<p>The way I see it, UChicago had to start the marketing campaign to level the playing field.</p>
<p>Ivy league schools will always carry this “top college” status with them, and any enterprising student could go and find a list of the ivy league schools and selectively add a few to their application list. Even on CC, there are articles about “how to get into an Ivy League school”. It’s seen as the gold standard, in a way. It’s a group of highly selective and prestigious schools, and it’s extremely convenient to associate that “league status” with the status of truly being the best.</p>
<p>When it comes to the numbers game, there’s no doubt that all of these colleges benefit by their association to the ivy league. Though this is just an anecdote, I’ve known many people (not really fit for top-tier schools) who’ve decided to apply to an ivy league school “just because.” The ivy league will harbors that one “reach school” that students think they should apply to, regardless of their true chances of getting in.</p>
<p>Even those schools without the ivy-league stamp have something very distinctive to fall back on. Stanford is the best school in the west. MIT is the best math/science school, hands down. Duke has some amazing basketball.</p>
<p>Outside of the “life of the mind,” there’s really nothing that UChicago really does best. There’s nothing that it has that its peer schools won’t have. Yes, its Econ program may be considered one of the best, and its Math & Physics departments might be recognized as top 5. That doesn’t mean it’s going to steal cross-admits from the likes of Harvard, Princeton, or MIT. And to add to that, honestly as an applicant last year, I had no clue what the ‘life of the mind’ even was. Point is, there’s really nothing that UChicago can do to set itself apart from its peers in the same sense that its other non-ivy peers can. </p>
<p>To combat the inequality, it’s forced to engage in this mass advertising campaign, and, in terms of acceptance rate, it may even overshoot its true place in the pecking order of academic powerhouses, at least as far as acceptance rates go in figuring out how great a school is academically. </p>
<p>All said and done, acceptance rates are a terrible way to figure out a school’s quality of academics. Though it does include the ‘prestige’ factor, which may be influenced by academic quality, it could instead reflect the popularity that the school has gained amongst the eyes of applicants for reasons other than the quality of education it offers.</p>
<p>Sorry for the rant.</p>