Why does UChicago has such have admittance rate?

<p>B&B, you're overgeneralizing again. A LOT of people couldn't name all the Ivies, let alone get "wowed" by them. A lot of people in academia and in business as well know Chicago very well and my son certainly got got a "wow" from having attended Chicago when he went out into the business world. (It's also a kind of "brand" that says, "this kid must be smart," in his current line of work.)</p>

<p>mack: sure, i could walk into a bodega and they probably couldn't name ALL the ivy's, they would also think that uchi was a state school. so what does that mean? I also didn't say that uchi doesn't have a wow factor, i said that the ivy's have a larger wow factor. i understand how sensitive uchi people are so i have tried to preface most of my statements by saying how wonderful and institution uchi is, however, more of the general public and even business and academia are more impressed with the ivy sheepskin, that is why ivy's and stanford have soaring application rates, low admissions rates and high yield. the perception with most people is that an ivy education will get them better recognition at whatever they intend to do in the future. uchi will get them there also, but it's more prestigious to have the ivy label. that's why uchi has such a low yield.</p>

<p>I think that another thing to remember is that the prospective student is not always fully in control of his or her decision. Parents - who may also be 'wowed' by the Ivy label, or wooed by a full ride at Flagship State U, may not be willing to agree to a Chicago education - even if it is the student's first choice. </p>

<p>In our case, we often have to explain why our son is not attending the top-forty uni his father works at (with a full tuition waiver), or why he did not accept the merit scholarships that he was offered. But - we <em>never</em> have to explain the decision to academics.</p>

<p>Ohio_Mom,</p>

<p>I agree. If you go on sheer numbers alone, then there are more people "wowed" by the Ivies. But if you talk to people who know something about a field--an academic, a doctor, or such--many of them will be much more impressed by the quality of education at U Chicago. And I say this as someone who has a graduate Ivy degree!</p>

<p>Cami215</p>

<p>Some other issues that affect Chicago's yield might include:
- geography. For a lot of kids, the midwest is flyover country, so Chicago does not draw as well from the huge numbers of kids in the northeast corridor, a part of the country where state schools are not much of an option for top students. In addition, the south side of Chicago still has its limitations. Although safety is far better than in decades past, it is still far from perfect.</p>

<ul>
<li><p>A number of Chicago's competitors offer engineering (Penn, Columbia, NWU, Cornell, Stanford, Duke...) and many have stronger pre-professional programs.</p></li>
<li><p>fear of hard work and a low GPA.</p></li>
</ul>

<p>No one ever said it would be easy...</p>

<p>and neither shouldyou need to explain your decision to anyone, however, this thread deals with yield and although there are some students that have their decisions made for them by their parents, whether it is an ivy or full ride state school, i don't beleive that there are enough of them that it would actually affect uchi's low yield. the fact that 66 percent of uchi's accepted applicants choose to go elsewhere either says that other schools are more desirable or there are other factors at uchi that make it undesirable. there are certainly enough stories out there to indicate why many would find uchi to be an undesirable environment to spend four years. yet the students who think of this beforehand would simply not apply. therefore, the ones that do apply have no issue with the rigor of the school. i can't imagine that 64% of the acceptees would choose to go to a lesser school, so all i can surmise is that most of the kids that choose not to go to uchi go on to an ivy or stanford, maybe a aws, which probably made their application to uchi a kind of safety type application. which is what yield is used to assess.</p>

<p>nemassdad: are you trying to cause a riot on this forum? you can't say stuff like:
A number of Chicago's competitors offer engineering (Penn, Columbia, NWU, Cornell, Stanford, Duke...) and many have stronger pre-professional programs.</p>

<p>Most of the uchi apologists on this site can barely deal with the high acceptance rates and low yield. they consisently rely upon the notion that uchi is superior to the ivy's. they like to think that ivy students are slackers and that only uchi students work hard. your saying stuff like you did, and that low gpa crack will just send them spiraling, will only inflame them to attack massachusetts as if it were a french suburb.</p>

<p>BnB: I wouldn't be going into a bodega to do a quiz about colleges. My point is that I think you vastly overestimate the visibility and credibility of "Ivy" beyond HYP. You would be lucky to get a majority of people -- even a random sample of well educated ones -- to name even ONE other Ivy (assuming they could name HYP and not mistakenly name Duke or Stanford). I don't know where you live, but I would venture that outside of about 8-12 states, you couldn't get a majority of college graduates even to come up with H,Y, and P as among Ivy colleges.</p>

<p>I'll reply to several posts at once here.</p>

<p>first, BNB post 26. I do not think the situation with applicants is quite so binary. An applicant will make tradeoffs - less attractive physical environment balancing against a strong econ program, for example. So, the school with a better environment, with an equal econ program, wins. Hence the relatively stronger attractiveness of some othe schools. Easier to get good grades, as pretty a campus...</p>

<p>BNB post 27 - agree that the chicago workload discussion is a bit overdone. Consider, though, that it clearly does take more work to get a comparable GPA at Chicago than Harvard, just to use one example. I can assure you from direct knowledge that slackers can get by with a b-average at H, but not at Chi.</p>

<p>Mackinaw, me thinks you vastly underestimate the finely calibrated prestige scales of applicants to elite schools. I would agree that the majority of college grads in, say Texas, would not be able to name many ivies, but then again, they were never applying, nor were their parents interested in anything other than a texas college.</p>

<p>But, the more relevant pool is that group of parents (and their poor offspring) that aspire to that storied window decal from an ivy. THEY know. OK, a few will get mixed up and include Stanford and MIT in the mix. They're just parents. (but include DUKE? never. Maybe confuse Penn and Penn State, but DUKE???)</p>

<p>mack: now who is overgeneralizing? those same individuals that you claim wouldn't be able to name one other ivy beyond hyp would probably also think that uchi is a state school, so what is your point? outside of 8-12 states, a majority of college graduates probably have never ventured 100 miles from their home, again, what is your point?</p>

<p>What the point is is that you're exaggerating street creds of an Ivy degree. </p>

<p>Related note: I do surveys as part of my job. I have a pretty good sense of what people "know" about things, such as that fewer than 10% could name even one justice of the Supreme Court, less than 25% can name their own member of Congress, etc. If I had some "spare change," I'd run you a little "name one college in the Ivy League" test in my state. My guess is fewer than 10% would name even one. Or I'd ask, "I'm going to list the name of colleges. As I mention each one please tell me whether this college is in the Ivy League, or not -- or have you never heard of this college?" Probably a few more might get this right, but not a whole lot more than someone who is just making a random guess.</p>

<p>newmassdad: sure, i also know firsthand that h is not all that difficult once you're in, but is that supposed to be a negative? i have to kill myself to get decent grades to compete for graduate school slots with kids from a more prestigious hyp with A's? no thanks, I'll take prestige with a lighter load any day of the week.</p>

<p>BB,</p>

<p>Actually, you have your reference point a bit messed up. If you had said professional school slots, you'd have been right, as many, especially law schools, tend to be rather formula driven. </p>

<p>Grad school? Different kettle. The number of applicants a grad school department deals with are smaller, decisions are made by faculty members themselves, and the process tends to be more subjective and, at top schools somewhat connection driven. So in this setting, it is easy to adjust for grading differences, and the faculty screeners do.</p>

<p>Mack,</p>

<p>I don't disagree with you about the "man on the street" not knowing, and not giving a hoot about the ivies. But the man on the street's kid is not going to an ivy anyway. Heck, he's lucky to get into State U. </p>

<p>But they're not our reference point. The soccer mom, the country club regular, the executive that actually benefitted from a GWB tax cut, the Benz or Lexus driver, those folks know and care, I would suspect.</p>

<p>People don't go around name dropping where they went to school, especially alumni of U of C. People go to Chicago for the quality of education, bottom line. Who would go to Chicago for prestige? Its my number one choice but most people I know haven't heard of it.</p>

<p>hats of to michaelburt</p>

<p>newmassdad: i was referring to professional school slots
michaelburt: there is more name dropping out there than you would imagine. also, a lot of people go to uchi for its prestige. don't kid yourself. the people that you know who have never heard of uchi will be left behind with the rest of the trash when you do reach uchi.
mack: who cares whether the general populace knows who the justices of the supreme court are? the fact is, that the people who do know what an ivy or stanford is, who also happen to be familiar with uchi will be more impressed with the ivy and stanford brand because it is harder to get into those schools and is therefore deemed more elite. this brings us back to 40% acceptance. those same people who are familiar with what an ivy is were the ones trying to get in during their day and they know how difficult it was to get into them then and how hard it still is to get into them now, whereas, during their time, uchi was probably their second choice or "safety", if you will, which is still the case today.</p>

<p>I think you are again missing the point. You are assuming that people "in the know" will reward Ivy grads -- ALL Ivy grads -- more than UofC grads because Ivy is more elite. My point has been and remains that once you move beyond HYP it may not matter in the slightest. You are the one who raised the "wow" factor, and I told you there may not be any "wow" to Ivy in general, but there may be to H, Y, or P. Further, while you are assuming that people in the know are impressed by low admissions percentages my guess is that they may be impressed by diplomas but have little clue of admissions percentages per se.</p>

<p>Again you are making assumptions that can be questioned, and you persist in the belief that "Ivy" is a uniform quality brand, when in fact the brand leaders are known on their own terms and not because they are Ivy.</p>

<p>I also know from experience (in my own profession, and watching the market for my son and others) that employers and grad/professional schools aren't thinking about admit rates. They are thinking about the quality of the applicant, and they know how to look at a resume and, if need be, a transcript. When he was hired by a major consulting firm, my son was asked about his SAT scores, his LSAT score, and his GPA at UofC; he was asked for copies of a couple of research-based papers; they were very interested in the range of skills and experiences he had to offer (statistics, spreadsheets, research, writing, teamwork, leadership, and overseas experience). These are the kinds of things this employer would ask of anybody applying, but it's the individual's talents and skills that matter. But nobody said, cuidado! this kid attended a college with a 40% admit rate. They knew that he had a solid and comprehensive education, and his high GPA coming out of Chicago, in combination with the other skills and experiences he had to offer, got him an excellent job. The same would have been true had he chosen to go on for a professional or doctoral degree.</p>

<p>i don't think i am missing the point, i think that you are just overly sensitive to the fact that uchi just doesn't run with the ivy's. when you get past hy and p, there is still columbia, penn, dartmouth and brown that all are incredibly competitive and carry big WOW. Only cornell may lack the panache of the others. i am also not saying that going to an ivy will automatically get you into a top law school, but it sure would be easier. to placate you, i will say that in many circles, uchi may not be viewed any less favorably than an ivy, but in terms of how our high school seniors view uchi in comparison to the ivy's, it's not even close. this thread starts with why uchi has such a high admit rate. the answer is that they need to admit more because most admits go someplace more desirable. which brings us back to the low yield. there are many reasons why the yield is low. one reason could be that the work is harder than at, say northwestern. i submit that the reason is that most of the 66% who choose not to attend would rather attend an ivy or it's equivalent. that doesn't mean that the leftovers that uchi get to enroll are not quality students, it's just that the ivy's skimmed most of the cream from the top.</p>

<p>BnB, regarding your first sentence. I have never been concerned about nor expressed concern about where the UofC "runs." I have expressed concern that you seem to have an idealized view of what "Ivy" means. The rest of your post is not relevant to anythiing I have expressed concern about.</p>

<p>Once one controls for the the quality of the applicant there is little evidence that the school one attends makes much of a difference (except for URM's) for career success. </p>

<p>From a Princeton Daily article:</p>

<p>"Going to an academically elite college does not necessarily boost your earnings potential compared to a less elite college, according to a study by Princeton University economist Alan Krueger. In his paper "Estimating the Payoff to Attending a More Selective College," published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, a school's selectivity, as measured by matriculants' average SAT scores, does not correlate with students' later income, once the abilities of the students upon entering college are taken into account. This finding challenges previous studies positively linking earnings to a college's prestige. The researchers did find, however, that for a subset of students -- those from a financially disadvantaged background -- an elite education did bring greater financial rewards."</p>

<p>The reasons for attending a school should perhaps be based on academic fit, not financial or career gain, as described here <a href="http://magazine.uchicago.edu/0310/features/zen.shtml%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://magazine.uchicago.edu/0310/features/zen.shtml&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p>