@Zinhead I meant that once students figure out they will not get any advantage in getting admitted compared to RD, given the preference given to ED1 and ED2, they will just choose to apply RD, if they want to shop.
@denydenzig - I hope you don’t think I have any doubts about the quality of UoC. As I’ve said more than once, I believe that academically it’s one of the top universities in the country. To take your points in order, though:
- No one knows what would have happened in a hypothetical world where all comparable schools had ED, but the fact is, by choosing to apply ED to a school, a student says they're prepared to go there if admitted and not apply anywhere else (including UoC). That, by construction, is giving a preference to the ED school. You may say: but maybe the student thought the odds were so much better applying ED that even though she preferred UoC she thought she had to use an ED bullet somewhere. To which I'll respond: well, she didn't love UoC all that much, did she? We'll never know exactly how much more she preferred UoC, but what we do know is that she made a choice at the outset that she didn't love UoC enough to hold out for it.
More importantly, though, now that UoC has ED, let’s think about what could well happen. There won’t be any more cases of students getting in EA to UoC and ED somewhere else, therefore having to pick the ED school and having a cross-admit go against UoC. Now a lot of kids will be admitted ED to UoC and, as a result, the number of cross-admits will decrease because they can’t apply anywhere else. If, as I think, between EDI and EDII, UoC will admit up to 70% of the class (I doubt UoC will disclose the stats, unfortunately), the kids left in the RD pool are going to be on average less interested in UoC, because most will infer that if you don’t apply ED, the odds against you are extremely high. If so, UoC’s cross-admit performance against its peers might actually get worse.
- Based on comments on other threads regarding statements made by UoC admissions officers, it sounds like something like 1,200 students were admitted EA to UoC last year. As most will acknowledge is the case everywhere, the EA pool will be higher-quality on average than the overall pool. Let's say, therefore, that for two-thirds of the EA pool, either HYPS or UoC is their clear first choice and they either applied SCEA to HYPS or EA to UoC, with no ED app anywhere.
That leaves 400 that might - might - have applied ED somewhere and therefore could be an EA/ED cross-admit. There are quite a few ED schools, among them Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Duke, Johns Hopkins, Northwestern, Penn, Tufts, Vanderbilt and the vast majority of leading liberal arts colleges. The EA/ED cross-admits could be spread over most or all of them. How many of the 400 UoC EA admits do you think also (i) applied ED to any one of these schools; (ii) was admitted to both schools; and (iii) would in fact have preferred to go to UoC? I’m going to guess (because we’ll never know): probably not enough to change the cross-admit statistics substantially for any one school in particular.
- Actually, I think it's entirely possible for UoC to beat the likes of Penn and Columbia on cross-admits. Certainly, they're close now, and an enormous amount of ground has been made up in recent years. As noted, though, I think it's not at all clear that with ED the picture will improve (although yield will almost certainly increase, as I suggested, more applicants admitted ED may result in fewer and less motivated cross-admits), and I think there are some structural challenges to UoC beating Penn and Columbia "handily" (the word I used) - but that's a subject for another post.
With all the game theory going on, one point I have seen not raised is that by applying EA, it also allows kids to apply at other EA schools like MIT, Notre Dame, BC, Georgetown, Caltech or a host of public schools like Michigan and Virginia. The choice is not necessarily EA at UChicago vs ED at another school, but EA at a variety of schools vs ED. If Chicago drops EA, it may not convert those into ED applications as a great many students might prefer staying in the EA pool.
@DeepBlue86 I have no reason to believe that you doubt the quality of UChicago (I think that is the preferred brand name now. The school I think takes pain to mention that UofC is no longer acceptable, because there is too much room for confusion with other schools from what I have read on the website 
)
Similarly I think Penn, Columbia etc are great schools also. We are just having a friendly conversation here, so no worries.
This is a very fair point. All I am saying is that you can’t compare cross admit data for these two schools then, because there really is not a “head-on” bake-off between the two schools on a level playing field and so those specific numbers don’t really tell any insightful story about revealed preferences. You can however compare two EA schools or EA/SCEA schools in terms of cross-admit data, provided there is a valid sample size.
Yes, the RD pool will be made up of students who are probably less interested in UChicago than the UChicago ED pool, but that doesn’t say anything about the RD pool’s interest in UChicago compared to some other school. Maybe compared to their ** other choices** UChicago is still #1, maybe not.
Not really. My feeling is that it is mostly going to be either Penn, Columbia or Duke. Given that Chicago already wins cross admits with the other schools (Cornell, Northwestern, Johns Hopkins, Dartmouth, Vanderbilt, Tufts despite them having ED) I think there is very little overlap in the applicant pool with these schools in the ED round. EA is a backup option compared to a student’s favorite ED school. Since Chicago is already preferred compared to these schools, despite not having an ED program, very few students will apply ED to these schools and also apply EA to Chicago, because if both schools admit them, they would in fact be going to their less favored school.
We know Chicago loses cross admits when it comes to HYSM (SCEA/EA schools) and Duke (but this is an ED school, so we have to wait and see). Chicago wins against Cornell and Dartmouth and many other schools already, despite many of them having ED, so most of the overlap is only in the RD round. The cross admit data is not statistically significant when it comes to Princeton, Brown, Penn and Columbia and may change now that Chicago has an ED option. We just have to wait and see. Not sure how many years of admit data Parchment aggregates in its revealed preferences.
Again to summarize, my point is that cross admit data between an EA school and an ED school that favors the ED school is not really revealing. But now that Chicago has ED, we should start seeing interesting data in Parchment against the Penn, Brown, Columbia and Duke in the next few years, if Chicago gets rid of EA. If I were to guess, I would say that Chicago will beat Duke slightly, will beat Brown handily and will tie with Penn and Columbia in the next few years.
The lack of statistical significance in cross admit losses with Princeton is interesting. I would have thought the numbers would skew in Princeton’s favor by a comfortable margin as it does for HYSM. I wonder what is going on there. Maybe the Princeton brand is not as strong or maybe there is very little overlap in the applicant pool, making the sample size too small?
That’s an excellent point, @Zinhead . I’m sure the ability to apply EA to Chicago, MIT, Michigan, and Georgetown all at once has been pretty attractive to students over the years. I certainly promoted it here.
I would also guess that up to half the EA admits in some past years – not necessarily recently – were people who had applied to some other university ED. Permitting that was, at the time, a very effective tool for Chicago. Sure, it lost some EA admittees to ED acceptances, but it got the ability to do full-court press marketing to everyone else.
My older child would not have applied EA to Chicago had she not been permitted to do that and to apply ED elsewhere. And she may not have decided to enroll at Chicago had she not been courted by it after it accepted her, and had she not spent three months doing further research about it and talking to students. That was then, this is now. They are clearly going another direction, and they probably can, but the old direction wasn’t so bad.
Re: Princeton. Cities are in; exurbs are out.
I wonder how far back that cross-admit data goes. I suspect that the cross-admit percentages right now are significantly different for UChicago than they were even 5-10 years ago.
I’ll chime in here because I absolutely believe that the UChicago admission officers/President know what they’re doing and have spent a lot more time thinking about this than any of us on this forum. To me its obvious, EA admits for those very exceptional student who might matriculate, ED1 admits for those who are qualified academically and they like, ED2 for those who are qualified academically, they like, and were most likely deferred from a HYPS or Uchicago EA, RD for extremely exceptional candidates who have shown more than a passing interest in UChicago. JMHO.
As a note I do get the issue about financial aid and applying RD, but if that is an issue I would research who historically gives the best financial aid and apply there EA or ED (from what I have researched that would be Princeton). However EA admits at the HYPS (and now UChicago) seems to be only for the very exceptional (in some capacity).
This discussion, while insightful and compelling, misses a fundamental point. These schools attract different students with different personalities. For those for whom academic pedigree is the one key criterion, UChicago will be at the very top of choices, righ there with MIT, slightly ahead of Columbia (ceteris paribus) and clearly ahead of all other ivies excep HYP. But a large proportion of kids look first and foremost for the “college experience” with a vibrant social scene, clubs and partying included. Here, UChicago loses.
I dunno, @denydenzig - I think you’re stretching 
so I’ll respond by being a little tongue in cheek:
If my girlfriend tells me we either have to get married or break up, and I decide to propose to her and stop seeing other women (because I’m not as confident the other women would say yes if I proposed to them, even though I might sneakingly think they could be a little prettier, nicer or what-have-you), although I agree it’s not the same as if I knew all the women were equally likely to accept my proposal, I think it’s hard to say that I don’t love my girlfriend more than anyone else. I think applying somewhere ED is analogous - you do that, and it should be assumed you’re saying that’s where you want to go / who you want to marry. It’s fair to assume you’d pick them even if another girl suddenly became available - this is the plot premise of more romcoms than I can count.
Second, it stands to reason that if you take a large slug of the keenest UChicago (see what I did there?) EA applicants and move them voluntarily into the ED pool, what you’re going to be left with is the least keen subset. All things equal, UChicago’s cross-admit performance must get worse, because a whole lot of applicants who would have chosen UChicago now are out of the pool and aren’t able to make a cross-admit choice, while the number of those who would choose competitors hasn’t changed at all.
Finally, even if it looks like UChicago wins in cross-admits with a lot of the ED schools, if the difference isn’t statistically significant (e.g., with Swarthmore), maybe some students actually are applying ED to the other school. As discussed above, I think a maximum of 400 of UChicago EA admits could be applying ED somewhere. It’s likely that a bunch of them aren’t applying ED anywhere, and, even if they are, they’re not necessarily getting in. Add to that the likelihood that the ED apps are spread around at least a few schools (although I’ll concede that my gut tells me you’re right and Penn, Columbia and Duke account for a large number of them), I think it’s very unclear that the EA/ED cross-admit group is affecting any individual school’s cross-admit performance vs. UChicago to a statistically significant extent. But we’ll never know…and next year, with ED at UChicago affecting the numbers, the game will change permanently.
Regarding Princeton, I’m confident @JHS is right, as usual - if you’re applying to UChicago, as fabulous as Princeton is, you’re probably keener on going to school in a city (even if it’s New Haven) than an expensive town in central New Jersey, and this causes Princeton to be dinged in the cross-admit competition with UChicago.
@DeepBlue86 Lol. Nice analogy. Lets run with it
Your action gives me no insights into another man’s potential likes at all. It tells me nothing about how many men would choose the other girl over your girlfriend if they both competed on an equal footing for the attention of these men In fact I think your analogy proves my point really well. You can’t use your opinion to judge whether your girlfriend is the most sought after girl in the mix. You are smitten by her or too afraid of losing her or whatever, so you have to actually take yourself out of the equation and use an unbiased (aka unhooked man) to judge
Having said all that, I am sure your girlfriend is indeed the best
I don’t think your math works here, because the pool that you remove into Chicago ED by definition would probably not have applied ED to any other school so wouldn’t show up in the cross admit ratio even before. They want to go to Chicago so are hoping to get admitted there and wouldn’t risk an ED application. So the EA/ED applicant pool and admit pool remains essentially the same for cross admits even after Chicago introduces ED. This is precisely why I said that you cannot compare Chicago with Penn or any other ED school as far as cross admits go till Chicago does away with the EA option. In any case, I believe that EA at Chicago will soon be retired and then after a few years we will have a good data set of cross admits, but given how the numbers are right now, I think cross admit data will only move in Chicago’s favor, not the other way around.
You are forgetting that the Parchment data is cumulative year after year. They don’t reset it every year. So yes the EA/ED discrepancy adds up and eventually makes a huge difference to the cross admit ratios.
She is, to me. I chose her, above all others, and made an irrevocable decision to be with her if she’d have me, so she’s my #1. What another man thinks is irrelevant. 
I don’t think that’s accurate. As EA applicants, after being admitted EA they could of course choose to call it a day and not apply anywhere else. Alternatively, after being either admitted or deferred EA they had the option to play the process out and evaluate their choices at the end. Assuming they really loved UChicago, positive cross-admits would be much more likely than negative ones in that circumstance.
Now, as UChicago ED applicants, that option goes away if they’re admitted ED: the process is over and they can’t apply anywhere else, so they fall out of the possible cross-admit universe, meaning that there’ll on average be fewer positive UChicago cross-admits overall because those keenest on UChicago are now unable to be admitted to and turn down anyplace else.
On the other hand, those who would have been EA applicants but don’t choose to apply to UChicago ED, in the full knowledge that that’s likely to disadvantage them, are by definition less keen on UChicago than those who choose to apply ED, and more likely to turn UChicago down in favor of someplace else. So, I think UChicago’s cross-admit performance may worsen in the new regime.
Re: your “cumulative Parchment data” point, perhaps I don’t understand the methodology, but it seems to me that the proportion of those EA/ED forced cross-admits relative to total cross-admits should remain roughly constant over time, no? If so, why does the fact that they’re cumulative matter, given that the numerator and denominator are both increasing?
@penn95 I specifically said Booth does not control the gift legally. BUT it does own it - it was a donation, a gift. It is its endowmentin a way that no one benefits from it except Booth School and its cash flow can be used for anything the BSchool wants. It is Booth’s endowment, just not managed by the BSchool.
Regardless of who “legally controls” the original Booth Naming Gift, you can see the point - Booth is NOT disadvantaged by its endowment because in practice, it gets cash flow from a pool of funds that is second only to HBS’ endowment. It does not play 7th place when it comes to affording to give scholarships, pay professors, improve facilities… it bats at a much higher position - somewhere around 2nd in the world of BSchools.
To conclude otherwise by saying Booth has the 7th largest endowment is wrong. Now that I think about it, perhaps I should not be making this point at all - after all it is the fact that many grossly underestimate Booth’s financial muscle that they blunder. It is always great for Booth to have that Ace that people like you would rather ignore.
“To me its obvious, EA admits for those very exceptional student who might matriculate, ED1 admits for those who are qualified academically and they like, ED2 for those who are qualified academically, they like, and were most likely deferred from a HYPS or Uchicago EA, RD for extremely exceptional candidates who have shown more than a passing interest in UChicago.”
So ED creates two new tracks for academically qualified but not exceptional full pay applicants and gives kids who didn’t get an early offer from HYP an edge in the UChicago admissions process. I agree that that seems to be the logic of the new system, but that’s precisely why I think it’s a step in the wrong direction, especially at a time when UChicago is increasingly able to compete with HYPS for top students and win on the merits. And it’ll be really problematic if ED applicants end up constituting most of those admitted.
analogies ad absurdum? Presumably, the two ladies are not more or less on the same indifference curve and there is something unjique about each …
Oh, of course - all women/colleges are unique, and the heart wants what it wants :x. My point was just that if I make an irrevocable commitment by proposing (equivalent to applying ED) to one of them, it should be assumed she’s my special someone (first choice).
It’s hardly absurd, when looking at the choices high school students make, to believe that a kid’s taste in a girlfriend or boyfriend is influenced by how desirable other people consider a potential girl/boyfriend, and even perhaps to want the prestige associated with the potential girl/boyfriend’s previous (or even concurrent) relationships. Same with colleges.
It’s also hardly absurd to believe that most high school students will value having some girl/boyfriend, whoever it is, over having one specific girl/boyfriend, no matter how attractive that person is. The romantic cliche is “If I can’t have you, I don’t want nobody, baby.” But the reality is, if I can’t have you, in a couple of weeks I will want somebody else. And eventually, I will be highly influenced to want somebody who wants me back, because that has some definite advantages over unrequited love. Same with colleges.
Once you are in a stable, mutual relationship – something that rarely happens until a number of years after one has graduated from high school – then, sure, your girl/boyfriend is your boo, and it doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks. Again, same with colleges, although people get to that point with colleges much faster than with romantic partners.
@JHS your “boo” …shocking …
@exacademic Admitting more wealthy kids would address some the endowment issue brought up by @Chrchill and others. The other issue is that many top students won’t get into their 1st, 2nd, or 3rd choice school. There simply aren’t enough slots, so given that, the difference between the students that might get in ED and those who don’t get in at all is quite small. I’m not advocating any particular position, just trying to figure out the logic here and therefore the objectives of the admissions policies.
To me there is a more obvious explanation for the introduction of ED than either the cynical one that it is meant to drive down acceptance percentages or the humliating one that asserts it reflects an insecurity about competing straight up with the EA schools. In the days of high acceptance rates Chicago students were known for being self-selecting: there was a Chicago type who valued the particularly serious educational experience Chicago had to offer. That type always had an excellent chance of being accepted. With the advent of these low acceptance rates that is no longer the case. Were it not for the ED option, that kid, however excellent, would have no better than the same low chance that all the other objectively excellent kids have. The stampede of the best and brightest to the College, good and gratifying as it has been in many ways, has created that bad side effect. Isn’t it at all plausible to those who favor the cynical or humiliating explanations that the Admissions people, aware of the traditions of the school, may be motivated by a desire to correct for that bad side effect? ED brings back in to the picture the self-selecting Chicago kid. This seems to me not only the most obvious explanation (though I have no more insight than anyone else here as to actual motivations), but it also seems to me to respect the tradition of the school, the uniqueness of its education and its students, without diluting the overall excellence of the body of all accepted students. I am by no means advocating for the old all-egghead model, but the model many on this board are promoting sounds not only strangely ahistorical and abstract but distinctly Darwinian: the ideal system being one in which the objectively “best” applicants get matched in the application process with the objectively “best” schools. That is why it appears so important to some that Chicago be universally recognized as the best. That’s a reasonable position, and those that take it love the University, but it’s not mine, nor should it be in my opinion that of an enlightened Admissions Office.
I feel that HYPS reject many superbly qualified candidates to make room for others based on factors other than “pure merit” because they are engaged in a “grand social engineering experiment” and can afford to be so adventurous because of their very fat endowments. Chicago can now nab these kids with ED2.
Lets not brand talented kids that are victims of the social engineering follies and elitism of HYPS as un-exceptional. That is kind of insulting to them. HYPS don’t have the lock on “Exceptional kids”