<p>I read that statistic in 2005, it must have dropped. How could it sink so low?</p>
<p>Here is an interesting article on Chicago athletics and academics.</p>
<p>thanks for the links idad! i enjoyed both even though i couldnt care less about all this sport talk.</p>
<p>"My guidance counselor saw both applicants entire profile, including essays and recs, and she told me that the primary reason the boy got in was because he played football."</p>
<p>Your guidance counselor wasn't on the admissions committee, no?</p>
<p>if I was agreeing with her I wouldn't have made the thread, no?</p>
<p>Thanks for the sports article idad, I saw the other article in another thread.</p>
<p>"I'm not sure playing football at Chicago is all that much of a hook. The coach can send a letter of support, but does not get to choose players."</p>
<p>While this is true, I've also heard a lot about Chicago making a real effort to diversify applicants and this includes recruiting heavily for sports. I know the coach of my track team was aggressively recruiting a lot of kids, so their admissions priorities might have shifted in recent years (or for one particular year, if they lost a large number of seniors for example).</p>
<p>hmmm, I didn't think of that, thanks.</p>
<p>I guess I was fixated on the idea that chicago's only priority was academics.</p>
<p>"what kind of pieces make up the mosaic?"</p>
<p>If you go back and read the decisions results for your schools of interest, you can get a little bit of a feel for this. If you are, say, an azure ceramic tile from the east coast, its fine to apply to schools that are popular with azure ceramic tiles ... just put in a couple of app's where eastern azure tiles are a bit less common. </p>
<p>I think that one of the traps that it is very easy to fall into is to try to figure out what Chicago - or any school - wants, and sort of reverse-engineer the application to match. One of the dangers of doing so is losing your own, authentic voice within your application. If you are a wonderful azure tile, you need to present yourself well - brush off the dust, clean of the groat, point out the sparkly gold and copper flakes in your glaze .... but don't present yourself as a red earthernware tile if you are not one.</p>
<p>I am liking the tile metaphor more and more now</p>
<p>lol, smirkus... thanks ohio_mom, I wasn't planning on manipulating an essay or anything; I just want to know which of my strengths and weaknesses are important to mention. Maybe something I see as a strength, UChicago thinks is a weakness. If I found out it was a weakness I could always mention why I think it's a strength.</p>
<p>No, no, grasshopper, what you think is what matters. Watch Kung-Fu reruns this summer and <em>believe</em> in yourself. Give yourself time to write your essays, and have someone you trust read them - mainly to verify that you don't lose the reader somewhere along the line.</p>
<p>Weaknesses in the form of less than stellar GPA or board scores can't be erased ... but sometimes they can be trumped by other factors. Remember that in is going to take an adcom maybe all of 2 minutes to evaluate your application's numbers: scores, gpa, rank. If those aren't hopeless, the rest of the application will take longer to review. </p>
<p>If Chicago is at the top of your list, I have another suggestion. Apply to a couple of other schools first. Your first app likely won't be your best, and you always think of something to improve after hitting the submit button. But ... Chicago should'nt be the last application - you will get sick of doing them after a while!</p>
<p>Football Average GPA's</p>
<p>2004 3.21
2005 3.07
2006 3.04</p>
<p>In 2006 the breakdown was 2.81 for rising sophomores, 3.11 for rising juniors and 3.02 for rising seniors</p>
<p>very interesting... so when they started recruiting is incredibly obvious now.</p>
<p>oh boy, reading that article makes me so uncertain, idad...</p>