US News to Nondorf: Drop Dead

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of Chicago ✅
81

^ If you purchase a poly blend for your sheets then they shouldn’t wrinkle. Same with satin. But cotton/percale should wrinkle quite a bit. Especially if, like us, you organize your sheet set by stuffing everything into one of the pillow cases.

When I was in college (not UChicago and not an elite place by any means), I lived in a suite-style dorm for a couple of years. At that time, someone did come in and clean our 4-person bathroom once a week which is really a luxury now for dorm living. Thing is, we were embarrassingly messy - makeup, cigarette butts, half-drunk coffee mugs, clothes all over the place. Just in the bathroom. I think we were using it like an extra room. I cringe at the memory now of us hiding in our bedrooms when we heard her coming down the stairs to clean, rather than just - oh, I don’t know - telling her to hold on 30 seconds while we do some preliminary work. Sheesh, we were immature.

82

I’ve one bit of advice. Find Bamboo Sheets! It’s like sleeping between two baby seal skins (or at least that is what I’d imagine it to feel like). And they don’t wrinkle!!!

Also, if you take them out of the dryer, and make the bed with them you don’t need to stuff them in a pillow case for storage.

83

^ Both our household and our children away at school have more than one set of sheets for each bed. Although, honestly, I’m not sure the latter does more than stuff the 2nd set in a drawer and ignore it. Bamboo sheets are wonderful.

Don’t diss my storage system, as it works very well for short people dealing with king-sized sheets. Of course, that’s really not a relevant issue for those heading off to school.

84

It is incredible how frequently these threads about Chicago ranking, desirability and selectivity keep appearing under various guises!

No doubt Chicago has done a wonderful marketing job. But just like many highly qualified applicants have to be turned away, there are only 5 schools that can be in T5, and only 10 in T10. Just like we have to tell many students that life is not fair…

85

“But just like many highly qualified applicants have to be turned away, there are only 5 schools that can be in T5, and only 10 in T10.”

@bronze2, according to US News, there are 11 schools in the top 10, so which one gets the boot?

86

^ The answer is always Brown. Oh, it’s not in the top 10? Well, that’s a good start…

87

Who is this bronze 2 guy and why does it seem like s/he is in every board, posting messages that are innocuous at first glance but are meant to inflame partisans? They drop a bomb accusing UChicagoans of immaturity and pettiness like “Just like we have to tell many students that life is not fair”

And then this parvenu moves on… because they have done their job of trying to stir an argument?

Clearly they dont know that this UChicago forum is not petty because it is overly cerebral.

Do they work for CC? is CC spiking the threads to enliven it more. Or this thread’s case, resuscitate a thread that has reached its end by dropping a defamatory statement? I dont think they are moderators.

If they are hungry for traffic, I have one suggestion: ditch the new layout. Its weird, its a bad user experience overall.

88

My message is not at all meant to inflame (and I am on very few boards)! I think when we go down the path of rankings when all these universities have multiple dimensions, there are no winners and we can argue ad infinitum. Admissions selectivity and yield are ways to rank, but even with these metrics there are qualitative differences.

We give too much credence to rankings. The reality is that we are blessed with many top quality schools.

Look at the U.K. - where it’s probably somewhat less controversial that Oxford and Cambridge are the top two. They matriculate respectively 3,300 and 3,400 undergrads each year for a country of 66 million. They see each other as peers; perhaps one has produced more scientists and the other has produced more prime ministers but not much separates them. I believe there’s no credible “quality ranking” of the 60 or so colleges that constitute these two.

The U.S. is five times larger, so from what institutions do we find the equivalent 33,500 students in each cohort? This happens to be the total enrollment of about our top 20 universities plus 5 or 6 liberal arts schools (which add up to ~2000 or one university in enrollment). I imagine we can do a similar exercise with faculty, research, and other indicia of quality.

My point is that there cannot be much to distinguish who is #18 and who is #21, and everyone can make her own list. Much less who is #5, or #6 or #7 and doesn’t belong in the top 5. But if someone forces me to name 5, I can only give 5 even though there are 10 others I would have liked to name which are equally high quality.

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^ Agree with above. This is why IMHO it makes more sense to think of tiers rather than strict rankings. Especially with the top 20 because all those kids have very good outcomes. Also, the lower you go in the “rankings” the more schools tend to move around. There’s information in comparing, say, a T5 to a T25. But comparing #5 to #6 or #10? Both are going to be significant reaches.

“I imagine we can do a similar exercise with faculty, research, and other indicia of quality.”

  • from talking to academics I've learned that it's actually easier to rank schools based on research output, number of distinguished faculty, peer reviews, etc., although it might depend on the particular academic department or school. Also, for some specialties there might be a real drop-off in "quality" after the T10-T20 or figuring out an ordering isn't really difficult since no one cares about #21+.
90

Coming back around to Chicago’s ranking specifically - of all the “top 10” schools, it looks like Chicago will have the toughest time hanging on. US News rankings are now geared to emphasis outcomes (defined broadly) and institutional wealth. Chicago lags in both these areas - and it’s hard to catch up on these fronts.

When admissions selectivity, SAT scores, etc., were more heavily weighted, Chicago did better.

Now, the trend seems to be focus on outcomes (with the traditional focus on wealth, too) - and Chicago will struggle there.

I predict, in the next few years, Chicago will fall back into the 9-12 range.

Interestingly, if you look at the top 10, it mainly looks like a list of the wealthiest research universities. It’s hard for Chicago to hang with this group when its resources pale in comparison to the Harvard and Yales of the World (and even the Columbia, Northwestern, and UPenns of the world, too).

Somewhat related - Chicago’s best bet to maintain standing will be to align with wealthier institutions. Start a league of some sort, or piggyback off Stanford, MIT, etc. Unfortunately, of all the “top 10” schools - Chicago “needs” the ranking the most - all the other schools have hooks (either they are in the Ivy League, have the draw of Silicon Valley/STEM, D1 sports, etc.). Chicago needs some bigger hook to keep pace - and that may only come through association.

91

While I agree that the new USNews formula is a setback for UChicago temporarily, I don’t think increasing Pell recipients by 300 or so in it’s undergraduate population will be difficult for UChicago. This is an easier problem to fix than having to stand up a huge and credible engineering program for example and they are even trying to do that with IME and CS. Now that takes serious money. Once they do that, their undergraduate body will start looking like the other richer schools. They can easily do this by bringing in more full pay students at the other end to compensate. They are already going down this path with two binding early decision rounds. The people who will get the short end of the stick will be those who need financial aid but don’t qualify for Pell Grants. So it will get almost impossible to get into Chicago in the EA and RD rounds unless you have a hook that the school needs to meet it’s diversity goals. Once Chicago tweaks it’s incoming class profile to fit the USNews criteria, they will again get into the top 5. Maybe in 3-5 years or sooner

Curses to USNews for ruining higher education in this country

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@surelyhuman - the issue isn’t just getting Pell grant recipients - it’s graduating them at high rates. US News’ methodology strongly favors schools that graduate a high percentage of its students, and Chicago will probably always struggle vs. the tippy top on this metric.

To tip the scales even further, US News looks at predicted vs. actual graduation rates. Chicago always falters here - the predicted rate is always very high, because the incoming classes are so strong. BUT, the actual rates are lower, for a variety of reasons.

This isn’t really a knock on Chicago - it’s just that, at the top (say, the top 8 or so schools), there is little room for error. Chicago’s standing is just (ever so slightly) not on par given the metrics US News uses, and will probably emphasize even more in coming years.

Again, I think Chicago will settle back into the 9-12 range - a range it was in for many years. Broadcasting out to, say, the 2023 rankings, my top ten (in no rigid order, and if US News sticks to its current trend - a big if) would be:

Princeton, Harvard, Yale, MIT, Stanford, Columbia, Duke, U. of Penn, Johns Hopkins, and Northwestern.

The schools at the cusp of the top ten, or just outside of it, would be Chicago, Cal Tech, Dartmouth, and Brown.

Put another way, the future rankings will benefit super-wealthy, STEM-y R1 research Universities. Not having super-wealth, and traditionally “struggling” with outcomes vs. the very top, will hurt Chicago.
Again, reading the tea leaves here, more and more rankings focus on outcomes - be it Forbes, WSJ, US News, etc. Any ranking with an emphasis on outcomes seems to drop Chicago into the teens. No big surprise if that’s where Chicago ends up on US News in a few years.

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@Cue7 I have to disagree with you here. If outcomes were being measured by self reported salary using Payscale data, I would say you have a point. But measuring outcomes with predicted vs. actual graduation rate in six years, retention rate (which is the highest weight, where Chicago does very well), percentage of Pell Grant students etc. as outcome is not going to be a challenge for Chicago. Chicago has done very well at the graduation measure in the last few years and they are hyper focused on this. I visited their orientation this past weekend to drop off my friend and they quite literally will push you out of the door in the required time. They actually said something to that effect in one of the sessions. Besides there are simple ways to manipulate this measure which are not contingent on having a huge endowment, which is where Chicago is at a disadvantage compared to the schools you mention.

I agree that the USNews outcome measures as listed now does favor richer schools, but gaming those numbers doesn’t take a $35 billion or even a $12 Billion endowment. It just requires reswizzling the profile of your incoming class and the sad thing is that most of the private schools, specially Chicago will now start doing that and given where they are now, this tweak will get their overall ranking score back up, till USNews makes another change.

The real losers here are hardworking middle class students who need financial aid, because the class profile change will come at their expense. They will get squeezed out by the Pell students at the lower end and full pay kids at the higher end.

Anyway, we have both made predictions. Now it’s just a wait and see game on where Colleges land in the next three to four years.

94

You guys are focussing on the material and efficient causes of something rather trivial - rankings. Yes, the thread’s about that, but OP’s take on it invited satire, not solemnity.

Still, if one must be solemn and must assume that rankings are measuring something actual, one ought to bring formal and final causes into the analysis. These are the most explanatory of all, as Aristotle tells us and as Cue must surely recall from his Chicago days.

So what is it then about a Chicago education that would make a certain kind of kid want to undertake it? The Core? The rigor of course work? The higher density of kids of serious disposition? The educational ideals of independent inquiry and free speech? The lack, relatively, of an important role for sports and other ECs? --One could rattle off other descriptors, often discussed on this board. These are the perennial attributes of the College. They tend to define it and make it either attractive or otherwise, depending on your aspirations and character. Kids without intellectual curiosity and a taste for hard work, whose focus is on picking up a prestige-laden degree in four years, will generally give this school a low ranking. But there has always been another kind of kid out there - and their numbers appear to be growing - who want the very things from an education that deter all others. Aristotle would call these things knowledge, wisdom, understanding, though he may have been overly optimistic when he asserted that everyone desires them. It is a special taste that may or may not lead efficiently to a calling. Its end is a pondering, considering frame of mind. Such a mind is a beautiful thing: it will last you a lifetime and keep you sane and happy through whatever torments the world throws at you. However, it’s a habit that must be acquired early. One’s college years at a college devoted to that enterprise is the time to make the start. On that proposition Aristotle and I are in agreement.

It’s hard to measure an ethos like that, but that doesn’t make it less powerful to someone longing for it than does a statistic showing minor variances in graduation rates.

95

“The real losers here are hardworking middle class students who need financial aid, because the class profile change will come at their expense. They will get squeezed out by the Pell students at the lower end and full pay kids at the higher end.”

  • Looking at the net price data as reported to NCES, UChicago doesn't stack up too badly in that Middle-Class range - $48k - $110k of income - when compared to some of those "T-10's" in Cue's post above. For those receiving grants and aid, UChicago's avg. net price in that range is $8-19k. In contrast, we have Penn: $13-21k and JHU: $15-19k. Others do a tad better such as Columbia: $7-14k, or are on par such as NU: $11-17k or Harvard: $3-20k. Among the "cusp" - where Cue has placed UChicago - we have Brown: $15-21k, Dartmouth: $12-17K, and Cal Tech (either $33k or unreported). So, despite its smaller endowment than pretty much all of these other institutions, UChicago is able to compete for middle class families.

Now, that data is from two years ago and the first class of ED’s. From what I’ve noticed anecdotally, UChicago’s outreach to the lower 60% of the income distribution has only increased since then. Whether that means the middle class will get squeezed as resources are diverted to lower SES and Pells is unknown. But stuff like the Police and Fire scholarship or funds to military personnel aren’t reaching the lowest tier. They are reaching middle class families, for the most part.

One caveat is that if you look at UChicago’s data, you notice that the net price for those on aid in the $30-110k range really jumped once they began implementing ED. Not sure if that’s because fewer of the Class of '21 took out loans, or the College re-aligned its financial aid policies to be more in line with peer universities. At any rate, some of the T-5’s have been lowering the net price, not raising it. So that’s why it’s important to keep an eye on UChicago as the data for Class of '22 and '23 trickles in over the next couple of years. One data point post-ED isn’t enough. We need to be able to observe the trend.

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@JBStillFlying They don’t really report the admit rate by income, so it is really hard to tell based on Net price whether middle class students are getting shortchanged. If they don’t get admitted, the rest of the discussion is moot right? They also don’t report the number of admitted students in each income category, so it’s possible to keep the net price the same or even make it better but admit less students in that income category. Although not perfect, the survey of incoming classes in the last few years shows that the class is skewing wealthy.

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“They don’t really report the admit rate by income, so it is really hard to tell based on Net price whether middle class students are getting shortchanged. If they don’t get admitted, the rest of the discussion is moot right? They also don’t report the number of admitted students in each income category, so it’s possible to keep the net price the same or even make it better but admit less students in that income category.”

-Sure but how do they get that right w/o abandoning “need-blind” admissions? Obviously it’s possible to figure out prospective income and perhaps even prospective need just by looking at zip code, parent’s jobs, schools attended, numbers and ages of sibs, etc but let’s hope admissions is focusing on other stuff such as fit, intelligence, academic preparedness, and so on. It’s a bit too cynical to conclude that income is as important a factor in admissions. Obviously, a good number of full-pay families will jump at the chance to apply ED. However, my two kids were admitted ED and we are not full pay. And we are - technically speaking - above “middle class.” I’m pretty sure, just from talking to other families, that those with less income who applied ED and filed for financial aid are benefitting even more than we are.

As to incoming surveys - where is last years? If you have it, please link. I haven’t seen once since the Class of '21 entered two years ago but maybe I missed something?. Again, we need to see trends POST ED.

@surelyhuman

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Id rather have UChicago keep its rigor than gain a few more percentage points in graduation rate. The measure of output should be if the students that started at a disadvantage (poor, rural, what have you) finish at the same level of their peers - even if they too an extra semester to do so. It pays more in the long run, both for the school and especially for the student.

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There are a couple factors at work that make it difficult to be bullish about Chicago’s USNWR ranking over the next few years.

One is the outcomes component (despite what @surelyhuman says, any ranking that looks at outcomes - measured in almost any traditional way - will always be tough going for Chicago, vis a vis Harvard, Stanford, etc.)

Two is the resources/wealth component. Remember, Chicago’s class size is growing rapidly, but it’s financial resources, size of the faculty, etc. isn’t growing in a commensurate way. So, Chicago’s spending per student is probably going down, the faculty/student ratio is probably going down, and the resources component generally will trouble Chicago.

All the other top Unis are getting wealthier, while their class sizes are stagnant. Chicago is trending the other way.

Given all this, it was much easier to be bullish about Chicago’s trend in 2010 or 2011, when Nondorf was cutting down the admit rate, and student selectivity mattered more in the rankings.

Now, Chicago, has tweaked pretty much all it can. It’s much easier to cut the admit rate, as opposed to trying to outpace gains in wealth made by other top Us, or maximize graduation rates of Pell recipients.

We will see, but it’s hard to be bullish about Chicago when outcomes and wealth seem to be two huge factors in the US News rankings. I think even staunch Chicago supporters, like @JBStillFlying would agree there.

100

Seems that according to USNWR, UChicago is in the same company as Stanford and Penn. I don’t think that anyone would really complain about that.