In my case, @CU123 , the last part of that description was/is certainly true. I do believe there has been a longstanding effort in the College to attract small-town and rural kids who may have been slightly deprived of intellectual oxygen in their native milieux. In the sixties there was a specific program called the “small town talent search”. The present initiative is broader than that and is folded in to a plan that encompasses URMs, first-gens, rural kids, veterans, and the children of police and firefighters, but I do see a continuity that is specific to the history of the College as a heartland institution for the gifted of all backgrounds and geographies.
I applaud these figures. They scupper and put to the lie several of the perennial kvetches about the U of C, including that it is deficient in URM and Pell grant holders in comparison with its peers and that TO was only for show and numerical manipulation. Nondorf is paraphrased as saying that the 10-15 percent figure for the non-testers was “similar” for both the total of all applicants and those offered admission. I particularly liked what he had to say about a very diverse range of kids coming in under TO (though skewed toward non-STEM, as was to be expected), the common denominator being only that they needed to make the case by other means than “the be-all, end-all of test scores” that they had qualities and talents worthy of a UChicago student. It would be nice to know some of those stories.