A Real, Live Admissions Counselor

Colleges & Universities University of Chicago
1

<p>Hello!</p>

<p>Yes, I am an admissions counselor. Yes, I work at the University of Chicago. Yes, I am here to answer your questions.</p>

<p>HOWEVER, I hate to be harsh, but any “chancing” posts will be deleted. I can’t tell you whether your GPA or SAT scores guarantee you a spot in the next class. Quite frankly, that’s just not how we make decisions. Everything is evaluated in a holistic process - why do you think we ask for so much information? It’s not because we want to torture you; it’s because we want to get to know who you are and make an informed decision. If we just did things based on GPA and scores, there’d be no reason to continue our [essay prompts](<a href=“https://collegeadmissions.uchicago.edu/admissions/essays.shtml”>https://collegeadmissions.uchicago.edu/admissions/essays.shtml&lt;/a&gt;).</p>

<p>I am here to answer any other questions you might have about the admissions process, financial aid, etc. - i.e. the “boring” stuff. If you have questions about what it’s like to be a student at UChicago, please direct them to [PSAC[/url</a>] (the Prospective Students Advisory Committee) who also has a presence on College Confidential. Curious as to the kinds of questions asked of PSAC? Why not [url=<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/university-chicago/791167-ask-away-its-uchicago-prospective-students-advisory-committee.html]take”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/university-chicago/791167-ask-away-its-uchicago-prospective-students-advisory-committee.html]take</a> a gander](<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/members/uchicagopsac-248091.html]PSAC[/url”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/members/uchicagopsac-248091.html)?</p>

<p>If the info on CC isn’t enough for you (and it shouldn’t be), feel free to browse around our various websites to find out more about UChicago:
[The</a> University of Chicago](<a href=“http://uchicago.edu%5DThe”>http://uchicago.edu)
[The</a> College | The University of Chicago](<a href=“http://college.uchicago.edu%5DThe”>http://college.uchicago.edu)
<a href=“http://collegeadmissions.uchicago.edu%5B/url%5D”>http://collegeadmissions.uchicago.edu</a></p>

<p>If you don’t feel comfortable posting questions on the CC forum and you don’t know where to go, check out <a href=“https://collegeadmissions.uchicago.edu/php/contact/[/url]”>https://collegeadmissions.uchicago.edu/php/contact/&lt;/a&gt;. There, you will find a list of regional counselors and basic contact info for the Office of College Admissions.</p>

<p>So ask away! Don’t be shy! We’re here to help you through the process.</p>

<p>Best,
The Office of College Admissions</p>

2

<p>Is there any way to check financial aid status online for U of Chicago?</p>

3

<p>Thanks for doing this! And welcome =)
I’m wondering about the likely letters–I think they’re new this year. How many does the office send out?</p>

4

<p>Disclaimer: I am not trying to offend anyone with the following post.</p>

<p>I noticed this year that UChicago sent out a ton of recruiting emails/letters encouraging high schoolers to apply. I also know that UChicago switched to the common app recently. UChicago has been known for years as an excellent academic institution with a puzzlingly high acceptance rate. Is the university trying to lower it’s acceptance rates to Ivy levels by making it easier to apply?</p>

5

<p>Given the surge in EA and RD applicants, I am wondering if the school is considering a change to SCEA or ED.</p>

6

<p>Feel free to ask me to refine my question as it is VERY general, but what exactly IS the admissions process on your end? Many send their apps into the abyss the is the admissions office (although in my imagination the adcoms clad in maroon robes meet in smokey catacombs underneath Rockefeller Memorial Church) and four months later a letter whether it be fat or thin arrives in the mail. What actually goes on in the room?</p>

7

<p>Hi! U Chic is one of my top choices. I can’t believe how I managed to make a pretty big typo. Do those usually hurt much(assuming its non-critical)?
How many international undergrads does U Chic take on fin. aid every year? Does the admission committee only look at need/doesn’t need, or also the exact family income? Also, how much aid can someone with 20-25K parental income expect as the worst case scenario for aid? Finally, how many Indians are accepted usually(if you have an idea)?
OK, too many questions :smiley: Thanks in advance!</p>

8

<p>Do you compare students from the same school? Or are they all judged independently of each other?</p>

9

<p>friend forgot to fill out fafsa . is he doomed?</p>

10

<p>I have a question about your early action program-from UChicago’s website, I assume that applicants are allowed to apply to Chicago EA and a binding ED school, but I’d like to make sure that this is the case.</p>

11

<p>I apologize for the length of the post, but it’s at times easier to answer many questions in one go.</p>

<p>

If you are wondering if your documents have been received by the [Office</a> of College Aid](<a href=“http://collegeaid.uchicago.edu/]Office”>http://collegeaid.uchicago.edu/), please contact them directly. </p>

<p>

Can’t give you any exact numbers, as it will probably shift from year to year. It’s a very small number.</p>

<p>

No offense taken. This is a valid question! Here’s the answer:</p>

<p>Honestly, no. I think most students wouldn’t consider writing two long essays instead of one to be an “easier” application. We still require an essay in response to one of our (in)famous essay prompts in addition to the Common Application essay. </p>

<p>It’s true, we have sent more information to prospective students this year, but it’s not simply to lower our acceptance rates. At all. We are trying to reach out to students who might not have heard of the University of Chicago, or who might have heard of us but are not seriously considering us. As you noted, UChicago is an excellent institution, and we want to make sure that any student who seeks a top-notch education is aware of all that we offer. </p>

<p>

We are not currently considering a change to SCEA or ED. </p>

<p>

Oh, if only the administration would provide us with stately maroon robes… Also, it would be pretty darn cool to explore the catacombs under Rockefeller (if there are any). Alas, that is not what happens. </p>

<p>UChicago one of those schools that evaluates applications holistically, so we take all parts of the application into consideration. In terms of actual process: applications come in, generally in a piecemeal fashion. We assemble the parts, and read those applications that are complete. If applications are incomplete, we let students know what is needed to complete them. Sometimes we read in the office; sometimes we read from the comfort of our respective couches. But from the months of November - April, admissions officers everywhere pretty much have no social lives. We at UChicago are busy reading every single word our applicants (and their recommenders) send us. Applications go through multiple reads and evaluations. There are no numerical cutoffs (e.g. SAT, GPA, etc.), so we don’t look at your GPA and scores to instantly make an admit or deny decision. </p>

<p>In the next couple of weeks, some of our admissions officers will write posts on the [Uncommon</a> Blog](<a href=“https://blogs.uchicago.edu/collegeadmissions/]Uncommon”>Page Redirection) describing a typical day in these wintry months.</p>

<p>

These questions are tough to answer definitively. Do typos hurt an application? Maybe, maybe not. How many international students requesting financial aid do we take a year? It depends on the year and the strength of the applicants. How much aid will you get? It’s evaluated on a case-by-case basis. How many Indians do we accept? Depends on the strength of the applicants. So, sorry I can’t give you any definitive answers!</p>

<p>

We don’t necessarily “compare” students from one school against one another, but we may take into consideration different courses of study, etc. There’s no hard-and-fast rule regarding school groups. It’s not necessarily going to be “better” for you if no one else from your school applies.</p>

<p>

No. Keep in mind we have a need-blind admissions process for domestic students, so no one is “doomed” (in terms of admissions) if s/he did not fill out the FAFSA. However, if your friend plans to apply for financial aid, he needs to submit the FAFSA ASAP (So many acronyms!) to the Office of College Aid. </p>

<p>

… Well, yes. It’s “allowed,” but you should seriously evaluate why you are applying to an EA school in addition to an ED school. If you’re admitted to your ED institution, we ask that you kindly withdraw your application immediately.</p>

12

<p>Have any students who were deferred EA received likely letters? It seems contradictory, but you never know. Have all of the likely letters gone out, or are they going in waves? I’d like to stop stalking the mailman… ;)</p>

13

<p>thank you U of C rep. : )
some more questions:</p>

<p>chicago states that they do not consider the writing portion of the sat, however, I (among others) have noticed that you now include the writing ranges in your school profile. does your writing score play some sort of factor? will the adcoms notice if you , say, got an 800 in writing? </p>

<p>also, chicago says they superscore. a friend of mine sent in her january scores , assuming, he would do far better, but he ended up doing worse. will chicago adcoms evaluate all sat scores taken even though they say they superscore? or are the highest scores already selected by the computer, and only those are seen by the adcoms?</p>

14

<ol>
<li><p>Many schools have mandatory essay prompts, the fact that Chicago offers an option prompt(#5) seems make the app more flexible. Because I’m naive, I always think that the Extended carries more weight and that answering prompt#1-4 would show more sincerity towards the Chicago Challenge because it’s college-specific and cannot be used elsewhere. However, 3 of my friends who got in EA this yr with prompt 5 make me wonder whether the infamous prompts are as important as perceived. (note: this is not to suggest that their essays are not outstanding ones).</p></li>
<li><p>How big is women’s fencing at Uchicago? I googled and searched the school’s website and did not find out much.</p></li>
</ol>

15

<p>jh2510-- Your second point seems to be directed more to a current student than an admissions counselor, so I’m going to try to answer it to the best of my ability. I know two girls on the fencing team and they love it. They even brought their gear to Italy with them when they studied abroad, that’s how serious they are about their sport. The website for the club team is [UChicago</a> Fencing](<a href=“http://fencing-club.uchicago.edu/]UChicago”>http://fencing-club.uchicago.edu/). On the website is information about contacting a member of the team. I encourage you to do so! </p>

<p>And although I’m not an admissions counselor, I think I can give some insight and hopefully address the question that was implicit in your first statement. I applied using #5 and got in as well. I think the University of Chicago admissions counselors want to see you think creatively and express those thoughts clearly on paper. They’re hoping you love their essay prompts (in fact, the entire school is encouraged to send in prompts for future students and there is a lot of enthusiasm involved in creating them) because that is one indication that you’ll enjoy the atmosphere here. But that’s not to say you’re not free to come up with your own, and that your prompt might not be fantastic. In fact, U of C has actually used applicants’ prompts in subsequent years. I think the majority of applicants who choose number 5 don’t recycle essays they’ve used to apply for other colleges. I think the counselors can generally tell if a person has recycled an essay from somewhere else to save time in their application. I definitely didn’t. I just came up with a prompt that I was really excited about and wrote an essay that showcased a side of me not already represented in my application.</p>

16

<p>marcellad. I did look at that site and was just wondering how big this sport in chicago when compared to say Notre Dame or Penn State. Most players live with their gear. I’ll definitely get in touch with a team member or coach if I get admitted!</p>

<p>Without a doubt of the superb creativity and quality of any admitted prompt 5 essays, and the belief that most applicants are college-specific in essays, the probablity of recycling a free topic one would seem higher than prompts 1 to 4. I also believe that the optional prompt does not play as large a role as the specific prompts in making chicago essays infamous.</p>

17

<p>Hello.</p>

<p>I have 3 questions today:</p>

<ol>
<li><p>I’m aware that your website’s Chicago account for applicants has a mechanism for applicants to make changes(or updates) to their applications, most prominently the feature that allows us to fix our essays “in case we left out an entire paragraph” (chuckles). While my essays’ gaffes weren’t as glaring as that, I would like to know if the admissions office takes the updates we submit to our Chicago account and actually corrects them. For example, I accidentally capitalized a word that was not meant to be capitalized; in the update, I just wrote that in my Chicago supplement, extended essay, paragraph 4 starting with “In…”, the word “However…” should be changed into its lower case form. Is that an acceptable format for a change?</p></li>
<li><p>I submitted both my custodial and noncustodial CSS forms to Chicago way back in late January. However, I have since updated the FAFSA to follow its guidelines governing who is who, and now my mother is regarded as my custodial parent. However, she filled out the noncustodial profile, as I left my parents to discuss between themselves who shall serve as the custodial parent. I wonder if I would need to somehow switch the profiles, as the two profiles were extremely similar if not in fact identical.</p></li>
<li><p>This is of lesser concern(at least when it is considered in the immediate timeframe): in the event that I am not accepted as a freshman for the Fall 2010 term(really hope this doesn’t happen!), I would like to transfer–preferably as a freshman in my spring term(applying for Fall 2011 entrance as a sophomore). My question is twofold:</p></li>
</ol>

<p>A.) Is the number of seats open for transfers directly related to the number of students who either transfer out themselves or leave?</p>

<p>B.) I know some schools do not accept SATs and/or ACTs taken while the taker was out of high school(in both directions)–is Chicago one of them?</p>

<p>Sorry for the lengthy inquiries, and thanks in advance.</p>

18

<p>jh2510:</p>

<p>I’ll address your fencing question since I know something about it. </p>

<p>Notre Dame and Penn State both have NCAA Division I fencing programs – in fact, I think they are ranked 1-2 in the country right now. They award athletic scholarships for fencing. A woman from Notre Dame won a gold medal in (I think) sabre in the last Olympics. That’s not the University of Chicago. The Chicago fencing team is a club team, which means that it’s not an official varsity sport and does not receive a ton of economic support from the University. There are no athletic scholarships (actually, Chicago is a D-III school, so it doesn’t award athletic scholarships even for its varsity teams). The kids pay their coach themselves, and have to raise money themselves for equipment, attending tournaments, etc. Transportation is whoever they can get to drive.</p>

<p>That said, there are a lot more club fencing teams in the US than there are varsity teams, and the Chicago team has an active tournament schedule, especially in the winter. They even fence against some D-I teams, including Notre Dame (which kicked their butts a few weeks ago, although Chicago won the isolated bout). As club teams go, they are pretty serious, practicing for several hours every weekday, and supporting each other in physical conditioning. Their coach is an erstwhile Russian Olympic medalist in foil. The team is popular and friendly, so it has a whole bunch of men and women in every category. There are probably 30+ core members at any time, with some other people who show up less regularly. Skill levels range from people who are or have been nationally ranked in their age groups to people who never touched a foil until college.</p>

19

<p>Marcellad and JHS: Appreciate yr great info on fencing.</p>

20

<p>So sorry if this was already answered, but when does Chicago inform students of acceptance? It seems the real answer is sometimes different from what is on the admissions page.</p>