Hello, this is my first post! Been reading forum for some time and have appreciated all the info and opinions …
Times Higher Education just published their 2016 “World Reputation Ranking” - I realize this is just another ranking, but it claims to “employ the world’s largest invitation-only academic opinion survey to provide the definitive list of the top 100 most powerful global university brands”. Well, one can argue about “definitive”, but it is one measure of brand name recognition. UChicago is ranked #11 (it was ranked #11 in 2015 and #14 in 2014).
What is curious to me is that the lack of name and/or reputation recognition in the general public. We are starting to get a real sense of this based on the reactions we get on sharing the news that my D is going to UChicago. Surprisingly, this is also among classmates and their parents at her private school, who just completed the college process, too.
Does any one have a theory(s) on WHY the school lacks name/reputation recognition in the general public given that UChi has been academically reputable for a very long time?
Not Ivy League. 2. Not Cambridge / Oxford. 3. No major football / basketball team (Duke, ND, Stanford, Michigan, etc). 3. Not a "Seven Sister" or elite NE liberal arts college (Amherst, Swarthmore, Williams).
Naming your University after a city, or state or geography is a pretty bad branding strategy, specially if you are not a Tech university. Penn is often confused as a state school. Most of the Universities with geography in their names are state schools, not elite private schools.
Imagine “University of Palo Alto”, “University of Cambridge”, “University of New Haven”, “University of Durham”, “University of Baltimore”, “University of Evanston”. Does the name have the same ring to it?
It also does not help that there is a “Univ of Illinois at Chicago” in the same city!
Yeah, like Princeton, MIT, Oxford, Cambridge, LSE, Georgetown, Amherst, Pomona, Middlebury, Haverford, Swarthmore, NYU . . .
The name recognition issue with Chicago, in brief, is that it followed a unique (and uniquely unsuccessful) path for its college in the 1940s and 1950s, then had standard urban-neighborhood problems in the 60s and 70s, with the result that the college shrank considerably and didn’t really participate in the Baby Boom boom that turned “Ivy” into a consumer brand. At the graduate and professional-school levels, especially in law, business, and social sciences, the University of Chicago never stopped being an ultra-elite institution. It took an entire generation to solidify the strengths of the college, to correct its weaknesses, and to stabilize the neighborhood, so that the college could stand with the rest of the university in prestige.
A university’s name is an extremely important part of branding and marketing and helps with generating awareness. That alone won’t fix everything, but a poorly conceived name can seriously hurt name recognition at home and abroad. The University of Chicago is just not a catchy and memorable name. That is why they are increasingly using the moniker UChicago. Subtle but significant.
“Surprisingly, this is also among classmates and their parents at her private school, who just completed the college process, too.”
I have thought the current high school students and their parents should know UChicago’s brand now even to a lesser extent. It has been 10 years since UChicago started branding its name extensively. Many admission cycles have passed and many USNEWS rankings have published.
I am just curious. What reactions have your D and you got? They did not know UChicago at all? They did not think it was a good school? They did not think it was on the same level as HYP (or other Ivies)? Or they thought it was a good school academically but sucked socially?
The general public – John and Jane Doe – in the US has heard of Harvard and Yale, maaaaybe Princeton, maaaaaaybe MIT; their state/area and local school(s); and schools with big-time D1 football and basketball. (Stanford, Duke, Michigan, Florida, Alabama, Wisconsin, Ohio State, USC, Texas, etc.)
My D’s high school school is not super competitive nor prestige oriented. So most kids do not know how highly ranked or selective UChicago is. No one was particularly impressed amongst her cohort. At my son’s former high school, UChicago is well known with both the parents and the kids and a lot of kids apply. My D is starting to get a little peeved about it because those students going to less selective schools get the Congrats but she doesn’t. It really doesn’t matter as those who will be hiring or reviewing grad applications are in the know.
One of my colleagues thought UChicago was a state public school but “a good one”. I informed her it was actually a private school but said nothing about the high rankings or selectivity.
It’s all good. I kind of like that UChicago isn’t as prestige oriented as others. It’s still a little under the radar. And it worked to my D’s advantage in being able to apply EA and in that they are one of the very few highly selective schools that still offer merit. My D was not particularly interested in applying to Ivies but was considering one if UChicago did not work out EA. Interestingly, one of her friends who is very high stats was offered great merit but went to an Ivy over UChicago. She was very brand conscious. So I’m hoping that the kid who chooses UChicago is not brand conscious but more self aware of what they want and need from their educational experiences.
Does it really matter that the average person on the street doesn’t know UChicago, or Williams, Amherst, WashU, Rice, etc? Where it matters, such as grad school or employment, they are very well known.
Our experience has been the same. Our son was admitted to multiple Ivy Leagues, Rice, Pomona, etc., but decided to go to UChi. When our friends/family ask us about where he is going, an answer of UChi elicits the following reaction:
Which one in Chicago?
You mean Loyola?
Urbana Champaign?
Northwestern?
Univ of Illinois in Chicago?
Why is he going to a state school there?
I thought he was really smart, didn’t get into Ivies or MIT or Urbana?
This riddle applies to ALL products (e.g. handbags, wristwatches, golf shirts), not just higher education. If you have the magic answer to this, then you will gave a killer career on “Madison Avenue”.
@JHS you’ve got me curious now … can you tell me more about the unique path that the school followed in the 40s/50s? I’d imagine other elite universities had similar urban neighborhood problems in the 60-70s. I bet there’s a good article or paper on this topic somewhere …
@eddi137 - I’m referring to the tone of the reactions, not specific comments - after all, it would be impolite to respond along the lines of your questions!
I’m curious - when people said their children also applied to “an ivy,” what school are they referring to here? All the schools in the ivy league are certainly not equal. There is a difference between Harvard and Penn or Yale and Cornell. Chicago competes perfectly well with some, and not so well against others.
Were people in your communities decrying your kids for not choosing, say, Penn instead of Chicago? I suspect that’s not the case but I’m curious to hear thoughts.
Put another way, the ivy league is certainly not a monolith! Some specification would be helpful.
Also, some here are noting that john doe may not know Chicago, but employers certainly do. That’s true - and this is also true for a bunch of other schools (Pomona, Wash U, Bowdoin, etc readily come to mind). The beauty about Harvard’s brand, though, is that everyone covets it - from john and Jane doe to the whitest of white shoe firms. That’s ultimately what schools and students want (most, anyway).
That, ultimately, is what Chicago aspires to, and it’s the reason it’s admissions office has become not just a selection committee, but a big marketing wing as well. It’s why their communications office has expanded so much, and why they university is suddenly open to all these ideas it spurned as too practical/unacademic in the past (institute on politics, Paulson institute, etc.). I have my own thoughts on Chicago’s softer brand, and I’ll post those later.
@TheReds I can relate to your experience! I have a good friend who lives outside of Chicago and we often visit with her when in the area. Although she knows where GS Son goes to school, she often slips up when introducing me to someone and says, “This is GraniteStateMom. She’s in town visiting her son who goes to UIC (University of Illinois at Chicago)” from which I get an enthusiastic response. If I correct her and explain that he goes to UChi the response is frequently somethings along the lines of, “Oh…well… that’s a good school too. I’m sure he’ll do just fine.” I don’t even bother correcting her anymore!
The two things I take away from this are: 1) As is often discussed on CC, prestige / ivy obsession is rather geographical with the Midwest being far lower on the obsession scale than the Northeast. 2) As @hebegebe pointed out, does it really matter what the average person thinks? The above response is what I get from her neighbors or local acquaintances. People who recruit, like the partners in her firm or those who work in higher education, know the school well.
Edited to add:
As far as brand recognition, I wonder if geography plays a role. Outside of the big sports schools, the schools that “everyone” knows are pretty much all on the coasts where people are more prestige conscious. Schools that come to mind are H, Y, P, Stanford, MIT…maybe Cal Tech and Duke ( but I think Duke is better known by the general public for athletics as opposed to academics). I wonder how many alums, current students, and parents would be happy if UChi decided to try to improve its brand by recruiting more top athletes in the hopes of becoming a powerhouse in a particular sport.
We are from the mid-South. I recently told a friend (a podiatrist) that my son was going to UChicago. This person’s response was, “Oh! He’s going to music school!”
My son’s view of this is interesting to me and just one of the reasons I admire him. He said he likes that not everyone knows how good UChicago is. People from Yale or Harvard almost have to hide the fact since people pre-judge you when you tell them you go there. In his mind, he has all the advantages of Yale, Harvard, and others but none of the drawbacks of being pigeonholed by people’s pre-conceived notions about these places and about the people who go there.