<p>Really, who cares?! It is a top school regardless. No one is going to judge you if you went to Penn over Chicago or Yale over Princeton. The differences are so small that they’re negligible. We have millions out of work in the U.S. and rising inequality and billions who don’t get enough food/clean water and countries on the verge of collapse we’re arguing about THIS?</p>
<p>Chicago will be grouped with HYPSMC someday. If not, who cares. Columbia isn’t on that list either. Does anyone outside of elite circles even know what HYPSMC means?</p>
<p>I thought the “C” in HYPSMC was Columbia! What is it supposed to be, Caltech? Caltech really doesn’t belong in that group. Not that it isn’t a great university, but it’s far more limited than any of the others, it gets only a fraction of the applications they get, and it fails to enroll more than half of the students it admits, unlike any of the others. Again, it’s clearly a great university; it’s just not at the same kind of general-public pinnacle of prestige as the others, even with its own hit TV show. (I don’t think Columbia belongs in that group, either, but if you were going to add a sixth university it would be either Columbia or Chicago, and I don’t think the initials police meant Chicago.)</p>
<p>I’ve only seen the C as a reference to Caltech. If Columbia is included, it becomes HYPSMCC, and with Chicago I guess it would be HYPSMCCC. Either way, I propose a reordering of the letters so that we get C(CC)HYMPS, sounds way cooler (can’t take credit for this idea, but it really is a good one).</p>
<p>@JHS yup, the C refers to Cal Tech. Regardless of the number of applications it gets or its engineering/science slant, you can’t deny the kids there are brilliant. They accept/deny applicants based purely on merit so that is probably why. </p>
<p>@PMC I believe it’s based on a rough order of prestige as a function of time, so HYPSMCCC would be the way to go, with the last C being Chicago since it’s the latest one to join the upper ranks. </p>
<p>So there you go everyone. Use HYSMCCC from now on. The rest will be history.</p>
Your username is starting to make a lot of sense…</p>
<p>
Your argument as I see it:
Chicago gamed its way into selectivity.
Selectivity, if obtained bereft of aforementioned “gaming”, leads to ultimate respect.
“Gaming”, as Chicago does it, which involves sending “thankless” and “stupid” postcards, is a bad thing in itself.
Chicago’s postcards are “stupid” and “thankless”</p>
<p>My part-by-part response:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Gaming implies rigging the system. Cheating it. Selectivity is a function of the number of students who apply, the number of students who enroll (yield) and the number of seats available (class size). Chicago’s only “gamed” the system insofar as it contacted a few students, encouraging them to apply. Students weren’t forced to apply. Chicago was only making up for one of its natural handicaps, which is its lack popularity in popular media. “Why does this exist?” you may ask. Well, I’d say it may have some to do with Chicago’s relative youth, and some to do with its location in the midwest, and some to do with its name, which doesn’t sounds none too glamorous. I don’t think that this qualifies as “gaming” the system.</p></li>
<li><p>If the major criteria (as you make it seem, by suggesting that Chicago’s one flaw negates all of its advantages) for measuring respect can be so simply gamed, does it deserve to even be the major criteria? And is “gaming” even the only thing that lead to Chicago’s increase in selectivity or could it be that Chicago is actually a good product on it own. As you mentioned, the marketing model was pioneered by WashU, and as good as WashU is, its gains from said marketing cannot compare to Chicago’s (There’s a recent thread on this very subject on the UChicago board). I think its more than just the “gaming”… And I don’t think selectivity = respect</p></li>
<li><p>I have already touched upon this. It was honest marketing, to make up for one of Chicago’s disadvantages. Criticizing that is like criticizing a sportsperson who had to work hard to make up for his or her lack of natural, raw talent. The marketing didn’t hurt anyone (if it did hurt you, a remedy was never further than a phone-call/email away). I for one did not receive any marketing material from UChicago, and almost did not apply there (I was planning on applying SCEA to Yale). Fortunately for me, two months before the early deadline, I accidentally stumbled upon the university (I tended to ignore rankings) and fell in love with it. I have received one package from it since (the perfunctory admittance package along with a personal new years card) and can’t wait to get more. I continue to receive some packages from colleges (including Duke and Columbia) and thoroughly enjoy leafing through them.</p></li>
<li><p><em>sigh</em> (and whats a thankless postcard… Should it have been thankful?)</p></li>
</ol>
<p>My two cents: Chicago was just as amazing of a school at 40% acceptance, as it is at 12%, and will be at 9%. As such, marketing does not deserve to be mentioned in this discussion (of respect). If we talk about prestige among plebeians, then Chicago’s marketing is doing nothing but wonders for it, but it still lags behind top Ivies (HYP), and Stanford and MIT. This certainly isn’t true in academia, and isn’t true in a lot of the professional world (for several subjects), and I doubt this will be meaningfully true ten years down the line, when Chicago’s reputation saturates and it slows down on its marketing…</p>
<p>“To be honest, I really don’t see why Harvard is considered the nation’s top college. Can someone explain it to me? Back in Harvard’s heyday, I could see why, but, at this current time, I’m sorry, I just don’t. The level of grade inflation at Harvard is just ridiculous; a handful of my friends are current Harvard undergraduates and they have attested to this fact.” Ok I thought I was the only who wondered about this. lol Must be their endowment.</p>
<p>Here’s a mess of a paragraph that may help.
They’re uber humongous endowment does help. So does having some of the best faculty around. Or having the best students around (most selective, highest yield). Or the fact that they have top Grad programs in almost every subject (from science and math to law and business). They produce the most Rhode Scholars (in fact they top the lists for most of the competitive scholarships around) and top almost every list on research and faculty citations. They’re prestige is unmatched. They have one of the most powerful alumni associations (if not the most powerful). Need I go on?</p>
<p>I’m not saying that Harvard is the best school for everyone, or even that it’s the best school for most people (Esp for undergrad), but it’s not very hard to justify that if there is such a thing as a best college in general (a ridiculous notion) it would have to be Harvard (or would have to have Harvard among the top few, as is the case with most rankings nowadays)</p>
<ol>
<li> Of course, Caltech students are brilliant, but the fact remains that despite some hefty advantages the number of qualified candidates who don’t apply to it clearly exceeds the number who do. Its closest rivals, MIT and Stanford, get more than three and more than six times the applications, respectively, and more than twice the yield. Its yield rate indicates that Caltech wins very few head-to-head contests with either. It looks a lot more like Chicago in that respect than like, say, Princeton. In terms of the appeal of its college, it looks a lot more like Harvey Mudd than like Princeton.</li>
</ol>
<p>Again, that doesn’t mean it’s not a great university. It absolutely is. It’s just, if Caltech were a classic British rock band, it wouldn’t be the Beatles or the Stones. It would be Cream, or the Kinks, maybe the Zombies or T. Rex. Great bands, bands good enough to be someone’s favorite band, bands good enough to have an argument that each is maybe better than the Beatles or the Stones. But not quite in the same category of overall x-mania.</p>
<ol>
<li>Harvard is considered the nation’s top university because no other university is (a) older, (b) richer, or (c) as strong across-the-board in as many academic fields and professional schools. But at the individual student level, that status means very little, because every one of its departments or programs has rivals that are just as good or maybe even better, and the associational benefit they get from the university’s strength in other areas is fairly minor, and not that much different from what the rivals provide.</li>
</ol>
<p>As a college, there are a number of institutions that can argue credibly that they do a better job of undergraduate education than Harvard. It’s really a question of angels on the head of a pin. Harvard seems to win the annual popularity contest by a narrow plurality. I suppose that makes Harvard the top college, but not by enough to matter much.</p>
<p>Grade inflation has little or nothing to do with it.</p>
<p>In a small town, there was one a competitive swimming team. The team had several superstars. Yet, they had problems fielding complete relays teams and needed to fill the roster. Although some kids never would compete for the medals, they tried hard and kept coming to the practices. </p>
<p>Over time, one of the kids learned all the right strategies from the top swimmers and was able to shave milliseconds and later seconds of their time. Every year, the coaches gave the kid the “Most improved Award” as his percentual gains were the highest among all, obviously fueled by a low starting point. He had the right body but was awkward, socially inept, and not popular. </p>
<p>But the kid got better. He would still not make it to podium as the three best swimmers were still better in qualifiers and finals. He learned to be more social and bought new clothes. He made more friends. But the podium never happened! </p>
<p>Why this story? Because if you screwed for so long, especially if you had the goods, it is not unfathomable to get better. Sometimes, all what is needed is to work on the image and drop some of the negative elements. And make sure many are told how better you look. And then rearrange the looks some more and tell even more people. </p>
<p>Why here? Because Chicago is that “most improved kid” who is working his way up from the lower levels it happily lived for many years, hampered by the fossils who were in charge of admissions and marketing and hampered by the image of a great school nobody wanted to go. What do the increased applications mean? Nothing but that Chicago finally is attracting a number of applications that is reasonable for its position in academia. Getting more than 30,000 is not remarkable as this has become a standard among similar schools. Heck, UCLA got close to 100,000 applications this year!</p>
<p>So now, Chicago has joined the family of Columbia, Duke, Penn, et al! Congratulations!</p>
<p>Before someone else misinterprets your post, you refer to Chicago as that “most improved kid” with regards to the number of applicants it receives, correct?</p>
<p>There’s another narrative out there, too, from a different perspective.</p>
<p>Jim Nondorf, Bulldog, Whiffenpoof, Bonesman, wanted to be Yale’s Dean of Admissions. He was passed over, and the job given to a rival. He knew that Yale would have a new president in a few years, and he went out to prove that he would have been a better dean than the one they chose. So he set up what looked almost like a controlled experiment. He found a place that resembled Yale in any number of ways, except popularity, and convinced them to let him run their admissions. He then ran circles around Yale, ate its lunch, dallied with its girlfriend AND its mother.</p>
<p>Chicago seems to have gotten more applications than Yale this year, which boggles the imagination. I’m sure people at Yale have noticed, including its new president (and former provost). How much of a shock would it be if sometime in the next year Nondorf changed jobs again?</p>
<p>I would not describe RPI in such terms, but perhaps you meant to hopscotch over that small detour through Troy. Who knows!</p>
<p>On the other hand, it is hard to overlook why it was opportune (and needed) for Chicago to change its image and especially how it reached out for students in the Ted era. And why bringing an admission technological guru could make it a clear and distinct departure from the old days that oozed uncommonality and exuded the importance of being different at all cost. Old days that failed to attract students to go beyond the relatively easy admission process ( statistcally and academically speaking) to the desired commitment to enroll, and most importantly left many of students unimpressed or unmotivated to spend on the utter drudgery of a “different” application marred by ridiculously silly requirements. </p>
<p>Letting go of a system that combined navel-gazing, self-indulgence, and inefficiency was the first step in the right direction. Nondorf might have benefitted from the alignment of the Zimmer stars, but the result of abandoning exactly what some of us derided abundantly are evident today. A less uncommon school is simply more able to attract the masses of students, and with the wider net, a larger number of less angular students who might have gone to the usual suspects of HYPS.</p>
<p>The next step, if Yale and consorts are really providing the model will be to fiddle with the non-restrictive admission as the current rates of admitting enough EA to fill the entire class is one last hurdle to the full “respectability” that comes to being highly selective.</p>
<p>Maybe, but I don’t think that’s likely anytime soon. If they went to REA, early applications would plummet. If they didn’t admit so many kids EA, Chicago wouldn’t have 1,400 already-admitted students to market to for three months, which I think has a lot to do with bringing their yield up. </p>
<p>If they went to ED, that would help yield (maybe), but really hurt number of applications, and if they admitted as many students ED as their EA strategy probably yields they would look (a) cheesy, and (b) more like Penn and less like Yale or Princeton, not the message they want to convey. Also, It Would Be Wrong, which I’m sure factors into their thinking somehow.</p>
<p>The current system is pretty effective at drawing applications from good prospects, and generating a list of super-qualified prospects (i.e., admitted students) for a massive, expensive marketing effort that would never be undertaken on a wider basis. Eventually, when the brand gets built more, they could go to REA, but in the near term I don’t think they want to tell anyone to think twice before applying.</p>
<p>What are the advantages of REA/SCEA to universities? Unlike Early Decision, REA/SCEA is not binding at all, so I have never understood why anyone would have REA/SCEA policies.</p>
<p>I agree with JHS and texaspg. I think having EA like MIT and Caltech for now should suffice. Chicago could continue to tweak how many they accept in the early round as well as in the regular round without restricting via “ED” or “SCEA.” And as others have said who have attended recent regional meetings with the Dean of Admissions…the projected overall acceptance rate this year will be around 9% meaning the regular acceptance rate will be much lower…unfortunately…for those applying “regular round.”</p>