word of caution for U Chicago applicants

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of Chicago ✅
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<p>My S1 is a freshman now at U Chicago. I don't read/comment on threads/posts by prospective students, but this evening I have a bit too much time on my hand and ended up browsing a bit. What I read is somewhat disturbing: a shocking amount of naivete and misinformation, one million examples of the blind leading the blind, and groundless optimism for admission chances in some cases.</p>

<p>I won't go into the detail, but if you have some time, read the following thread on the parents forum: many posters there are very knowledgeable, informed parents who sent their children to top schools and some of them are former admission officers and college admission counselors. It's a long thread, but you can skip many posts and zoom in on some juicy stuff. By now, it's puttering out. the first half of the thread has all the good info.</p>

<p><a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/767118-under-3-6-gpa-applying-top-20-parents-thread.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/767118-under-3-6-gpa-applying-top-20-parents-thread.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>If you further search within this thread, you will find some posts I made that debunk many "feel good" propaganda by the universities and their admission officers that are purely designed to encourage more students to apply so that they can maintain a very low acceptance rate, which is an important factor to maintain a high USNWR college/university ranking that undoubtedly is an important factor in determining bonuses, promotion etc for the involved school officials. </p>

<p>By all means, apply to U Chicago: it's an amazing school, and I couldn't be happier for my son. But, ALL OF YOU need several good safeties. The general rule of thumb in gauging one's chances for schools rated within top 20 USNWR is (note: Chicago, as you know, is currently within top 10):::</p>

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<p>If you have NO hook (athlete, URM, legacy, child of a big donor, an incredible life story like "I raised 5 younger siblings while living in a shelter after both of my parents were sent to jail on drug chages), most of your numbers should be in the 75% range of various stats the school provides for acceptance students (top bracket from their 25-75% range numbers) to consider that school A MATCH FOR YOU. On top of this base line, now you must have an attractive EC profile and/or good essays. Even so, it can be a hit or miss. Also, I will bet my month's salary that this year, U Chicago's acceptance rate will go further down from previous years for various reasons (see <a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/university-chicago/780201-40-acceptance-rate.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/university-chicago/780201-40-acceptance-rate.html&lt;/a> on this board), and the general stats will go up.</p>

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<p>You will always hear someone saying "So and so got in with SAT 1900 and GPA 3.5. Well, this falls into the "even a blind chicken finds corns some times" category, and schools do endeavor to create a few cases like this for the reason that was explained in the thread I linked earlier. You certainly shouldn't build your college application strategy based on that. You may be that lucky blind chicken, but you should also be realistic. While it's great that you guys are so enthralled with U Chicago, do yourself a favor: diversity your admission strategy and make sure that you properly assess you chances if you are going after top schools.</p>

<p>To those who would protest saying "U Chicago loves quirky students, and puts a great deal of emphasis on essays and don't care about SATs", I would say this "go check their accepted students' stats. How in the world do you think they put together the accepted students pool whose stats are completely in line with the likes of Stanford, Columbia, UPenn, Duke and such, if they were not paying so much attention to the stats, but rather focus on essays mostly?" Regardless of the marketing headlines, look at the numbers - which are the results of their actions. In general, when a top 10 schools says "we want well rounded students. More than numbers, we look at A, B, and C", the proper interpretation is "high scores are given. from there we go to A, B, and C to further reject a majority of the students and accept only a few". When top schools say "such and such is optional", it means "it is optional for you when you apply. we won't automatically throw your application out, but it's required for accepted students"</p>

<p>Every year, there are few stories on CC about kids with good stats and applications that got rejected by EVERY SINGLE school they applied to - because they overestimated their chances and did not include enough safeties in their application portfolio.</p>

<p>Good luck. I hope you guys make it to U Chicago.</p>

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<p>:(</p>

<p>I don’t even have a 3.5 GPA and this thread makes me feel bad about myself.</p>

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<p>hyeonjlee is absolutely right. Every time I read a prospective student say something to the effect of “Chicago really values the essays,” I think hmmm…</p>

<p>Chicago DOES value the essays, but they don’t ignore your curriculum, GPA, and test scores. When my D applied, she had a super interview–one that convinced both her interviewer and herself that she belonged at Chicago. But when he came out to meet me, the first thing he said was, “Her courses are outstanding, her grades are outstanding, and her scores are outstanding.”</p>

<p>Obviously, a full quarter of the class has scores in the bottom quarter. But those students have something else that’s pretty special.</p>

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<p>I am not trying to argue with or discredit hyeonjlee, but frankly, the post she wrote left me feeling EXTREMELY under-qualified, and before I, or other prospective students, completely give up on getting into UChicago, here is some actual quantitative data to consider:</p>

<p>86% of Chicago’s Class of 2012 ranked in the top 10% of their high school class
93% of Stanfords incoming class ranked in the top 10% of their high school class
93% of Columbia’s incoming class ranked in the top 10% of their high school class</p>

<p>U Chicago’s middle 50% for the SAT was 1340-1510
Columbia’s middle 50% for the SAT was 1410-1540</p>

<p>These are only some of the schools that hyeonjlee listed whose numbers would be comparable to UChicago. There is a relatively large disparity between UChicago and some of these other top schools when it comes to the objective stats. </p>

<p>Also, although I have no actual data to support this claim, I find it very hard to believe that you have to be in the 75th percentile in all of the stats to consider the school “A MATCH FOR YOU.” hyeonjlee’s son got a 2400 on the SAT, so maybe I am completely wrong about this, but it seems unreasonable to say that if you get below the top 75%, than the school is a reach. </p>

<p>Please don’t take this to mean I am trying to argue with you, nor assume that I am some bitter high school student who resents anyone telling him his chances are low for his dream school…The fact that UChicago is a top, incredibly selective school yet has relatively lower incoming class statistics than other comparable schools leads me to think that UChicago DOES put a lot of weight on the subjective portions of applications, i.e. the essay, the recommendations, the extracurriculars. The adcomms explicitly told me that they care more about the essays and recommendations than the SAT, although you probably think this is just a ploy to get more students to apply…</p>

<p>Feel free to differ, this is just my observations as someone sitting from the outside. hyeonjlee, and others, who have students going to UChicago are likely to know more information…I just thought I would put in my 2 cents.</p>

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<p>What puzzles me is why some are surprised [?] that the students who can write great essays are more often than not the same students who have great grades, scores, have probably read a lot and have taken a rigorous courseload. So it should not be a surprise to anyone that students who are accepted at Chicago are also students with great stats. And the Chicago adcoms know it.</p>

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<p>You are confusing the scores for “incoming” students and with those of the “accepted” students. The number you are quoting is the incoming students stat.</p>

<p>Note that U Chicago yield is lower than the likes of Columbia. This is one of the matrix numbers the new office of the dean will certainly try to do best to bring up. (yield is the % of the accepted students who chose that school).</p>

<p>U chicago’s yield being low means that among the accepted students, the top students who were also admitted went to higher ranked schools such as HYPS and not coming to Chicago. In fact, the general consensus among the very knowledgeable parents/adults on the parents forum is, other than HYPSM, the admitted students stats are HIGHER than the incoming student stats because of this reason.</p>

<p>The INCOMING STUDENTS collegeboard stat for chicago for 75% is 1530. Columbia is 1550. Stanford is 1540. UPenn is 1520. These differences very minor to begin with, and even the lower number (other than U Penn) for Chicago by a minuscule difference can be easily explained again by the lower yield number of chicago.</p>

<p>Without any hooks, you guys should look at 75% range more as a marker, rather than 25%, so let’s not even discuss the lower bracket. Schools need to maintain their stats to maintain their ranking and public branding (like luxury goods). The diversity candidates, athletes, legacy, and development cases lower the stats. Now they need “unhooked” kids to make up for that. That’s why the general consensus is, those without a hook must have stats close to the 75% marker.</p>

<p>The effect of yield on the GPA and class rank may be a similar story. Also, please note what % of the incoming students are from high schools that report class rank. Do you realize that more and more competitive high schools no longer report ranks because it hurts their students? For those schools that have a very large legacy pools are the schools that draw a lot of kids from private high schools and tippy top public schoos, and they don’t report class ranks. what this means is, the 93% of the top 10% class ranked kids in stanford comes from public schools that are still reporting ranks (more likely not the most tippy top competitive high schools both public and private), and more likely reflect geographical diversity, athletes, URM, etc - again, the factor that does not help kids from NJ, NY, CA and CT solid middle class background without any hooks).</p>

<p>Again, I did not make the post to dismiss you guys. I thought I was doing all of you a favor by gently reminding you that you need a safety backup strategies just in case.</p>

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<p>My caution is for those applicants on a shaky ground with regard to other qualifications who blindly think that if they write one heck of an essay they can get in. </p>

<p>In general though, I disagree that “good essays” have a very very high correlation with the scores and stats in general. Yes, meaningful correlation, but NO WHERE NEAR highly meaningful/statistically significant correlation. If so, the testing agency (college board) should send assassins after all these clairvoyant Chicago admin officers who can make test scores obsolete by using amazing skills to “divine” from the essays who are the tippy top, most qualified students overall. The whole myth that GPA or other factors are so perfectly correlated that the GPA spread just happens to fall where it does has been roundly debunked in one of the threads in the parents forum: the only way the GPA spread of the top schools falls the way it does is because they (schools) deliberately selected their students using GPA as one of the important selection criteria. </p>

<p>Of course, there are always exception. </p>

<p>I say this again: I am not trying to make the prospective students and applicants feel bad or insult them. I am trying to help you by making sure that you have safe strategy and also pay attention to the safety schools you can surely get in. Of course, if you make it to Chicago, more power to you and WELCOME TO THE COMMUNITY.d</p>

<p>I feel that with S1, we were TRULY RECKLESS with his college application stuff. It worked out all right: he is in Chicago, but it could have gone the other way, and he could have been one of these kids who got accepted into NOWHERE. We though Cornell and Northwestern were safeties. NO WAY. If that had happened, I would have kicked myself in the butt, and I would have wished that somebody forced me to swallow a dose of realism and wisdom in the whole process.</p>

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<p>I’m a lurker and a prospective student; just popped in to say thank you to hyeonjlee for making this post. As much as this thread makes my rather tenuous chances (no excellent ECs, not sure my essays will be all that brill) even more dismal, I appreciate the sense of reality given here.</p>

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<p>The data I quoted for Columbia and UChicago were the same. UChicago has it listed as the class of 2012, and Columbia has it listed as admitted students. Yes, I realize that both of the schools are publishing the data for different years, but I am just assuming (this might be wrong) that the change from the class of 2012 and class of 2013 was not incredibly drastic. </p>

<p>There is a difference between admitted and accepted. Admitted students are the ones attending, accepted are just those who received acceptances.</p>

<p>And the numbers I quoted were directly from the respective university websites. Take them as you will.</p>

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<p>ooppppppppppppp. I mistyped.</p>

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<p>it should be instead:</p>

<p>The whole myth that GPA or other factors are so perfectly correlated with SAT scores that the SAT spread just happens to fall where it does when schools picked kids based on GPA and other factors has been roundly debunked in one of the threads in the parents forum: the only way the SAT spread of the top schools falls the way it does is because they (schools) deliberately selected their students using SAT as one of the important selection criteria.</p>

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<p>This, as I mentioned, may be due to the effect of the lower yield by Chicago than Columbia. Hence, it does not say whether Columbia’s numbers were actually higher than Chicago’s when it comes to the accepted students. For you, what matters is the accepted students stats, NOT the incoming class stats.</p>

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<p>Chicago is going through a major upswing. It’s acceptance rate is dropping like rocks. Its application number has gone up 100% during last few years. Anything about Chicago should be based on the latest numbers. Last year’s acceptance rate was something like 27%. I don’t remember what it was the year before (over 30%, something like 32-35%??? I don’t remember). This year, I won’t be surprised at all if it dips below 20%. The effect of common app kicks in the year after it was first tried (increased applications), which was last year, and a new dean of admission who is brought in to increase Chicago’s “market appeal” (read: more applicants) must be doing his best to do what he is hired to do.</p>

<p>Besides, within 10-20 SAT points, we are splitting hair here. You can believe whatever you want to believe. Just make sure that you are not putting a blinder on yourself because you want to believe whatever it is so badly.</p>

<p>All I am saying is, those of you who think Chicago’s pursuit for all these “quriky” students is such an obsession on the part of the school so much so that way out of the range stats don’t matter and do not make their chance precariously low are drinking from kool aid. </p>

<p>Again, do you best, and apply by all means. However, make sure, all of you, that you have a safe and sound strategy to include safety schools and make sure that your enthusiasm for Chicago does not blind your vision so much so that you are not properly investigating all the options you have. You must make sure that you all land in a place that is perfect for you, even if it’s not Chicago. </p>

<p>Parents forum is full of parents doing very sophisticated job in vetting all potentials, weighing options, and coming up with strategies that do not leave their kids with sub par options due to the lack of proper research and evaluation. You might want to visit that site now and then. You will learn a lot.</p>

<p>If I had done my job like the other parents are doing on that forum, I would have advised my son to follow a different strategy — with the same outcome (Chicago), so, we were incredibly lucky - it’s the beginner’s luck. For S2, I don’t think the lightning will strike twice, so I am doing my job diligently to learn everything there is to learn to maximize his chance.</p>

<p>My conclusion about the whole college admission process? It’s one hell of a game, a high stakes game. AND, colleges have done this for years and they are expert gamesmen, all of them. Don’t ever believe that they are some kind of do gooders, well wishers, and counselors. Their mission is to put together an incoming class for the benefit of the SCHOOL, its alumni, its faculty, and its officials. It so happens that in order to do that they will serve all the students well once they come in. Hence the value and benefit of the elite colleges. Remember they are not some kind of international aid agency whose mission is to rescue kids from their own mediocrity.</p>

<p>All the naive students and parents have no chance to game the system the same way without thorough research and learning on their part. This applies to top schools and kids who are applying to top schools.</p>

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<p>“The whole myth that GPA or other factors are so perfectly correlated with SAT scores that the SAT spread just happens to fall where it does when schools picked kids based on GPA and other factors has been roundly debunked in one of the threads in the parents forum: the only way the SAT spread of the top schools falls the way it does is because they (schools) deliberately selected their students using SAT as one of the important selection criteria.” </p>

<p>Phew! thank you for correcting your earlier misstatement, which I was ready to bring to your attention as being incorrect.</p>

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<p>To add to the OP’s comments, consider that many applicants and parents lie to their friends (of course, they think they’re just “rounding up” or down as the circumstances justify…), for example, if one were to rely on opinions of others, there would be 2x or 3x as many acceptees at top colleges as there really are.</p>

<p>This is an even bigger factor for financial aid awards - unless you actually see the U’s aid letter, be skeptical. </p>

<p>BTW, the lack of honesty on the part of admissions folks is well known and has been documented for years. Why parents rely on the “info sessions”, which should properly be called “disinfo” sessions, instead of third party sources is beyond me. I can only tell you that “the early admissions game” from a few years back was a real eye opener. And there have been quite a few others. Karabel’s book, for example, can be rather heavy going at times, but is a fascinating description of how elite college admissions evolved to where it is today, and how easy it is to (1) say one thing while doing another and (2) disguise less than noble intentions in honorable rhetoric.</p>

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<p>There’s no question that the grade/score distribution for the set of kids accepted to any college runs higher than the figures for the students who actually enroll. A few colleges do provide information on their accepted class as well as their enrolled class (Amherst, Brown, I’m not sure who else), and that information confirms this. The students with the best grades and test scores tend to be the ones with the most options, whether they have been accepted to Harvard, Chicago, or Podunk State, and so they are relatively more likely than other accepted students to choose a different option.</p>

<p>Looking at the Amherst and Brown data, the difference isn’t quite as extreme as hyeonjlee suggests. The 75th percentile of enrolled students is above the median of accepted students – probably somewhere around the 60th percentile. The basic point, though, is correct: except for HYPS, where yield is so high that there isn’t room for much deviation between the accepted group and the enrolled group, at selective colleges almost half of the students accepted will have “stats” that would put them in the top quadrant of the class that actually enrolls. (Brown has a much higher yield than Chicago, but Amherst doesn’t, if you adjust for ED, and the Amherst and Brown data are pretty consistent with one another.)</p>

<p>A college’s yield on the students it accepts in the lowest grade and score quadrant tends to be pretty high – those students represent far less than 25% of the students accepted.</p>

<p>If your stats put you in the middle 50% range based on a college’s enrolled-class figures, you are in a group from which the college will admit a substantial number of students, but the admission rate is going to be below its overall published average. A little below if you are towards the top of that range, a lot below if you are towards the bottom. You definitely have to take that into account in your thinking.</p>

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<p>Does anyone have a suggestion on where to have stats on ENROLLED students for any college?</p>

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<p>The stats that you see published everywhere are the enrolled student stats. Those are what the colleges put on their common data sets – most (but not all) colleges have those available on their websites – and they are picked up by all of the college guides and by US News & World Report. Unless it’s absolutely clear otherwise, whenever you see stats on the distribution of grades, class rank, test scores for a college, it’s based on a particular enrolled class.</p>

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<p>thanks for the reminder, hyeonjlee. Not sure why people are arguing about 10 points on the SAT. It’s funny how we all invest in magical thinking. We toured U of Chicago with S2 when we were in the area recently (S1 goes to NU) and loved the place. Then we read the HS college book and looked at Naviance and were reminded that the lowest accepted statistic for the class of 2013 was 4.67w/2290. And those with the SAT score in that category (that would be S2) think that UC will somehow think his GPA is a typo, especially if he knocks them dead with an essay (one that will be published instantly once the world sees it). NOT! Nevertheless, he’s going to apply to probably 3 impossible-dream schools (not UC, but it’s really a gorgeous school in a vibrant location) because of the Lottery motto–can’t win if you don’t play–fully understanding that the odds are, in reality, nil. So we will contribute to the admissions game along with all the other dreamers. But S2 has a long list of matches and safeties, too.</p>

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<p>Neumes, could you share how you found the lowest accepted stat for U Chicago?</p>

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<p>OP -</p>

<p>I guess I’m an ignoramus. but . . . is the point of this thread that getting into Top 20- schools like U Chicago less certain than one might think?</p>

<p>Kei</p>

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I think Neumes is talking about the Naviance stats for his son’s high school.</p>