| In the past, Chicago has not, and I hope that they don't start the practice. Likely letters "assure" a group of extremely highly qualified applicants and make the rest of the applicant pool go nuts.
For example, I had 6 or so friends who all applied to the same school. The school sent 3 of the 6 friends likely letters; the rest got bupkus. All of my 6 friends ended up getting in, and only one (one who got the likely letter) ended up choosing the school. My thinking is that the students who did get likely letters were not especially favored (all of my 6 friends were comparable to each other in the eyes of an admissions officer), but they got likely letters because a) the admissions committee had read their file and had issued a final decision, b) they were strong for the applicant pool and competitive for other colleges as well, and c) they had extremely high test scores and stood out as a good "snag." | 
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