University of Chicago -- The Meteoric Rise

The Maroon article wasn’t based on final #'s. Go with final class of 2020 numbers from the website. Esp. given that UChicago isn’t releasing any preliminaries this year. Apples to Apples.

73-75 percent yield is either way a substantial increase

@JBStillFlying I stand corrected.

This just in. UChicago Law ranked second in Above the Law Ranking, following 4th place is USNWR. Law and Busiess schools are both killing it. Medical school needs to follow suit …

Not just the med school @Chrchill - most of the bio/life sciences division needs improvement. Would love to see the med school, NIH funding, bio dept etc rise in the rankings (all are not in top ten right now).

This is unfortunately a fairly large chunk of the university.

For those who are interested in learning more about this Above The Law ranking which I find more than interesting and useful, I am attaching this link here.

http://abovethelaw.com/law-school-rankings/top-law-schools/?utm_referrer=http%3A%2F%2Fabovethelaw.com%2F2017%2F05%2Fthe-2017-law-school-rankings-the-finest-in-fact-based-list-making%2F

@Cue7 we agree. See my earlier post. But it’s not a large chunk of the University. Again – social sciences, humanities, physical sciences and math/ statistics are all top notch.

Given @Chrchill argument about a “meteoric rise,” let’s look at some rankings - the 1993 National Research Council rankings vs. the currrent US News rankings. I finally found some time to do some analysis, and here goes… this will show us change over time.

(Sources: https://www.stat.tamu.edu/~jnewton/nrc_rankings/nrc41.html and US News)

Biological Sciences

Biochem

1993: Chicago #24
2017: Not Listed in Top Ten (US News does not list beyond the top ten)

Cell Biology
1993: Chicago #14
2017: Not Listed in Top Ten (US News does not list beyond the top ten)

Evolutionary Bio
1993: Chicago #2
2017: Chicago #4 (-2 drop)

Genetics
1993: Chicago #11
2017: Not Listed in Top Ten (US News does not list beyond the top ten)

Neuroscience
1993: Chicago #22
2017: Not Listed in Top Ten (US News does not list beyond the top ten)

NIH Funding
1993: Chicago #18
2017: Chicago #32 (-14 drop)

Physical Sciences

Chemistry
1993: Chicago #11
2017: Chicago #12 (-1 drop)

Physics
1993: Chicago #7
2017: Chicago #7 (no change)

Mathematics
1993: Chicago #5
2017: Chicago #5 (no change)

Statistics
1993: Chicago #4
2017: Chicago #5 (-1 drop)

Computer Science
1993: Chicago #25
2017: Chicago #34 (-9 drop)

Earth/Geo Sciences
1993: Chicago #7
2017: Chicago #20 (-13 drop)

Social Sciences & Humanities

English
1993: Chicago #10
2017: Chicago #1 (+9 change)

History
1993: Chicago #8
2017: Chicago #6 (+2 change)

Political Science
1993: Chicago #6
2017: Chicago #12 (-6 change)

Psychology
1993: Chicago #18
2017: Chicago #17 (+1 change)

Sociology
1993: Chicago #1
2017: Chicago #8 (-7 drop)

Economics
1993: Chicago #1
2017: Chicago #7 (-6 drop)

Endowment Rank

1999: Chicago #13
2017: Chicago #14 (-1 drop)

(https://magazine.uchicago.edu/0204/features/run.html and current endowment rankings)

College

1993: Chicago #9
2017: Chicago #3 (+6 change)

(Source: Current + US News rankings over time: http://web.archive.org/web/20070906213921/http://chronicle.com:80/stats/usnews/index.php?category=Universities&orgs=&sort=1993)

Law School

1993: Chicago #4
2017: Chicago #4 (no change)

(Source: Current + US News rankings over time: http://www.top-law-schools.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=213)

Business School

1994: Chicago #6
2017: Chicago #3 (+ 3 change)

(Source: Current + US News rankings over time: http://www.mba50.com/a-history-of-the-us-news-mba-ranking-1990-2013/)

Medical School

1998: Chicago #18
2017: Chicago #15 (+3 change)

WHERE IS THE METEORIC RISE?

From what I can see, College, B School, Med, English, and History have improved - but not by a whole lot. EVERYTHING ELSE HAS DROPPED OR STAYED THE SAME. Sociology, poli sci, computer science, endowment rank, etc. etc. - none of these have improved.

How can we say we have a meteoric rise? If anything, all the rankings back my previous assertion - that, overall, the university of chicago has DECLINED.

According to that USNews archive, the college had slipped to 15th by 2006. Moving up 12 notches in 10 years does look fairly impressive. Those with a bit of historical knowledge will note that the rankings plummet occurred during the years that they brought in outsiders to run the university (1993 - 2006). Zimmer, who started in 2006, was an inside hire and a return to the long tradition of promoting to administration from the ranks of faculty.

Perhaps other academic departments exhibited the same rankings variability during these separate time periods? Booth, for instance, did slip a bit during that 1993-2006 timeframe. Law ever so slightly (just leaving the top 5 before returning). If so, then it might be more useful to look at the university’s department rankings from 2006 onward. Or (more difficult in terms of data), look at year-by-year rankings by department from the past 30 or so years.

In any case, if your memory of the university goes back only 10-15 years, and you see an increase in reputation and rankings for many departments during that time, then - yes - you are likely going to think that UChicago has had a “meteoric rise”.

Cross-posting:

A +3 rise from 6 to 3 is 1000000x bigger accomplishment than a +3 rise from 30 to 27. In fact, a movement between 10 and 30, though looks huge, is almost a rounding error compared to a movement between 5 and 3.

It takes more effort, more money and more everything to move up one spot as soon as you reach #7 (hence the B school term, “magnificent 7”) because you are supposed to dislodge an 800 pound gorilla who is unwilling and uncooperative to move one more spot up the ladder. And it gets doubly difficult to dislodge someone every time you move up.

Not all +3s and +7s are created equal, people!!! Get some perspective.

  • This is why UChicago Law displacing both NYU and Columbia is a big effing deal!!! That NYU Law vs Columbia Law cross town rivalry is one for the books becuase they have been trading spots for so long. Both NYU and Columbia with their New York money and close ties to New York Big Law fought tooth and nail to keep UChicago Law from rising, but rise UChicago did.

** This is why Booth going to top 1 or 3 depending on the ranking publisher, and entering the Trinity by “forever” distancing itself from Kellogg, Columbia and Sloan is an even bigger deal. And its going to take 10x more out of Booth to clearly push down one among Wharton, Stanford or HBS than it took to differentiate itself from the three schools of the lower Magnificent 7.

Now that you have gained that perspective,

*** This is why UChicago from #15 to #3 is undoubtedly a “METEORIC” rise!!!

Just in : Brand new world university ranking. Uchicago 9 in the world up from 10. Ahead of Yale, Princeton and Columbia https://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings-articles/world-university-rankings/top-universities-world-2018

@cue7 - To my mind, the so-called “meteoric rise” has been in the public perception. UChicago has always been a superb school, at both the undergraduate and graduate level, and it has always been especially in the social sciences and humanities. Its “meteoric rise” in ranking is due to the “meteoric drop” in acceptance rate that accompanied its “meteoric rise” in advertising and the fact that they now accept the Common Application.

which makes Chicago’s yield this year >> Yale and Princeton.

@sbballer is yield part of the metrics for USNWR ?

@Chrchill no it isn’t.

I’m not sure they’ve disclosed their yield yet (at least not officially). They also haven’t disclosed how many students were admitted in each round, but if, as seems likely, they admitted more than two-thirds of the class in one of the ED rounds (or off the wait list in exchange for an immediate acceptance of the offer), the yield will certainly be very high.

Yield is effectively part of the metrics for USNWR; it’s just disguised as acceptance rate. The number of slots available is essentially fixed (although it’s not quite as fixed at Chicago as it is elsewhere), so the number of people accepted will equal the constant number of slots divided by the yield rate. (In other words, if a college has 1,000 slots available, and its yield is 50%, that means it will have to accept 2,000 people to fill its class.) That number, divided by the number of applications, is the acceptance rate. So the acceptance rate, which USNWR does use, includes the yield as one of its key elements.

It’s not a huge element of the formula. It represents 10% of the Selectivity component of the rankings, which in turn represents 12.5% of the overall rankings. So, basically, acceptance rate, which reflects yield, is 1.25% of the overall ranking.

The University of Chicago endowment grew to an all-time high of $7.82 billion as of June 30, 2017, following an 11.4 percent return on investments for the preceding year.

https://news.uchicago.edu/article/2017/10/17/university-chicago-endowment-grows-782-billion

And yet another economics Nobel. Another tour three ranking is USNWR.

This has been a very entertaining and enlightened thread. My son has just accepted admission to UChicago on ED1. We chose ED1 for a very simple reason. By going ED, his track and field coach said he would advocate for him in admissions. He did, and my son received a likely letter. That is not what most people are discussing on the thread, but that is how the game is played in DIII athletics, and the same playbook was touted to us at Williams, Johns Hopkins, Bowdoin, and Washington and Lee. His academic profile is at or above the 75% reported at UChicago and HYPS, but his track times are below DivI standards but near the top end of DIII. Therefore, he zeroed in on UChicago, and the others above during his college search.

That being said, my son loved the fact that UChicago was #3 in US News. He loved the outright statement of commitment to academic integrity and open discourse. He loved the number of Nobel Prize winners. He loved the very high percentage of Law School applicants accepted by T14 law schools. I believe that if he wasn’t interested in running track, he most likely would have applied ED1 over HYP (S was never in consideration as he wanted to stay East of the Mississippi).

So, even though some purists may think that #3 ranking is inflated by some gamesmanship with ED1/EA/ED2, most prospective students don’t know or see that, or even care if they did. If through marketing and external statements and continued research breakthroughs happen and the admissions office continues to find the process that keeps them in the top 5 in the world, I say give that man a raise. What if Amazon would have said, “you know Borders and Barnes and Noble use storefronts, therefore we should too?” That is the thing about strategy, you find your strengths and you exploit them. That’s what they teach you in business school, that is how you grow. It is good to see UChicago finding a strategy and executing on that strategy.

I do not believe the goal is to get richer future donors, I believe that is a characteristic of being a top 5 university. The goal is to be a top 5 university and the characteristics that come with that are windfall. Other characteristics are things like share of voice in the world of academics, more research dollars, more industry start-ups incubated at the school, larger endowment, etc.

I also don’t think a name change is needed. I think being #3 in USNWR for a run of time will make UChicago more recognized. Even during my time at Kellogg, I knew of UChicago as a great school, but that is only because of the business school. Now, for right or wrong, people know of UChicago because of its vaulted ranking growth.