tomslawsky

Newsweek.com: Society: Inside The Admissions Game

"Last Friday—three days behind schedule—all the big and small envelopes go into the mail. For the first time, Bischoff runs the whole class through a computer program. Only then does Chicago learn that it has accepted 1,529 men and 1,631 women. Their average SAT score is about 1420. Their ethnicity, something that many applicants don't divulge, still isn't known in the aggregate. Chicago prides itself on using no gender, racial, geographic or other quotas in deciding whom to accept. "We're not 'building a class,' creating this ideal little world with so many of these and so many of those," O'Neill says. "We accept the best, and hope to get as many as we can."

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tomslawsky

Based on this, I feel Chicago is underrated as a role model university.

RamocitoMorales

Chicago isn't flooded with Asian students though.

schrizto

^ I'd say Chicago has about as many Asian students as most Ivy League universities.

I am doubtful that ethnicity wasn't considered at all in Chicago admissions.

RamocitoMorales

You're right in saying that the Ivy universities don't have THAT many Asians, but the California universities are simply overcrowded with them.

tk21769

Interesting article, though it's more than 10 years old. Ted O'Neill is not the admissions director anymore.

>> I am doubtful that ethnicity wasn't considered at all in Chicago admissions.

I dunno. If the issue enters significantly into a student's essay, maybe it becomes important. Who's to say that individual admissions committee members don't weigh and consider who might have been influenced by what life-shaping factors. However, if an admissions director says they use no gender, racial, geographic or other quotas in deciding whom to accept, I'd take him at his word.

I suspect there is also relatively little leeway at Chicago for athletes, movie stars, or "development" admits. Not that very many of them even apply to the University of Chicago, and not that they aren't sometimes very well qualified for wherever they wind up.