<p>Where does it specify when decisions will be released?</p>
<p>It doesn't say it on the website or anything...</p>
<p>When I was applying, all dates said December 15th.</p>
<p>Do we know what time yet?</p>
<p>Kids, if you looked at past years’ threads you would see two things:</p>
<p>First, they don’t announce ahead of time what day they are releasing decisions (probably because they don’t know until a day or so before when they will have all their ducks in a row to do it). I think it’s safe to assume that it won’t be later than Friday the 17th, but it would be stupid to fixate on the 15th. I’m sure they aim to release their decisions by then, but they have missed that date plenty of times in the past. What’s more, they have sometimes engaged in actual deception to mislead people about when decisions will be released – having people post online “not today” only hours before they start sending e-mails. (Not classy. I hope that’s a thing of the past.)</p>
<p>Second, when they do release results they have a history of being a little chaotic about it. Maybe this year they will have their act together and do a better job, but in the past there hasn’t been any single time when results were available to everyone. Last year, if I remember correctly, there was a spread of 4-5 hours between the time some people started getting notified and the time when everyone had been notified. They can’t be proud of that, and it caused all kinds of unnecessary anxiety (not to mention swamping their switchboard and servers, which didn’t help anything).</p>
<p>The lesson: PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE do not get yourselves worked up over any particular day and time for getting your EA decisions from Chicago. In the long run, 24-48 hours in any direction won’t make a speck of difference. I know it’s hard to concentrate and you want to know what’s happening as soon as you possibly can (like, last week!), but life just isn’t set up that way. You will get accepted, or deferred, or rejected, and when the decision is released won’t have anything to do with the decision itself. As long as you find out in enough time to make decisions about applying to other schools, your life won’t really be affected by when you find out. (And, on that front, make certain your transcripts and recommendations are on their way to whatever schools you MIGHT apply to. Don’t wait to get that stuff happening, or to be working on those applications. You can, and should, wait to pay application fees and test-score-report fees for colleges you may not apply to if you are accepted EA or ED somewhere.)</p>
<p>Take deep breaths. Practice your mantra. Go for a walk. Bake some Christmas cookies. Have a holiday fling. Don’t let the University of Chicago and your phone/computer turn you into a zombie for one of the best holiday seasons of your life!</p>
<p>JHS, that’s some really great advice. I want, very very badly, to follow your advice. However, I will probably still get extremely anxious and be refreshing the internet every 10 seconds come 5 o’clock on December 15th.
However, I am planning for the worst (deferral) and planning to apply to many other schools.
To everyone else who applied, best of luck!</p>