<p>JHS - good point. I think it is important to note that there is a pretty set talent pool of students with the baseline abilities to gain entrance at top colleges, and there is accordingly a ton of overlap in the admits at all these schools. </p>
<p>I do think, though, and this could just be a function of Chicago’s reputation and the types of students that end up going, that the focus for gaining admission there for prospective applicants should be a little different than what it takes at other schools. Earlier on, I advised high school students on college admissions. Whenever parents asked about admissions in the ivy league, I always focused on telling them to make sure little johnny worked very hard on academics, but ALSO developed SOMETHING ELSE. Get involved and concentrate on a sport, theater, debate, fencing - something that demonstrates passion in something. In short, I told parents and students set to apply to ivies that they, well, NEEDED A HOOK. This isn’t exactly ground-breaking advice. </p>
<p>For the students that applied to Chicago, after my own time there, I just didn’t feel like the hooks were as necessary. Again, Chicago could WANT the kids with hooks, and just winds up with more of the eggheaded crowd based on rep and atmosphere of the school, but with kids developing apps for Chicago, it just didn’t seem necessary to have a hook. It all came down to the three "I"s. The students rejected from U of C did not have the necessary mixture of the three "I"s, and the ones accepted generally did. </p>
<p>Another note on this, I regularly saw students accepted to ivies - and they generally heard very early (as in, October) because of sports and very subpar other factors, such as 1200 SATs or poor grades. This generally occurred with the students who played niche sports - squash, crew, etc. The few students I saw apply to Chicago with low scores and a great ability in squash, rowing, whatever, generally did not fare as well because Chicago just does not have the same needs for these sorts of kids.</p>