A Couple Questions about U of C

JHS
Tue, 03 Mar 2009 09:13:35 +0000

There’s two reasons why Chicago’s admission rate is higher than its peers’. One is what rockerguy told you – fewer people apply per slot available than at many other colleges. That lowers the denominator on the admission rate calculation, which of course increases the admission rate.

How does Chicago accomplish that? By having a PITA application, by having a reputation for wonkiness, by not having a world-famous party scene or world-famous sports teams, and by being located in a cold, Midwestern, urban place that turns off some potential students and seems far away to others. (Chicago and Northwestern, with a better party scene, Big 10 athletics, and “nicer” neighborhood, get about the same number of applications per slot, which suggests that geography is pretty important.)

The second thing Chicago does to raise its admission rate is not to have Early Decision. Most of its competitors other than HYPSM fill 25-50% of their classes with Early Decision admittees. Since ED admitees are bound to enroll, the ratio of admittees to enrollees at ED colleges is just about 1:1. Chicago has Early Action, which is not mandatory, so it has to admit at least twice as many applicants early to fill the same number of slots. At the RD stage, except for HYPSM and one or two others, most elite colleges admit at a rate of 5:2 - 3:1, which is true at Chicago, too. The bottom line is that, compared to a college that admits half of its class ED, but is otherwise comparable to Chicago, Chicago will have to admit 2.5 people per slot, and College X will admit 2 people per slot. This raises the numerator of the admission rate formula.

So . . . when you lower the denominator, and raise the numerator, you get a bigger number.

Does it mean that you have a better chance of admission? I think it has to, certainly compared to colleges that have single-digit admission rates. The Chicago applicant pool is certainly self-selective, and may be stronger on average than the applicant pools of other colleges. At the end of the day, however, Chicago sends acceptance letters to almost twice the number of people that Yale does to fill the same size class, and it gets fewer than half as many applications. Admissions at Yale means paring the pool down to a group with mind-boggling applications, and then rejecting over half of those. Chicago can still probably accept everyone it considers mind-boggling, and still take some chances on people who seem merely really interesting.