<p>University of Chicago’s marketing to top high school students is both relentless and clever. It has helped to increase the number of quality applicants and ultimately in drawing top students away from its existing peer institutions. However, it hasn’t made Chicago a true peer with the HYPSM institutions yet. The more telling figure in this respect is not the admission rate, but rather the cross-admit data. See, for example, pp. 20-21 of this Stanford report from 2010: <a href=“http://facultysenate.stanford.edu/2010_2011/minutes/10_07_10_SenD6388.pdf[/url]”>http://facultysenate.stanford.edu/2010_2011/minutes/10_07_10_SenD6388.pdf</a> It shows that Harvard, Yale, Princeton and MIT each draws a material amount of cross-admits from Stanford, but no other college draws more than 2% of the cross-admits. Once Chicago actually shows up on charts like this then we can talk about Chicago having gained ground on the HYPSM peer group.</p>
<p>All that said, if any of my children told me they wanted to go to Chicago, I would be delighted to have them attend no matter where else they had been admitted. University of Chicago is one of our nation’s great universities and has been for a long time.</p>