not apply due to lack of competitive team in her sports. I am sure there are many athletes with strong academics pass on U of Chicago due to lack of competitive sports teams. Even MIT has a D1 team. No athletes do not get any pull for lack of academics from adcom at MIT.</p>
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<p>Attention to test scores for the sake of raising a them few points for USNWR would be a grave mistake. Chicago gets good enough scores without emphasizing them in the admissions process. What makes Chicago stand out to many students is its emphasis on essays, curriculum, and recommendations and not test scores or over-the-top ECs. As one Chicago official once said, “We would rather hear a student spent the summer sitting under a tree reading great books than building houses in another country they don’t really care about.” I believe the word is getting out about these aspects of the Chicago’s admissions process, and accounts for the increase more than anything else.</p>
<p>At least from the early admit pool, it appeared as if the statistics for both class rank and SATs remained about the same from last year. Then again, early admit pool will be considerably different from regular admit pool, so we’ll have to see what happens come April. I’m expecting a slight rise in SATs and class rank, but probably nothing too significant.</p>
<p>^^where do u have the statistics and numbers for the EA admits?</p>
<p>I don’t have any statistics. This is just from the early admit thread here at CC. There were many students who were admitted who were not in the top 10%, and in fact, many more than I was expecting.</p>
<p>My guess is, the kids admitted from the RD pool will have more competitive stats than the EA kids. Acceptance rate of 28.5% (EA) vs. projected ~12-13% (RD): this says it all even without any conscious effort on the part of the admissions office to favor higher stats for RD per se. Of course, this won’t hold if there is a reason to believe that “self selection” happened during the EA cycle where higher stat kids chose to apply EA as opposed to RD. However, there seems to be no evidence that this took place.</p>
<p>Furthermore, IF Phuriku is right in that the EA acceptances were given with less emphasis on stats, then they have to make up for that “generosity” during the RD cycle by picking students with high stats - I don’t think any top elite college with an ambition to build and maintain the ascension momentum would like to see their admitted student stat profile sliding - this is not the kind of signal they would like to send. Note also that as I mentioned earlier, that accounts for 13.5% of the total USNWR ranking weight. </p>
<p>I am not stating my personal opinion per se. I am just role playing for the institution assuming that their goal is to build a more prestigious and competitive profile for the school.</p>
<p>I am actually not too surprised to see this thread on the discussion home. Arguably, Chicago has the fastest growing name in undergraduate education. Attracting more of its acceptees is probably the biggest challenge facing the university (yield is approximately 35% I would say). If Chicago increases the generosity of its financial aid program, the yield would greatly increase. My ability to attend will be contingent on the financial aid and the regualr decision offers come April.</p>
<p>@hyeonjlee: Generally, a university places has a certain idea of the number of applicants that it wishes to admit during the EA/ED round. Since there are fewer applicants, the acceptance rate is often considerably greater.</p>
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<p>Not true. ED acceptance rate is higher than the RD rate since it’s really a quid pro quo between the school and the students: you commit early and help us preserve the yield, and we give you better odds. EA acceptance is also in general higher than RD, but NOT by as much as by ED. </p>
<p>Chicago this year had 52% increase in EA applications. Yet, they maintained the similar EA acceptance rate (28.5%). Hence, they admitted 500 more kids during the EA cycle this year than the last year. They kept the ratio constant and increased the number significantly. I was practically shocked by this. With a full anticipation of the general application number going up not only during the EA cycle but also RD cycle, U Chicago was essentially penalizing the RD kids greatly by coming up with an admission landscape where they greatly favored the EA applicants. Note that we are all projecting the RD acceptance rate to be below 15 % at best - more like 12%.</p>
<p>This level of disparity between non binding EA and RD has not been seen before, and completely caught the RD applicants by surprise. Historically, Chicago’s EA acceptance rate was a few % higher than the RD acceptance rate, NOT over 2X higher. I don’t see this kind of difference even among top elite ED schools.</p>
<p>I think this is scandalous and irresponsible on the part of U Chicago: rather than running a rather rational admission cycle, they turned this into a game of chance. This year, your odds of getting into the school is heavily predicated on when you applied, perhaps more than your overall qualifications - within a reasonable boundary that is. </p>
<p>This is no skin off my nose. My kid is not applying RD to U Chicago. Still, I am scratching my head: what were they thinking? It seems grossly unfair. Everyone anticipated that U Chicago applications are going to go up. They should have adjusted their EA acceptance rate downward from the previous year so that there is more equitable chance for the RD applicants. Instead, they made it into a lottery (again, within the boundary of sort of qualified students). Not merit based, but based on chance and gaming.</p>
<p>OK nothing illegal in what they did. However, in my mind, this is really a blot on their institutional integrity and a farce overall.</p>
<p>Perhaps they were just trying to increase yield? Generally, EA admits are more likely to matriculate, so UChicago heavily admitted them this year in hopes that yield would rise (?)</p>
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<p>Ivy Leagues whose EA/ED acceptance rate was more than 2x higher its RD acceptance rate: Columbia, Cornell, Penn, Dartmouth, Brown, Yale; in other words, all of them. And I particularly emphasize Yale, as it is the only EA school among these.</p>
<p>As in every issue in admissions, it all comes down to institutional health vs. fairness for the applicants. And the former wins every time.</p>
<p>Haven’t you guys seen the new SAT ranges for UChicago on college board ([College</a> Search - University of Chicago - Chicago - At a Glance](<a href=“College Search - BigFuture | College Board)?%5DCollege”>College Search - BigFuture | College Board)?))? They’re at HYP ranges now.</p>
<p>Actually what I said is true. Schools institute these prerogatives to preserve or enhance their reputation. I too am not ideologically supportive of measures that digress from meritocratic admission standards. Chicago’s initiative to increase yield (as A-Punk correctly states) simply demonstrates that the school aggressively seeks to better its national image. One of the most proven methods of accomplishing this is to admit more EA/ED applicants since applying early is an overt act of displaying interest in potentially attending the institution, particularly if the early agreement is restrictive or an ED program (although Chicago’s policy is neither). Thus, Chicago did indeed have a strategy to improve its yield - by admitting a far greater number of EA applicants than it has in previous years. Given Chicago’s desire to increase its yield and the fact that its EA applicant pool had a 54% increase over last year, that the EA admission rate did not plummet to an appreciable extent is not surprising.</p>
<p>Moreover, given its commitment to increasing EA acceptances, Chicago will institute much more rigorous standards on its RD applicant pool. This is simply because the incoming class is more full after the EA round than at any time in its history coupled with a subsequent record number of RD applicants. Therefore, the discrepancies between the EA and RD acceptance rate are more pronounced.</p>
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<p>Yes, that is true. However, most institutions have considerably higher admissions rates for their EA/ED cycle without a substantial greater quality in the talent and merit of the applicant pool. The truth is that universities are incessantly seeking to increase the perceived quality of their image to the public and increase their competiveness with their peers. Universities’ foremost objective is to shape their entering class to best benefit their public profile and marketing abilities. This entails higher acceptance rates for minorities, students from underrepresented states, and students from unusual circumstances and accounts for the phenomenon of gender balance. Is this equitable? Absolutely not. I am a staunch proponent of the argument in favor of admittance on the basis of merit, talent, and demonstrated potential through circumstances that are not advantageous to individual success or achievement. </p>
<p>Much of college admissions is a “grossly unfair lottery” and some preferential treatment is more flagrant than others. Thus, the indignation that hyeonjlee feels is perfectly warranted and reasonable and the universities who create admission paradigms based on non-meritocratic standards are at fault and ultimately not fulfilling their foremost objectives to society. Will more meritocratic standards be instituted in the future? For the benefit of us all, I certainly hope so and the elimination of EA/ED/SCEA programs and other discriminatory policies would proceed a long way towards our achievement of this goal.</p>