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I disagree. USC received over 37,000 applications last year and wasn’t even a member of the Common App. NYU received over 42,000 applications. Both of them are quite large for private universities, true, but they are extremely popular by any measure. As perhaps a better example, compare Syracuse and Boston U, which are comparable in rankings and size – yet Boston receives 150% (10,000) more applications than Syracuse. I don’t think it’s glossy brochures getting people to apply to BU instead of Syracuse!</p>
<p>Yes, aggressive marketing increases applications; no university knows that better than Chicago. Still, attractive elements play a role in drawing applicants. Take the phrases “open curriculum” from Brown, “life of the mind” from Chicago, and “Ivy League” and “first university” from Penn, and their viewbooks would lose three or four pages. </p>
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It is this mode of thinking that I find mildly surprising in Chicago admissions. Chicago is an excellent university that has always attracted strong students. Comparing itself to Brown or Duke or feeling that it has to “catch up” somewhat strikes me as extremely strange and out of character. Where is the university I applied to that refused to join the Common App and took sadistic glee in refusing to release decisions by any method other than snail mail?</p>
<p>I think the only people who take pleasure in increasingly low admit rates are students or alums worried about the prestige of their alma maters. Once a college dips below a certain percentage - 15% seems to be the magic number - things begin to become a bit random, and it is quite possible to be admitted at Harvard but not Cornell or Stanford but not Chicago (I’ve seen both of these cases on CC). When a college truthfully says it could fill its class two or three times over with equally qualified applicants they rejected, the only point to attracting still more applications is for bragging rights and name recognition. I may be bitter because only 2 of my 17 ED interviewees for Duke have been admitted over the past two years; most of them were bright, well-adjusted people who would’ve done well there. I would not be unhappy if the admit rate at Duke held steady or increased a bit. </p>
<p>To respond to your statement, Chicago has at least one major handicap: a lack of an engineering school. As long as Chicago lacks an engineering school, it will be overlooked by top high school students interested in engineering. The only other top 25 universities that lack engineering are Emory and Georgetown; each of them has other schools to attract students, including Oxford and business at Emory and business, SFS, and nursing at Georgetown.</p>
<p>At Duke, Pratt accounts for more than 5000 applications each year. Cornell received 6600 engineering applications last year. Columbia Fu received 5700 applications last year. Other top privates likely have comparable numbers.</p>