Class of 2017 Yield Rate 55%

[jak321]

<p>@Insidelane</p>

<p>First of, I think you meant $2,800,000 rather than $280,000. But please remember that were it not for the efforts of the admissions office to garner more applicants, there would still be thousands of rejectees, certainly more than 10,000. The “unnecessary costs” (another idea I shall try to debunk) that can be blamed on the admissions office is probably closer to one million than three.</p>

<p>

This whole race thing is absurd. The huge number of kids rejected from a school is an indication of a college’s admissions failure.

</p>

<p>Well, it seems to me that a decrease in an institution’s acceptance rate is almost always heralded as a success of a college’s admissions office. Improving a college’s applicant pool strength and increasing it’s size often go hand in hand, not to mention the affect of (perceived) selectivity on prestige and rankings, things that Chicago ignored for far too long.</p>

<p>

It means that the college is not socially responsible, is not concerned about the quality of its admissions pool and it [sic] not conducting its admissions season in a socially responsible and ethical manner.

</p>

<p>Marketing is a service, albeit one we’ve learned to hate (but we would hate almost anything if it were to interrupt our TV shows…). If I hadn’t discovered Chicago through a friend’s mailings, I probably would not have realized that it was precisely what I was looking for in a school, and I probably wouldn’t be Chicago bound right now. I don’t see why it’s a universities duty to be socially responsible, but short of inundating your mailbox with packages, I don’t really see how Chicago is harming society. Their acceptance statistics are all available online, and it’s a students decision to weigh the costs (time, applicant fee and other investments, not least the emotional) to their odds of gaining admission.</p>

<p>

It means they are unsuccessful marketing their school to their target population and are creating a lot of noise instead.

</p>

<p>The university wouldn’t know whether a student lies in it’s target population until he or she applies. One way admitting a better student body is by simply increasing the number of applicants (by definition, it’s the applicants on job to be self-selective). </p>

<p>

A beter way to think about it is "University of Chicago solicited >28,000 applications from students that they rejected, thereby unnecessarily costing families approximately $280,000 (Including cost of scores-and does not include travel costs for visits).

</p>

<p>Your rejoinder notwithstanding, the best way of thinking about this is the University reached out to thousands of people who, statistically speaking (since close to 25,000 applied last year, and fewer than 10,000 applied just a few years ago) would not have applied otherwise. These students were still given every option of not applying (and several did not), but some decided the application fee (often waved) was worth the odds. I am one of these students, and even though this process led to the disappointment of 4 of my friends, I’m still glad for it (on a macro level as well. One persons acceptance is easily worth the disappointment/100 bucks of tens of rejectees). Investments do not yield positive results for everyone (or even most), but that is not a testament to the reprehensibility of investments, just the investors (if even that).</p>

<p>

That unnecessary cost for families is followed by having to muster up funds to pay for education.

Chicago is pretty good with FA these days (and are getting better). Chicago also awards several merit scholarships (unlike the Ivies etc.). Out of the thousands admitted, I’m sure there are several hundreds (even a thousand) students who would not have applied were it not for the tireless efforts of the admissions office (and their payoff for admissions alone more than compensates for a few hundred dollars here and there). Many would have received better financial offers from Chicago than they did at other (peer) institutions. These total savings alone may have compensated for the million or so spent on applicant fees (at the very least, blunted it).</p>

<p>

The PR expense is also immense to the university.

If I hade to put money on it, I’m pretty sure they don’t regret doing it. You seem awfully concerned with only the costs of a transaction and tend to ignore the benefits.</p>

<p>

All this BS hinders efforts to carefully match students to schools and causes unnecessary hardship.

Hyperbole and rehashed arguments…</p>

<p>

The numbers game is totally irrelevant to the quality of the school and higher yield numbers says nothing about the quality or even popularity of the school since the most important variable is unknown-and that is which school was preferred over which others.

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<p>The number game is irrelevant in itself, but it’s just a numerical (and hence objective and precise) way of looking at something very relevant, which is the quality of a school’s class. Nonetheless, you don’t seem to consult any data on the “important variable” before tearing Chicago apart. Here is the only data I could find on it:</p>

<p>[Parchment</a> Student Choice College Rankings 2013 | Parchment - College admissions predictions.](<a href=“http://www.parchment.com/c/college/college-rankings.php]Parchment”>http://www.parchment.com/c/college/college-rankings.php)</p>

<p>It may not be precise (look at their methodology and sample sizes) but it does pass the sniff-test, at least for the first few colleges. Chicago does pretty well, it’s ranked 6th, right behind MIT and Princeton and just ahead of Brown and Caltech. Their past data chronicles Chicago’s ascent (and therefore the admissions office’s successes) very well.</p>

<p>

The choice of Chicago over Harvard, Yale and MIT means something entirely different than the choice of Chicago over NYU, U of Maine and St. Johns(NY) and it is impossible to differentiate on the basis of yield alone.

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<p>I think you underestimate (among many underestimations) the quality of Chicago’s student body. Consider</p>

<p>Success in producing prestigious scholarship winners:
<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/university-chicago/1498021-colleges-produced-most-gates-cambridge-scholars.html#post15874622[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/university-chicago/1498021-colleges-produced-most-gates-cambridge-scholars.html#post15874622&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Objective stats:
<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/15465760-post44.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/15465760-post44.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;