Ah, Cue, you’re a hopeless case. Give you an inch and you take a mile. “Counting more than ever before” doesn’t mean “counting the way Harvard counts”. Don’t forget your Thucydides. Pericles told the Athenians that their life of discourse and cultivation of the arts made them different from the Spartans, whose single-minded focus was on military training. But he also told them they could learn a few things from the Spartans without thereby becoming Spartans. He was not alone: many Athenians admired this or that thing about Sparta. The capacity to admire was one of the strengths of the Athenians that made them in fact different from the Spartans. Thus Chicago can take a few things from Harvard and even admire a few things without thereby coming Harvard. And certainly not justifying your sweeping conclusion that “only the ivy model works”.
Sorry, not sure why you keep bringing up sports, bcos that is the weakest part of your argument. I don’t know anyone who considers D3 to be in the class of competitive sports. Sure, it allows a good athlete from HS to keep participating and competing in something he/she loves, but d3 being ‘great sports’? Hardly.
Even today, Chicago’s basic sciences are not on a par with some of its other top 10-ranked programs. So future scholar in Hume or Soc or Econ, sure, but Bio? Not so much.
The Uncommon App back then was a plus and a minus. Sure, by submitting the Uncommon App, a student was signifying great interest in UoC. But, the different (and quirky?) essay was a huge hindrance to many (top?) students and kept them from applying. More importantly, it also limited the diversity of the apps, both economically and for persons of color.
Eliminating Uncommon App and join the Common App and voila, applications will skyrocket by doing nothing else.
Taken on its face, (and perhaps out of context?), Dean Boyer’s comment is naive. Even if the high school world believes that Chicago is better than Columbia, there is no reason to assume it should receive more apps that Columbia. In the first place, Columbia is larger. Columbia also has an Engineering schools, to it will attract STEM geeks that Chicago does not, and thirdly, Columbia sits in a more attractive city (to 18-year-olds) and is closer to more populations centers – most students prefer to attend school within a days’ drive from home. (NYU also receives a gazillion apps for those that are attracted to the Big City Lights.) A top private midwestern school will lose to a top private Northeastern school every time; there are just more folks in the NE and their public schools are low ranked so the demand for a private education is just higher. (Move WashU to the burbs of Philly and its apps would practically double, IMO.)
My point is that while Chicago wanted more apps last decade to achieve a more diverse class, it may be approaching target; and with ED, apps will likely slow. (EA at UoC was a great backup to those applying ED somewhere else.)
And yeah, Chicago needs to upgrade its student housing stock which have been extremely poor for generations. By benchmarking to its peer group, its an easier sell to fundraisers and faculty. (UofC faculty have long preferred money spent to develop scholars on them as opposed to housing where those scholars might live.) And yes, bcos Chicago hires faculty from the same pool as its peers, its needs to benchmark against the Joneses. But then so does Berkeley and U-Michigan, but neither of them claim to be ‘Public-Ivy’; Stanford also competes in that hiring pool and they embrace The Farm, not some Ivy-wannabe. (Speaking of sports, D1 = ‘great sports’; some high schools have better sports than d3.)
@marlowe1 and @bluebayou - you may be taking what I’m saying too literally. I don’t at all mean to say that Chicago has rigidly adopted the ivy model of admissions and class structure (meaning, a large percentage of the class are athletes, often in esoteric sports like crew and squash).
Rather, I’m saying Chicago is more “ivy-like” than ever before. Whereas before, it truly was an “anti-ivy” (in its goals, in its structure, and in its focus), now it’s more like a flavor of ivy (the “Academic Ivy!”).
This is akin to how the little ivies (Williams, Amherst, etc.) don’t have the exact ivy model (indeed, they are D3 sports programs), but are still readily referred to as little ivies.
Chicago has very much gone in that direction, and its incoming classes bear a striking resemblance to its east coast peers, both at entry, and upon exit.
So, I don’t see Chicago adopting D1 sports programs and creating squash teams and crew teams. But, I don’t think it’s the level or types of sports that give ivies their most striking characteristics - characteristics that Chicago now shares.
There are far worse fates for a university than “becoming Harvard.” Harvard is probably the most successful non-governmental, secular nonprofit organization of any type in the history of the world. On that ground, I have to agree with Cue7. Chicago and HYP ran a kind of interesting natural experiment as to which model of undergraduate education and university structure was most sustainable and – guess what? – Chicago’s model, admirable as it may have been, was not the winner. Chicago has spent the past 30 years, really, trying to revert to the mean of elite universities, because it was definitely on the wrong side of that mean.
That said, I certainly hope no one at Chicago is trying to remake it into what marlowe1 called “a sort of second-rate ivy.” It should be first-rate or nothing!
"What all these schools share in common, however, is a general belief in utilizing the education to prepare leaders (across all fields - academia, business, medicine, etc.). Until recently, Chicago’s goal was always very different - it was to prepare scholars (to be a place that taught the “teachers of teachers”).
Um, most Chicago undergrads didn’t go on and get PhD’s even back in the day. UChicago surely has a legacy as an education “leader,” but keep in mind that the university kind of sprung up all at once (grad and undergrad). Even before the latter became neglected, UChicago always had a relatively strong focus on the graduate programs when compared other top schools including several of the ivies. And I was always under the impression that UChicago wanted to prepare leaders for business and medicine (and law) 
Furthermore, I’ve seen no evidence that current administrators are downplaying the original mission of the school, which was to provide a top notch education (undergrad or graduate) to everyone who was qualified. At one point, that was rather ‘anti-ivy;’ in fact, it was the ivies who eventually switched over to Chicago’s model by allowing in women, URM’s, more Jews, etc.
“Now, I think Chicago has embraced that “AND” model - to offer a great education AND access to excellent exit outcomes, or the ability to lead across fields, etc.” . . . "I remember meetings with admins when I was at Chicago, and the sentiment then was clearly: “frankly, we don’t care what these other schools do. If you want those services or experiences, you should’ve gone elsewhere.”
- Wait a minute: haven't the rankings in many specialty fields actually SLIPPED, according to your previous posts over the last couple of years? And others just on the brink of disaster? Now all is well again? What happened?
IMO, Most of the college’s long-standing image problems were retired along with Ted O’Neil and his “we are too special to be well known” mindset. Seems that he was 20 years of Lazy. So if getting your admissions office to work harder to attract top students is implementing an ‘ivy-model’ - then Cue, I guess I agree with you! 
When an institution brings in more and better students, it’s amazing what happens when they graduate. Do keep in mind the order here: career advancement is significantly improved now, but that’s a more recent development than the increased numbers of higher quality students who started pouring in once they learned about the College.
“Again, I think this comes back to the bottom line. Chicago has adopted the ivy model because, again, it’s wildly successful and good for the bottom line. So, nowadays, we have great academics AND competitive sports, great academics AND a pipeline to Goldman, great academics AND a Latin Honors system like all our peers, etc.”
- Cue, you do realize that one of the first things Nondorf did when he took over admissions was advertise the heck out of the place, right? Does that seem "ivy-model" to you? That 'pipeline to Goldman' was there when I attended Booth so not sure exactly what you mean. The College specifically didn't graduate enough high quality students back in the day to make a dent on Wall St. Now they do. That tends to open many pipelines. You don't need to embrace an 'ivy-model' to make that happen. All you need are smart graduates.
@JBStillFlying - I am puzzled. Do you really think Chicago (undergrad) didn’t have a pipeline to Goldman because it didn’t have enough “high quality” graduates, or that all you need are “smart” graduates?
Trust me, Chicago has never lacked for smart, inquisitive students. It’s never lacked “high quality” graduates.
Before providing the input that’s at the tip of my tongue, why do you think, until recently, Goldman, McKinsey, BCG, etc. didn’t recruit much at Chicago undergrad? They didn’t think there were smart undergrads at Chicago?
Also, I don’t understand why you equate Ted O’Neill (the previous admissions dean) with 20 years of “lazy.” @JHS may be able to speak to this more, as I think his kids attended Chicago during the tail end of the O’Neill years, but I’ve never heard him described as lazy. He just operated under a different admissions schema - one that Chicago chose to jettison, to match its peers.
Nondorf’s marketing, Zimmer’s stance, Boyer’s assertions - they have nothing to do with staunching “laziness” - they signify a change in model.
Relatedly, my posts re departmental attrition are quite distinct from the health of the college. A University can have a flourishing (especially monetarily) college and suffer erosion of their academic departments. The college has little to do with the state of a U’s NIH funding.
Finally, Chicago’s changing mission had little to do with the actual number of undergrads who went on to be PhDs. To the contrary, the old experience could be summarized as “Life of the Mind” FULL STOP. The College cared little - and offered few resources or auxiliary supports - no matter what you wanted to do AFTER College. The College simply didn’t concern itself, or really support, how grads used the education AFTER undergrad. The mission was to provide the most scholarly experience to undergrads, anywhere. (This resulted in it becoming a “teacher of teachers,” but that’s sort of a byproduct - not by specific design.)
And so, no, under the old regime, I don’t see a goal of the College to produce leaders in law or medicine or business. There was either barely-masked disdain, or administrative apathy regarding any of these practical pursuits. Undergrads were more or less on their own to figure out what they wanted to do after college.
Now, that’s changed, but you don’t seem to grasp the shift that’s occurred. Chicago can offer the “Life of the Mind” AND excellent exit outcomes or pathways to lucrative careers, or whatever. That’s because of the change to an ivy-like model, not because there are more “smart” graduates. There are, simply, more incoming students who fit the mold (and type) that these employers seek. Goldman, McKinsey, top law schools, top business schools, etc. want the sort of graduates the Academic Ivy produces. They didn’t want the grads of an “anti-ivy.”
“Trust me, Chicago has never lacked for smart, inquisitive students. It’s never lacked “high quality” graduates.”
- No doubt. But there is a big difference between a talented class of 700 and talented class of more than twice that (holding SAT's constant which of course simply wasn't the case). The latter has a larger footprint. Top kids will tend to gravitate to top jobs and grad schools, and that was true prior to Nondorf as well. There were just a whole lot fewer of them.
'Before providing the input that’s at the tip of my tongue, why do you think, until recently, Goldman, McKinsey, BCG, etc. didn’t recruit much at Chicago undergrad? They didn’t think there were smart undergrads at Chicago?"
- You are completely misinterpreting my post. However, while we are on the subject, I'm sure you have seen the data showing number of applications and SAT scores. UChicago went under a 50% admit rate for the first time in 1999 a couple of years after Behnke was brought in to 'help' Ted O'Neil with admissions, and steadily declined until he retired in '08. We know what happened under Nondorf. UChicago's SAT scores lagged those of peer institutions until 2009. The improvement in academic strength of the class is covered in the Boyer history book. It's quite notable. And the reason is simple: UChicago was no longer third or fourth choice but had become a first-choice destination for those admitted. That's going to impact things like career placement pretty significantly.
“Also, I don’t understand why you equate Ted O’Neill (the previous admissions dean) with 20 years of “lazy.” @JHS may be able to speak to this more, as I think his kids attended Chicago during the tail end of the O’Neill years, but I’ve never heard him described as lazy. He just operated under a different admissions schema - one that Chicago chose to jettison, to match its peers. . . . Nondorf’s marketing, Zimmer’s stance, Boyer’s assertions - they have nothing to do with staunching “laziness” - they signify a change in model.”
- A change in model that basically goes from NOT recruiting at New Trier up the street to deciding to do so? LOL.
Don’t want to speak for JHS but I believe his kids were admitted under the more competitive admissions environment of Behnke/O’Neil.
“Relatedly, my posts re departmental attrition are quite distinct from the health of the college. A University can have a flourishing (especially monetarily) college and suffer erosion of their academic departments. The college has little to do with the state of a U’s NIH funding.”
- But you know that highly ranked academic departments are a huge draw at UChicago. As a College alum, were you trying to make another point about those posts? And you do realize that a flourishing college actually FUNDS those departments, correct? Can't use a vacuum to assess a university's degree of success.
“Finally, Chicago’s changing mission had little to do with the actual number of undergrads who went on to be PhDs. To the contrary, the old experience could be summarized as “Life of the Mind” FULL STOP. The College cared little - and offered few resources or auxiliary supports - no matter what you wanted to do AFTER College.”
- Nondorf has really improved this function to include the "AND" as you have pointed out. There is no doubt about that. But all colleges have focused like a laser beam on career placement in the last 20 years and particularly in the last 10, as families decided to opt away from the 'useless' liberal arts. The ivies had and STILL have a distinct advantage over UChicago in one area to help with career placement, and that's the involvement of the respective school's college alumnae network. The fact that UChicago was able to make these improvements w/o this assistance shows that it was 1) doable and 2) a reflection on the academic strength of the College in recent years. You can't really line up Metcalf partners if you only graduate a small group of students of very respectable but not quite stellar quality.
"The College simply didn’t concern itself, or really support, how grads used the education AFTER undergrad. The mission was to provide the most scholarly experience to undergrads, anywhere. (This resulted in it becoming a “teacher of teachers,” but that’s sort of a byproduct - not by specific design.) . . . "
- These personal experiences are no doubt valid. You were there. However, anecdotally, the students we knew did just fine in terms of grad school or jobs. I suspect it all depended on how much one enjoyed one's experience in the College. Believe it or not, there were those who did (although they worked super-de-dooper hard. And - NEWSFLASH! - that's still the case today).
'And so, no, under the old regime, I don’t see a goal of the College to produce leaders in law or medicine or business. There was either barely-masked disdain, or administrative apathy regarding any of these practical pursuits."
- This is just a dumb statement. The university had a business and med school back then. Business and Law were set up within a few years of the university's founding. Med within 25 years after the founding. We always knew kids who gravitated to the university's professional schools from the College. Not sure where this 'disdain' is coming from. Are you saying the College went rogue from the overall mission of the university?
“Undergrads were more or less on their own to figure out what they wanted to do after college.”
- I seem to remember my brother's Harvard friends having the same problem :smiley: my brother found his own job in a law office out West, and then got jobs for his buddies. Being from Harvard helped - a lot! - but that's pretty much all he had to go on.
BTW, even a couple of years ago there were still 4th years who didn’t bother to make use of Career Advancement and then seemed quite dissatisfied with lack of gainful employment upon graduation. So it’s still quite possible to graduate without career plans in place.
"There are, simply, more incoming students who fit the mold (and type) that these employers seek. Goldman, McKinsey, top law schools, top business schools, etc. want the sort of graduates the Academic Ivy produces. They didn’t want the grads of an “anti-ivy.” "
- Disagree. There are PLENTY of "anti-ivies" in my daughter's class, and there were likely PLENTY of 'pro-ivies' in the classes around your years there. But I will agree that when you bring in a stronger academic class, many of them will have stats rivaling the ivies and some (like my son) would likely be fine at an ivy.
My kids were both admitted under the O’Neill regime. I think my son was O’Neill’s second-last class, and Nondorf came in when he was a second year, although the big changes didn’t start until the year after that. The students pretty universally adored O’Neill. One of his nicknames was “the Dean of Love.” He was very articulate and passionate about the University of Chicago.
Chicago in those days was very aggressive about marketing, but its marketing was supremely quirky and intellectual. I think the basic idea was constantly to be modeling the type of discourse and intellectual inquiry that went on at Chicago, so that Chicago-type students would encounter it and feel like they had found a home.
At least that was my daughter’s experience. Chicago was always on her radar screen, because (a) her parents encouraged it, (b) she knew that if she had stayed at her private school the counselors would have encouraged her to apply there because she was a Chicago-type student, © she knew and liked some kids from her old school who were there already, and (d) she figured out fairly early that an EA admission to Chicago would be a nice safety in case Columbia didn’t take her ED. But the Chicago marketing materials, especially the interactive stuff, and the Chicago community forum on LiveJournal, really reeled her in. She went from viewing Chicago as a rational strategic safety to seeing it as the place that best matched who she was and what she was looking for.
(My son didn’t need any marketing. He fell in love with Chicago when we all took his sister there for her O-week. He was constantly being chatted up by attractive women who assumed he was an incoming student, and all of them wanted to talk about the Tintin t-shirt he was wearing. He had never met women other than his sister who knew who Tintin was. He thought Chicago was like heaven.)
In the late O’Neill years, the number of applications was already climbing, and the acceptance rate falling. In my daughter’s year, the RD acceptance rate was around 30%, and in O’Neill’s last class I think it was around 20%.
“My kids were both admitted under the O’Neill regime.”
Clarification: Behnke/O’Neil. At least according to the Boyer book.
“In the late O’Neill years, the number of applications was already climbing, and the acceptance rate falling. In my daughter’s year, the RD acceptance rate was around 30%, and in O’Neill’s last class I think it was around 20%.”
- Due to Behnke. At least according to the Boyer book.
"Many of the earlier apprehensions about a larger undergraduate population focused on the worry that the University was stuck in a scenario in which only a small number of “self-selected” students wanted to come to Chicago. This assumption was misleading, given the high attrition rates among these “self-selected” students after they arrived in Hyde Park.
To address these concerns, the College launched several interventions. First, Michael Behnke, the dean of admissions at MIT, was appointed vice president for College enrollment at Chicago in 1997. Behnke was able to break the cycle of high-acceptance and low-yield rates that had plagued the College since the 1950s and to undermine the assumption that “self-selection” necessarily translated into fatefully small, encumbered numbers of applicants. Behnke bluntly insisted that the University had become a backup school for many students: “In admitting between sixty and seventy percent of the applicants in recent years, the College has brought in a number of students for whom it was their third or fourth choice. These students are not likely to have looked as carefully at Chicago as those to whom the faculty point as ‘self-selecting’ Chicago. They, in turn, contribute to the College’s relatively high attrition rate.”69 Behnke increased applications from 5,522 to 12,397 and reduced the admissions rate from 61 percent to 28 percent. Yield rates increased from 30 percent to 38 percent. Upon Behnke’s retirement in 2009, James Nondorf of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Yale dramatically revitalized admissions by deploying a series of imaginative communications strategies, and by the fall of 2012 Chicago experienced a huge increase in interest from academically qualified students across the nation. The results were not only a stunning uptick in inquiries and applications, with more than 30,000 applications in 2013, but a pronounced increase in the yield rate for admitted students (60 percent in 2014) and a substantial increase in the academic quality of the matriculation pool as measured by SAT scores (see figs. 2 and 3)."
Boyer, John W… The University of Chicago . University of Chicago Press. Kindle Edition.
So Behnke was put in charge of improving admissions. Based on statements from other posters, O’Neil seems to have focused on giving speeches to the students. (In sharp contrast, Nondorf spends maybe 5-10 minutes in front of the students). Ted O’Neil was no doubt the “face” of admissions but the improvement in the numbers under Behnke speak for themselves.
I’ve posted this before: I can’t even find a reference to O’Neil in the Boyer’s book. Has someone else found it? If so, please post. It’s good to understand what actually went on with College Admissions (of course, admissions were pretty poor even before O’Neil. While he seems to be a continuation of the “problem,” he wasn’t the source of it).
Hard not to admit that @JHS 's contention at #103 (that HYP were winners in the contest with Chicago) is correct - if the judgment is being based on the worldly success, power and influence of their grads and the funnelling of financial support back to their alma mater. I too acknowledge the importance of this for a private institution. Chicago needed to do more on those lines. However, I don’t see the more extreme and, yes, unsustainable experiments of its past as being dead losses in the war against the ivies - they established a profile and orientation that has continued as part of Chicago’s permanent brand - a brand that puts many off but many love. It is why we see both stout and even emotional defence of Chicago on this board - and also why we see periodic eruptions of UCDS. The ivies do not need to be defended in that way.
That history of experimentation and differentiation at Chicago may simply be more appealing to today’s bright kids than it formerly was, and it is certainly better known to them. It was also very appealing in earlier days but began losing that appeal in the decades of the seventies and thereafter. Probably a certain faltering of belief in the mission occurred at that time, and perhaps youth culture turned against Chicago-style seriousness. This was fatal when you are battling the HYP juggernaut, which with the accumulated wealth, prestige and power of centuries never falters. This is acknowledgment of a reality, but it is one that plenty besides me are under no compulsion to love. We can acknowledge the many strengths of these mighty institutions and yet want Chicago to maintain an important distance from them.
I’m a hard case. I could never be brought to cheer for the Yankees or to admire the gaudy lives of the wealthy. Though it may be not the worst thing in the world to BE Harvard, it does not follow that everyone wants to be.
I want to acknowledge what a good catch that is on @JBStillFlying 's part. It cannot be an accident if Boyer doesn’t mention O’Neil and attributes the improvements in admissions over the first decade of this century to Michael Behnke, who shunned the spotlight. Boyer is always a polemicist, if often a dry and subtle one. His disregard of O’Neil speaks volumes.
(And also to acknowledge that she spelled Ted O’Neil’s name right, and I didn’t. I suspected it was wrong, and did it anyway, because I was too lazy to look it up.)
There are at least three spellings of that last name (O’Neal, O’Neil, O’Neill) and on a good day I myself will get it right. I have the same issue with Behnke (Benke/Banke/Bahnke).
Boyer’s book is rather vague on what Behnke or Nondorf did to convince more students to consider UChicago as a first choice school. It takes time and money to convert “undergraduate experience” options into real ongoing services for the student body. Behnke improved the admit rate almost immediately, and so did Nondorf. Both while admitting larger numbers of students (because that was the thing they absolutely needed to do - it’s in that fact that I 100% agree with Cue about the ‘ivy model’).
It’s interesting that it took three outsiders - Sonnenschein, Behnke and Nondorf - to turn things around 180 degrees. But are these three actually responsible for instilling an “ivy-model” upon the University of Chicago?
Perhaps it will be helpful to articulate just what we think an “ivy model” is. The components are in this thread, but can someone just summarize them in a few phrases and then provide an example or two? Because I’m confused about what is an implementation vs. an effect of the “ivy model.”
Here is a summary of changes (not necessarily in order) that I’ve observed since the retirement of Hannah Gray:
- College doubled in size (and tripled compared to earlier).
- Admit rate and yield substantially improved.
- Academic strength of student population considered higher.
- Retention and grad rates all improved.
- Core scaled down from 21 courses (1/2 of degree requirements) to 15 (approximately 1/3).
- Introduction of "trendy" and "preprofessional" majors such as LLS, ME and business economics.
- Introduction of study-abroad.
- More and better RSO's(?).
- Major investment in Career Advancement services.
- More introductory courses (example: Econ 198 - now 100 - didn't exist 30 years ago).
- Major expansion of pretty much all Core options (Hum, Sosc, Civ, 'non-major' science, math) including some "easier" options.
- Odyssey/no barriers mean better financial aid options (though sticker price has also increased by a lot so not sure of the net effect).
- Focus on more SES and ethnic diversity, especially recently and most notably with the introduction of TO.
- Changed Admission plans to include ED1 and ED2.
- Changes in GPA ('grade inflation'); Deans List tightened up.
- Implementation of Latin Honors.
- Re-introduction of a quality athletic program (although not on the level that it used to be).
- New and better residential housing that is central to campus and dining halls.
I’m sure there are more. Which ones are evidence of an “ivy model” and which ones are the consequence of it? At least some of these changes seem more like “UChicago Light” than they do “Academic Ivy.” While they’ve jettisoned some things and introduced others, I haven’t seen where they have “changed the system.”
Also, some of those things may have been changed over time regardless. After all, UChicago has been tweaking and changing its educational system since it started. And some of those changes may just be a modern way of returning to or continuing the spirit or mission of the university: for instance, ED1/ED2 will attract those who ‘self select’ into UChicago for its educational experience, or TO will enable the university to continue making higher ed accessible to those who are qualified to receive it, even if other universities have shut those doors.
Not that I don’t believe Boyer isn’t prone to want to follow HYP. IMO, his push to change to a semester system is enough evidence of that, forget all the other references he’s made to those institutions. I’d just like to understand better how others perceive this as a true ‘180’ instead of an organic evolution of a specific and distinct university.
Why do you start measuring from Gray’s retirement? If anything, I think she was the beginning of the walk back to a more common norm, especially since the job she had before she was hired to be President of the University of Chicago was Acting President and Provost at Yale. She was the first of a series of Ivy-qualified presidents that continues to this day, although (like Zimmer) she had served on the Chicago faculty for a long time before her East Coast foray.
(Disclosure: I am a big Gray fan. I served on a committee with her, and liked her a whole lot. Also, like marlowe1, but at another institution, I took a seminar class with Charles Gray, who was a real sweetie.)
During her tenure, both the undergraduate and graduate headcount increased, buildings got built (including Cerar and some undergraduate housing), Ida Noyes got renovated for student extracurricular activities, they helped found the UAA athletic conference, and there were significant fundraising campaigns. Also, at least one of your events – the establishment of Law, Letters, and Society – was a pure feature of the Gray era. It was first introduced (under another name) in 1987, and Dennis Hutchinson was teaching some version of it in the College as early as 1982 (when I heard about it from people who knew him).
^ Fair question. Big Gray fan as well, btw.
The reason I started with Sonnenschein is because that was the first administration to really focus on the college as a source of revenues. All the big changes we heard about started there. While Gray was able to increase enrollment, it wasn’t on the same scale as what came later.
Edit to add: under Gray, the grad programs substantially improved. The university was a graduate school powerhouse when I was there in the later Gray years.
Well, you’re the one with total recall on Boyer’s book, and you were in business school there during those years, so I am tempted to defer to your judgment. But I think the undergraduate enrollment increase during Gray’s tenure was “at the same scale as what came later” – a 28% increase, i.e., about the same rate of increase that the college had from then until well into the Zimmer administration.
Also, who was it who appointed John Boyer Dean of the College? Arguably, that was a pretty important step in the process!
Upthread @JBStillFlying - you summarize the changes that led to an “ivy model” quite well. I am not sure what is implementation vs. effect, but the aggregate changes have caused Chicago to converge with its east coast peers, no doubt.
As an example of an effect, I think the promotion of more pre-professional opportunities, increased investment in Career Advancement, creation of more pre-professional academic pathways (Business Econ, ME, etc.), and focus on USNWR ranking has led to more exit success in “traditional” (read: ivy-like) pathways, like banking, finance, consulting, etc.
Oh, I also think the use of ED and ED2 (a 180 from Chicago’s prior admissions policy) signifies alignment with the non-HYP ivies. ED at these other schools is vital for locking in a significant portion of the class, and this is now the case at Chicago, too.
I’m a little less concerned with what was implemented vs. what was an effect, and more interested in the aggregate change. And, from what I can see, the change to an ivy-model is noticeable.
@JHS IIRC it was Gray who appointed Boyer. She stepped down in '93 and he was appointed the year prior. Totally agree that this was a crucial step. I suspect the lack of mention of Ted O’Neill in the Official History means that there might have been some in-fighting going on. The book certainly makes note of skeptical faculty pushing back against further growth in the college and the revision of the Core.
Gray left shortly after I moved out of Hyde Park. I don’t recall hearing about ambitious plans to expand the college size until late '90’s under Sonnenschein, in large part because what he was attempting was interpreted by some as a full-on assault to the identity of the university. We really have to begin there if we are going to have a discussion of “ivyfication.”
Let’s look at the numbers in a bit more detail (Tables I and III of the university’s enrollment reports).
During Gray’s tenure it was decided that existing plant at the time could support no more than 3,400 students. Indeed, College enrollment in the fall of '93 was 3,435 so they were at their max. When Gray was named president in '78, enrollment was about 2,653. So during her 15 year tenure, they increased college enrollment by 29.5%. New matriculants increased by about 25%, so it’s very possible that there were slightly fewer transfers-out at the time as well* (NB I jotted these down quickly but tried to adjust where the footnotes indicate. During the 80’s and perhaps into the early '90’s, new college matriculants could enroll during summer, winter and spring quarters as well as fall).
Sonnenschein had a shorter tenure, only 7 years. During his time he proposed increasing the size of the college by 1,000 students in four years time (assuming quality could be held constant). So that would mean about 4,400 students compared to Gray’s max of 3,400. That caused quite a bit of controversy with the faculty, as did his decision to scale back the Core. By the time he left, he had only managed to increase enrollment by 16% - just under 4,000. Still, that was more than half of what Gray managed in less than half the time. Had he not had so much pushback, he may well have met his proposed goal. New matriculant uptick was nearly 14%, so Sonnenschein may have been reducing attrition rates a bit as well.
Sonnenschein’s plan started kicking in with Randel. Can’t recall much about him from the Boyer book. But under his six-year tenure, College enrollment increased nearly 20%!! Same with new matriculant enrollment. However, keep in mind that the College also slipped in the rankings at that time - overcrowding perhaps? Worse academic experience due to the more signficant growth? Not sure. Maybe it’s in the book. This was during the era of Behnke/O’Neill and while SAT scores did increase, they remained behind those of peer institutions. We know that the admit rate declined from just under 50% in '99 to about 30% by 2008.
Zimmer’s 13-year tenure, most of which has included the Nondorf years, has seen a 42% increase in the size of the college (6,801 as of this fall compared to 4,780 in the fall of 2006). So in less time than Gray had, he has improved enrollment by well over a third more than what she was able to accomplish. New matriculant enrollment is up 32%, so attrition has really slowed down. And we know that anyway from the recent freshman retention and 4-6 year graduation stats, as well as the number of transfers taken in each year (about half what they used to be 30 some-odd years ago).
TLDR: Gray grew the college to its physical “max” - subsequent presidents have grown it beyond that number and have initiated or presided over substantial changes. Can’t recall if Sonnenschein oversaw any new construction; most of that seemed to happen post-2000.
Chicago has definitely changed a lot with all the dilution. There’s more grade-chasing than before, and the stressful culture got worse. Most students that I talk to dislike this change, and I’d wager most would be against it if a poll was done. At this point it seems like people care a lot about grades but simultaneously trash on people who chase grades “the wrong way”, like taking easy professors. It’s an unholy combination that is going to implode one day. I don’t think I’ve seen the kids this stressed when I was an undergrad. The Latin honors is just adding fuel to fire. If you look at what the undergrads are talking about, a lot of it is depressing memes about failing classes and bad mental health support from the school, and a pretty antagonistic attitude towards the admin. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t this bad a few years ago but maybe I just wasn’t paying attention.
@Skyrior - as you have graduated, where are you seeing these stressed undergrads? Do you work on campus?
This is interesting and sobering information, @Skyrior - could you elaborate a bit?
The frustrations with student counseling services have been well documented:
https://www.chicagomaroon.com/article/2019/11/12/student-counseling-service-limited-time/
https://www.chicagomaroon.com/article/2019/5/25/without-mental-health-resources-life-mind/
As I recall, Chicago is a grind-it-out, gritty sort of academic place. It can be tough on even the most poised individuals. Along the lines of generally elevated (and documented) stress difficulties among young people, I wonder if the atmosphere on campus is now even more high-octane. There’s vicious competition just to get in nowadays, and students who are accustomed to (and seek) academic perfection in high school may not cease their efforts at the college level.
This is a slight aside, but it’s why admissions offices getting narrower in who they accept may not be a good thing. SAT bands are narrowing, distribution of high school grades are narrowing, etc. There is something to taking “chances” on students, and offering a college environment that could let those students flourish.
Would be most interesting to hear impressions from those on the ground.