<p>relative to other schools that is. </p>
<p>class of 08 was 40% i think
class of 09 was 40% i think
class of 10 was around 38-39%</p>
<p>why is the rate of depression so small (once again, relative to others)?</p>
<p>Please run a search. There have been numerous discussions on this topic.</p>
<p>The admissions percentage is a factor of both how many students apply and how many students who are admitted attend.</p>
<p>Chicago turns off prospective applicants for a few reasons:
1) It is a school with a Great Books tradition with an emphasis on academics. That sounds yummy to a Chicago applicant, but it grosses out a lot of bright and talented kids.
2) The Uncommon application turns off prospective applicants.
3) The lack of a huge party scene.
4) Its non-ivy status doesn't help, either.</p>
<p>Check out my "don't come here if...." thread for more reasons why a student wouldn't submit an application.</p>
<p>unalove, that is a very concise and I believe encompassing list of the reasons wh fewer students apply to UChi than its peers. I like it</p>
<p>Thanks, Smirkus!</p>
<p>Unfortunately for us, we don't get to see what the applicant pool actually looks like to see who you really are competing against. I'm willing to believe, though, that of the 20,000 students who apply to Columbia, a good number of them are applying JUST because it's in New York City and the Ivy League but otherwise are not qualified to be considered for admission, as with Harvard/Yale/Princeton. These "auto-deny" applicants make the school seem more competitive than it really is, and most schools love to rope in applicants any way they can. If you apply to Chicago, you have to really want it, and considering all of the smart, wonderful people I know who didn't get in, I don't think that admissions here is any easier than any other elite school, despite the percentage admitted.</p>
<p>Unalove should have addressed the other side of the equation as well.</p>
<p>Yale and Chicago have freshman classes that are approximately the same size, about 1,300. Yale gets twice the number of applications Chicago does: 20,000+ vs. 10,000+. So even if they accepted the same number of students, Chicago's admission rate would be 2x Yale's. They don't accept the same number of students, though. Yale accepts about 1,800 students to fill its 1,300-student class; it expects about 75% of the people it accepts to choose Yale. Chicago accepts about 3,600 students to fill its 1,300-student class; it expects only about 33% of the people it accepts to choose Chicago. If the two schools got the same number of applications, Chicago's acceptance rate would still be 2x Yale's. Fundamentally, Yale gets twice the applications and twice the percentage yield, so its acceptance rate is 1/4 of Chicago's (9% vs. 36% last year).</p>
<p>Why is Chicago's yield so low? The answer is, it isn't. If you factor out the effect of early decision programs (which produce 100% yield on a portion of the pool), many other elite institutions have comparable yields. Swarthmore gets 30% of its RD acceptees, Williams 36%, Brown 44%, Dartmouth 38%, Cornell 37%. To some extent, all of these institutions are chasing the same students, and only a small handful "win" more head-to-head contests than they lose.</p>
<p>So, the complete answer is: fewer applications, and no early decision program.</p>
<p>JHS, thanks for bringing that portion up too. Chicago has no way of roping kids into it, and a lot of students who would have applied to Chicago ED if the option was available try their luck at other schools and get in. I'm proud of Chicago for offering EA instead of ED, but at the same time, you'll have kids comparing offers from Swarthmore, Princeton, Harvard, MIT, Yale etc., ie. the schools that offer a similar experience to Chicago but in different packaging.</p>
<p>There are, though, more than a handful of students (I'm one of them, for instance) who apply to Chicago EA and call it a day. Chicago was by far and away my first choice, except for one week in November in which I thought that a smaller, closer-to-home school would have been better for me (this school would have been Colgate). Once I got in, and once I settled my feelings about leaving home and my family, I was golden.</p>
<p>We love EA at our house!</p>
<p>Ah JHS, love your stats! They bring an interesting perspective to the discussion.</p>
<p>I do enjoy this perennial UofC question, and always wonder: Who cares?</p>
<p>Here's a fun application of the analysis: Chicago vs. Northwestern</p>
<p>Each gets about the same number of applications per slot: 8.3. So number of applications doesn't affect their relative numbers at all.</p>
<p>Northwestern's gross numbers show an overall acceptance rate of 30% (4,820 out of 16,220 apps) vs. Chicago's 35% (3,600 out of 10,400 apps). Northwestern's overall yield is 40.6% (1,950 out of 4,800), while Chicago has an overall yield of 34.7% (1,250 out of 3,600). So Northwestern looks a little more selective, and a little more popular with admittees, notwithstanding that Eastern snobs like me don't consider it as being anywhere near as attractive as Chicago. (I'm sure no one at Chicago has ever noticed this, or speculated as to why that might be.)</p>
<p>Northwestern, however, takes a little more than a quarter of its class ED from a very small number of ED applications, at a 49% acceptance rate (524 acceptances, 1,079 applications), on which it gets 100% yield. If I estimate that it outright rejects about 10% of the ED pool and defers the rest of the non-admitted EDs, that leaves an RD pool of about 15,600 apps, with 4,300 acceptances, a 27.5% acceptance rate. Out of those 4,300 accepted students, 1,430 chose to attend -- almost exactly 33.3% yield.</p>
<p>Chicago gets a lot higher percentage of its applications EA -- about 25%, or 2,600 EA apps. Last year, it accepted about 1,150 of those, 44%, but of course they were not committed to attend Chicago. If I make the same assumption about the portion of the EA pool that gets deferred, Chicago's RD pool would have been about 9,000, of which 2,450 were accepted -- 27.2%. And, as noted, Chicago's yield on all accepted students was 34.7%.</p>
<p>So, it turns out that the apparent difference between Chicago and Northwestern is pretty illusory, and to the extent there is a (slight) difference it goes the other way. Northwestern accepts a (slightly) higher percentage of its early applications, and a (very slightly) higher percentage of its RD applications. Its yield among students who have a choice is slightly lower. The difference between the ED/EA programs at the schools accounts for 100%+ of their apparent differences in acceptance rate and yield.</p>
<p>Fun exercise with one flaw. Northwestern does not defer its ED applicants.</p>
<p>Really? I didn't know that.</p>
<p>No matter, that raises NU's acceptance rate on RD applications by 0.9% to 28.4%, by taking 450 applications out of my denominator. It increases, not decreases, the effect of ED.</p>
<p>Yes, "flaw" was maybe the wrong word, as it strengthened your argument. Thought of that right after hitting "submit."</p>
<p>And yes Northwestern doesn't defer--I don't know if there are other schools with the same practice.</p>
<p>I think sometimes asking the question: "Why does Chicago have a high admissions rate in comparison to the Ivy League schools?" is like asking "Why am I poor in comparison to Bill Gates?"</p>
<p>
[quote]
Its yield among students who have a choice is slightly lower.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>JHS,</p>
<p>Your analysis is interesting but also kinda biased and part of your conclusion is flawed. First of all, not all EA students have a choice because as unalove pointed out earlier, "there are more than a handful of students who apply to Chicago EA and call it a day". But if you insist that all the one who apply to Chicago EA have a choice, then it just means fewer people have Chicago as their first choice whereas at least a quarter of NU student body makes it their first choice. Either way doesn't support your conclusion that NU is less popular but you made it look otherwise by trying to have it both ways.</p>
<p>Sam Lee,</p>
<p>I think YOU miss the point. ALL EA students have a choice. The fact that some chose not to exercise it is irrelevant. Worse, we have no data to back up your supposition other than anecdotal reports. Heck, please tell me what "more than a handful" means in numbers? Then, please tell me a source for the data, one that is (a) informed, (b) reliable (c) verifiable.</p>
<p>Thanks</p>
<p>Sam, that's a fair criticism. I think it's likely that Chicago has a higher yield among its EA admits than among its RD admits. And Chicago would almost certainly have a lower RD yield if it had an ED program to capture the low-hanging fruit in its applicant pool. So it's not completely fair to compare Chicago's overall yield to Northwestern's RD yield. In the end, the overall numbers are the overall numbers.</p>
<p>I think unalove is probably unusual in calling it a day after her EA admit, however. I know a number of kids who were admitted to Chicago EA, and none of them failed to apply elsewhere. (Many of them had already applied elsewhere when the EA results came out.) Also, you ought to acknowledge that from a game theory standpoint, Northwestern's ED program is much harsher to students than Chicago's EA. Northwestern says, effectively, "You can double your chance of admission if you commit to us in advance and waive financial aid competition, and you are willing to live or die by your early application." Comparatively few students take it up on that, only about 6.5% of applicants. Whereas Chicago's program really doesn't restrict or penalize early applicants at all, and unsurprisingly attracts a much greater percentage of overall applicants. We really don't know how many students in either university's early pool thought of the school as "Mr. Right" vs. "Mr. Right Now".</p>
<p>Here's another flaw in the analysis, in the interest of full disclosure: I was using 2006 numbers for Northwestern and 2007 numbers for Chicago, in part because they were the latest I had for both, but in part also because by coincidence that meant both schools got almost exactly the same number of applications per slot, so it took the "self-selecting applicants" issue out of the analysis. If I had used 2006 Chicago numbers, there were almost 1,000 fewer applications, so Northwestern would have been more selective in any event. And for all I know Northwestern had 17,000 or 18,000 applications in 2007, or accepted only 4,500 kids to fill its class.</p>
<p>I don't think one could really support the position that Chicago is any more selective than Northwestern. I do think that one can support the proposition that the differences in the schools' selectivity metrics is in large part a function of Northwestern's ED program design.</p>
<p>newmassdad,</p>
<p>You are the one who missed the point. JHS captured it:</p>
<p>
[quote]
So it's not completely fair to compare Chicago's overall yield to Northwestern's RD yield. In the end, the overall numbers are the overall numbers.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>nope, sam. </p>
<p>You jumped to a conclusion based on faulty, anecdotal information. </p>
<p>Sorry, but most places, and especially Chicago, do not reward faulty reasoning.</p>
<p>Please re-read JHS's response. He said the comparison is not completely fair. He did not agree with your criticism. The "numbers" do not support you.</p>
<p>Sam Lee, I am at Chicago and you are not at Chicago. You would not know the kids who "call it a day" after an EA application, as they are all at Chicago. Duh.</p>
<p>Certainly I have no evidence to support that "more than a handful" of kids applied to Chicago and only Chicago EA, though it would be interesting to look at how many Chicago EA admits end up attending. These numbers too, get tricky, considering that many also combine EA Chicago and ED elswhere. Even if Chicago is tied for number one, after an ED admittance, the opportunity to attend Chicago disappears.</p>
<p>I don't know what argument I am trying to make here, other than Chicago remains attractive to enough students that, provided they can afford it, choose to attend without filing any more applications. This was true for me and it was true for at least four of my good friends whom I've bothered to ask, and I believe it was true for some of the 2011ers on this forum. </p>
<p>However, that in itself doesn't mean much. A lot of students only really discover Chicago after admittance and visiting the school-- they apply to it as a "maybe" and, upon visiting, that "maybe" turns into an "absolutely." </p>
<p>As a high school senior, it's so difficult to determine what you want, anyway. Had I had the chance to redo my college applications, I probably would have applied to schools RD along with Chicago EA, not because I like Chicago less, but because I shouldn't have limited myself. I knew for sure that I liked Chicago more than any other of the superelite schools, and the superelite schools were the only ones that were in my range of sight at the time. If I were to do it all over again, I would have applied to would have been the likes of Bryn Mawr College, Oberlin College, Carleton College, Reed College. and Colorado College RD. These are colleges I only became familiar with long after my deposit to Chicago was sent and colleges I would have probably liked less than Chicago had I attended, but colleges that nonetheless offer a distinct intellectual experience similar to what I like so much about Chicago.</p>