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The University of Chicago saw a 42 percent increase in undergraduate applications for next fall's freshman class, an astounding number even among universities accustomed to double-digit increases.</p>
<p>It will mean bad news for most of the 19,306 students interested in attending the Chicago school next year -- double the number who applied in 2006 -- but good news for a university trying to broaden its appeal and boost its popularity nationally.</p>
<p>The university plans to accept the same number of students as last year, about 3,700, meaning it will accept just 19 percent of applicants, compared with 27 percent of the 13,564 who applied last year. Twenty years ago, 73 percent of applicants got an acceptance letter.
<p>Cal, Michigan and UCLA have also joined the Common App as of 2010. Along with Columbia, I don’t think MIT and Georgetown are part of the common app yet, but they may have changed for the 2010 application cycle.</p>
<p>MIT has not joined the Common App and there is no indication that it ever will. It certainly does not need to increase its applicant base artificially with an acceptance rate hovering around 10%. The main reason MIT sticks to its own app is that its questions are specifically designed to surface the more creative, resilient and interesting applicants that a more general application would filter out. Many MIT applicants already max out on test scores, curriculum difficulty and AP classes, so a stats driven app such as the common app would not really help the admissions committee. The school wants to know if you have participated in math and science competitions, if you have created something unique and if you have the resilience to handle the rigorous science core. For MIT, the idea of “fit” is a big deal and the institute has fine tuned various non-cognitive instruments such as its application and interviews (largely mandatory for any chance of admission) to assess the personality of its applicants and what they would bring to the MIT community.</p>
<p>cellar, I think it will bow to pressure someday. Stanford and UoC said the same thing in the past. I hope D1’s college will join Common App. It’s easier for a lot of students to apply.</p>
That’s not necessarily true. MIT does not require a long essay, only 3 short answers. If all the MIT specific questions were added to a Common App supplement, it would defeat the purpose of a Common App, requiring more rather than less work. Unlike Chicago, Stanford, Georgetown or Columbia, MIT is not positioning itself a a general liberal arts university. It does not really want more applicants with only a passing interest in science or technology. It wants applicants passionate about science, hence a focused application. The administrative burden in picking the right applicants would be much greater with a Common App with no clear benefits.</p>
<p>It’s not the essays, it’s about filling out the whole application, repeating the same data twice. Caltech is also on the Common App. I believe it also wants applicants who are passionate about science.</p>
<p>Chicago has had a perfect storm to create conditions which make it’s admit rate look far more like it’s selectivity-- growing competition pushing people to apply to more top schools, better marketing to fight off a terrible modern reputation among most high school applicants, and moving to the common app from a notoriously difficult to fill out (I think perception mismatched reality on this) application. Kudos.</p>
<p>I am not so sure the Common App really helps Caltech find these passionate applicants it so badly wants. While arguably as selective, to fill a class size less than a quarter of that of MIT, Caltech needs to admit about half as many applicants. While the low yield can’t strictly be attributed to the Common App, the relative ease of application and lack of specificity of the questions certainly does not help admission’s job. Also, the numbers don’t suggest a boost in applications per seat due to the use of the Common App. (as compared to MIT). </p>
<p>As far as amount of work required, the MIT app is actually a model of simplicity with far fewer fields than the Common App with a typical supplement. As self-selecting as the MIT applicant pool already is, I don’t believe a seriously interested candidate is genuinely discouraged from applying because of the absence of a Common App. If anything, the slight quirkiness of the application process, the fact that you can interview before even applying, that results are given out on “pi” day, that applicants get admission results in tubes as opposed to letters and so on are all part of the attraction. If the candidates had to write the application in Java, they would still find a way!</p>
<p>This. I do think MIT, Columbia, et al eventually will move to the CommonApp. It will streamline the process more and as someone who applied to MIT a couple years ago, I know applicants would appreciate it.</p>