<p>marite,
glad you chimed in agreement with JHS before I did – since you both are my intellectual superiors. ;)</p>
<p>I think he has framed this correctly as not either/or but both/and.</p>
<p>I’ll note, though, marite, that HYP have been increasingly friendly to risk-taking in the last few years – admitting students with less categorical features such as stats, from among those who are unhooked. Those appear especially to be students of some unusual background in some interesting way.</p>
<p>Thanks for the clarification, JHS.<br>
epiphany: It seems to me that HYP have also taken more risk recently, but in a different way from UofC, by trying to expand socio-economic and geographical diversity. The resulting student body at these schools, may not be more “creative” than the students that the Chicago writing prompts are supposed to attract, just a tad less well prepared than the students from the more traditional catchment areas and feeder schools.</p>
<p>And we have those who were accepted by an Ivy’s and other peer schools who decided Chicago is a better fit. My guess is that NMD’s daughter had other acceptances as well and chose Chicago for at least some of the reasons Chicago is Chicago. As I have said before, it is not that the students are so different before arriving, it is the application (and other material) tries to alert students to what they will find when they get there. For some students Chicago is just one of many environments in which they can succeed, for others it is the environment they seek, and for yet others it is like garlic to a vampire.</p>
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</p>
<p>No, it doesn’t. It says exactly what I am saying: if Chicago admits students who are ALSO admitted to Ivies, those applicants are likely to choose the more prestigious college they were admitted to. Therefore, if the applicant pool becomes saturated with more students with the conventional credentials that make them Ivy candidates, there is more likely to be a cross- admit, and the vast majority of the time the cross-admitted student will go with prestige. </p>
<p>Those students are not necessarily “stronger”. They also include grade grubbers and the type of students who hire private tutors to prep for the SAT’'s and retake the SAT multiple times. (I am NOT saying that all applicants to Ivies are like that – I am saying that SOME are and you can’t tell from GPA’s and SAT scores which fit that mold.). Meanwhile, the pool of students who don’t make it into Ivies may be very brilliant and passionate students, who simply haven’t prioritized their grades as much or didn’t bother retaking the SAT more than once. </p>
<p>I can’t believe that you have been on CC as long as you have and yet seem blind to the reality that when money isn’t a factor, students generally go with the most prestigious of the schools that admitted them. Look how long Evil Robot agonized over turning down Yale, even when money was a strong factor – and how many CC’er urged him to go to the Ivy, whatever the cost. </p>
<p>There are exceptions, of course – but the best way for Chicago to IDENTIFY those potential exceptions is to pre-screen. An Chicago pre-screens by saturating applicants with the message: our school isn’t as much fun as the others, but we’re all really smart, and if you want to apply here we want to see an extra essay from you showing us how you think. That’s what “life of the mind” means.</p>
<p>By pre-screening, in the past Chicago has been able to successfully shave off a good chunk of those potential cross-admits who are either thinking of Chicago as a “safety” (and who wants to bother with an extra essay for a safety) - or who are in some way intimidated by the nature of the questions – and the last thing Chicago wants is students who are easily intimidated by such questions, because those kids are going to have a rough time with the Chicago style of teaching. (Among other things, the essay questions can be read as, “here’s a somewhat lighthearted sample of the type of questions we will want you to wrestle with in every class you take here”). </p>
<p>An earlier poster created an ice cream analogy. I’ll refine that: The Harvard Ice Cream Factory is famous for its vanilla ice cream. Everyone knows that, the only near competitors are Yale’s vanilla and Princeton’s vanilla. There is a publication that ranks the quality of vanilla ice cream and every year it comes out ranking the same purveyor of excellent vanilla at the top. But Chicago makes the best butter pecan. And you are wondering why Chicago doesn’t scrap the butter pecan in favor of vanilla.</p>
<p>Next you’ll be wanting the city’s restaurants to start making flatter pizzas.</p>
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</p>
<p>My point is that is why Chicago retains its essays as a pre-screen for motivation to attend Chicago in its applicant pool, as well as a window into the mind’s of those applicants to further try to discern which one might be Chicago-leaners. The ones I am talking about Chicago not wanting is that narrow segment who are “put off” by being asked to think somewhat differently about a college essay, or perhaps write in a different tone or style than they were planning.</p>
<p>If Chicago dispensed with their uncommon essays, they wouldn’t attract better applicants – they’d attract a larger corpus of students, including worse applicants. They’d attract essay-writing slackers - the ones who think that an extra essay is too much of a bother, or the ones who don’t like writing about topics that don’t particularly appeal to them. Chicago doesn’t want its core classes filled with students who are hesitant to take on extra work or balk at working hard in subjects that don’t really appeal to them – so why should it adopt an application process that makes it easier for those students to seek admission?</p>
<p>My daughter didn’t view Chicago as a top choice, but she did care enough about the school to apply early, to put care and effort into the application process even beyond what Chicago required. Based on that fact, coupled with the fact that Chicago admitted her, I think she was imminently more qualified for Chicago than any student who decided that it was too much a bother to apply. </p>
<p>Chicago follows the same rules as most other top colleges: you can’t get in if you don’t apply. So I’d add to that the very first test of who is qualified for admission, before all else, is that the student needs to complete and submit an application.</p>
<p>I want the city’s restaurants to make flatter pizza! I’m all for regionalism and cultural heterogeneity, and generally I treasure whatever bit of local culture have survived the malling of America. But I don’t get deep-dish pizza. A big No! to that. Give me Pepe’s, or give me . . . I dunno, a diet?</p>
<p>calmom, your last allegory doesn’t resonate with me at all. Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Chicago . . . they all have 32 flavors, 92 more like it, each more scrumptious than the last. Their products are really similar, their recipes overlap to a tremendous extent. One may sell a little more rosemary-goatmilk gelato, another more espresso swirl and pistachio, but the decor and the advertising are a lot more different than whatever you put inside you there. And ice cream places don’t turn away customers much.</p>
<p>
Hmmm… I thought you were coveting Barnard a while back?</p>
<p>I’m glad my d. chose Barnard – her experience there is proof that Chicago’s “death of fun” atmosphere would probably have been oppressive for her. In other words, the heavy workload there is tough enough – I’m sure in hindsight she will always felt that she got all the discipline and academic rigor she could have ever wanted with the choice she made. </p>
<p>But I also feel good about our contacts with Chicago over the years, beginning with the time my son first contacted them, though he opted not to apply. And I feel that completing the application was a valuable learning experience for my daughter. If she spent only a few hours of her life thinking the Chicago way… then that was a worthwhile few hours. Even though she wrote the Chicago application before any others and did not reuse any essays, the other essays and short answers she submitted to colleges were probably also improved because she cut her teeth on the Chicago app.</p>
<p>Even given the fact that the majority of cross-admits with HYP etc. choose not to go to Chicago, why does it follow that the Chicago student body is somehow “weaker” than that of Ivy League schools even by traditional criteria like test scores, or that it includes a materially greater number of so-called “diamonds in the rough”? Is there a statistically significant difference between Chicago and Ivy League schools in terms of the SAT scores of the incoming class (which, if I recall correctly, are usually presented as the scoring range of the middle 50%)? I doubt it. Does anyone truly believe that if you took the best students – or even the “average” students – at the University of Chicago and plunked them down at H, Y, or P, they’d be any less (or more) academically successful than at the U. of C., even if they had applied to all three places and had been rejected? I certainly don’t. Sure, there are probably fewer movie stars’ and politicians’ kids at Chicago, and fewer people with 57 extracurricular activities and leadership positions in all of them, and fewer people who’ve cured cancer while nursing infant orphans in the Third World (NTTAWWT). But I’m not talking about that.</p>
<p>On an entirely lighter note, but an excellent illustration as to what I think is quintessentially Chicago – here’s an article about a pair of Chicago students who have published a different take on world literature:
[Students</a>’ book transforms classics into ‘tweets’ | The University of Chicago](<a href=“http://www.uchicago.edu/features/20100104_twitterature.shtml]Students”>http://www.uchicago.edu/features/20100104_twitterature.shtml)</p>
<p>Marite: note that these kids are comparative lit majors, so yes, Chicago does have them. The year they applied, I believe they might have been asked to “describe a picture and explore what it wants” – or to “write a page” and then explain “who has written it”.</p>
<p>JHS, I was picking up on another poster’s ice cream allegory, but I can put it another way. When I lived in San Francisco, my favorite place for ice cream was a little place that sold gelato. Whenever I went out with friends, or later with my son, for ice cream – we went for gelato. </p>
<p>There were many other options for ice cream in SF, many more well known: Dreyer’s, Mitchell’s, Swensen’s, Double Rainbow, etc. – but we had developed a taste for gelato and it had nothing to do with how many flavors they offered. We liked the thick, smooth, soft ice cream in little cups instead of the big scoops piled on a cone the other places sold. </p>
<p>The gelato store never had a problem finding customers - on any evening of the week, there was a long line going out the door onto the street. Double Rainbow also had a long line that I never was interested in standing in – but I was happy to wait for gelato. </p>
<p>It’s all ice cream but it’s not the same.</p>
<p>Twitterature is hilarious! Love this:
</p>
<p>Given that the Ivy’s have said they could populate their schools multiple times over with their rejects with no loss to quality, I’m not too worried about the quality of students who “settle” for Chicago.</p>
<p>calmom. I never said that Chicago did not have comp lit majors.
DonnaL: I never said that Chicago had a weaker student body than HYPS. I quoted Dean Behnke about Chicago’s yield dropping because of the stronger applicant pool. Your beef is with him (as is mine).</p>
<p>I believe the dip last year in Chicago’s yield is actually due to their FA in a bad economy. Something I think they are loath to admit.</p>
<p>As far as who do well where, I think most above the median in test scores and GPA at many state flagships could do well at any top 20 school. A past president at Harvard once remarked that the curriculum was designed for about a 600+ CR SAT.</p>
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<p>Well I certainly don’t think that.
:)</p>
<p>And I also don’t think this, despite respecting calmom on many other issues:</p>
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</p>
<p>(Because a student could recognize that the “bother” was unnecessary or unwanted for a whole variety of reasons – not all of them, btw, relating to an acceptance at an Ivy League school.) </p>
<p>I also somewhat object to this excerpt:</p>
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</p>
<p>While I recognize that you’re not talking about “all applicants to Ivies,” I do believe that you’re still overgeneralizing. Because the pool of Ivy-aspirants =/= the pool of Ivy admits. There are dozens of Ivy aspirants on CC, and many off CC, who are grade-grubbers (only or mainly), but truly not many such students make it into the Ivy League. I mean grade-grubbing in itself is not even a hook, nor is it a tip.
:)</p>
<p>I stick by my statement: the first and foremost qualification for Chicago is that the person has to complete the application. As far as I know Chicago has yet to admit anyone who failed to do that. </p>
<p>There are students who are desperate to attend Chicago, some of whom unfortunately end up on a waitlist. I felt bad the year that my daughter was accepted when another CC parent reported that her son had been waitlisted. Her son had better stats and all-round academic credentials than my daughter, and Chicago was his first choice, dream school. </p>
<p>My son was an NM finalist so we got a ton of mail, and by the time he had submitted all his applications, there were literally several boxes full of literature from colleges that he had decided to discard from his list. Some were dropped simply because he had already applied to too many similar colleges. Some of the apps had sort of crazy things on them. There was an app to Tulane that was going to give him an answer in 2 weeks, and they had this crazy scholarship thing with a weird question about a box… and he meant to apply, he really did, it was years before Hurricane Katrina and New Orleans sounded cool and the box project sounded intriguing, he was eligible for some sort of priority scholarship… and then he just never got around to doing that. </p>
<p>And yet… here it is 9 years later and… I don’t care. I tossed the Tulane app in the recycling box with all the rest of the stuff and I don’t begrudge them their silly box question and I don’t resent all the kids who have gone to Tulane on full tuition scholarships that my son didn’t bother to apply for. If my son had belonged at Tulane he would have applied – he didn’t, therefore Tulane rightfully awarded some other more deserving kid that scholarship that year. How do I know that other kid was more deserving? Because he or she was willing to put in the effort to answer the [silly</a> box question.](<a href=“http://admission.tulane.edu/9813_TU09_OnlineFastApp_DHS.pdf]silly”>http://admission.tulane.edu/9813_TU09_OnlineFastApp_DHS.pdf) </p>
<p>My daughter’s a wonderful dancer and yet she is not at Julliard. Julliard is the toughest college in the country to get into, and you have to audition. My daughter didn’t audition, probably because she didn’t want to study dance in college and she didn’t want to attend Julliard. Yet I don’t blame Julliard for maintaining their stringent audition requirements and not simply adopting the common app and sticking with that. (Hey, the kids could all submit the common app arts supplement, right?) Just like Chicago, I don’t think anybody ought to be at Julliard unless they really, truly, seriously want what Julliard had to offer. </p>
<p>I don’t care if a kid has an IQ of 190 and wins the Nobel Prize in literature for a novel written at age 12 – if the kid won’t fill out an application for a school or a scholarship or a job or whatever else one can apply for, than that kid is not “qualified” for whatever it is that might have been awarded if they had applied for it. Life is about goal-setting, motivation, and effort. “Qualified” entails a willingness to do whatever it is that is required to get to the desired goal; it should not be confused with “potential”. (Colleges routinely admit far too many kids with “potential” every year who flunk out – I’m sure they wish that number could somehow be reduced to 0. The C student from high school who would knuckle down and do the work is more “qualified” for any college spot than the A student who can’t manage to get it together to attend classes once they get to college). </p>
<p>Chicago, in particular, is a school that imposes a heavy workload on students. Because they are on a quarter system things move along very quickly and there is no cushion of time for catching up if a kid misses several classes or falls behind on the reading. So Chicago is definitely a place where one of the most important qualities is that the student needs to be able to get their s-t together and produce a seemingly endless chain of required work on short-term deadlines. I honestly don’t understand how anyone can try to pretend that they or their kid is Chicago material and then throw out one lame excuse or another as to why they didn’t bother to apply. </p>
<p>I don’t have anything against students who would rather not be bothered. My son always was the type of student who balked at doing tasks that he felt were wasting his time or that were geared to subjects he wasn’t particularly interested in. My son had better grades and better test scores and maybe more “potential” than my daughter-- but she was qualified to attend to Chicago and he wasn’t. Because he didn’t apply. And I never really asked him what his lame excuse was for not applying.</p>
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<p>Because understanding what the U of Ch. is, yet still not applying, does not equal “not being chicago material.” Yes, I get it about the application. But again, one has to prioritize. Your D was “material” for lots of other colleges, undoubtedly, that she didn’t apply for. And mine, and the children of many other parents on this thread. You may feel that in your family’s case, your S had a “lame excuse,” because of your S’s behavior, personality, history, or whatever. Well, it’s not necessarily the case in other families, with other S’s and D’s. There were people in my D’s life (teachers, administrators) who wanted her to apply to Cambridge U. and explicitly said “she’s Cambridge material.” But she had many commitments early in senior year (see earlier post – responsibilities on and off campus) and an awful lot of juggling of choices to do. There is not enough time to apply to all the colleges & U’s (with separate apps & often additional recs & supplements) that all of our children are “material” for. Not even in the same range. Had my D wanted to (she didn’t), I doubt she would have had the time to do quality applications to all the Ivies (+ Stanford), yet those are all in the same range. (She was “material” for the 3 she applied & was accepted to; theoretically she was material for the others as well.) But it’s not a matter of “material” so much as prioritizing what is most material for you, the student, and thus most important to present the best application effort(s). I’ve argued in the past, as have you, as I recall, that it’s difficult to make a case for “just any Ivy” being equally suitable for the same single student, as they all have their flavors/campus cultures. </p>
<p>Originally she had 15 colleges on her list (5 each of 3 levels); after being discouraged from teachers that that was too many, that she couldn’t produce sufficiently quality apps with those many, she - with my help – reduced it to 12 (4 each). There was never an original plan even to apply SCEA to Yale. There was a plan, ironically to apply EA to Chicago, partly because she was headed for NMF (and eventually was). In the meantime, though, two classmates urged her to apply to Yale Early, so she did. Those early rounds come and go quickly with the 5 AP’s and music & dance off-campus. While starting other apps, she heard, to our surprise, about Yale. She, and I, had also heard about the crappy FA from Chicago, and I assure you the only way she was headed for anything other than a public was with extremely generous FA from a well-endowed private, which by definition (compared to Yale) excluded Chicago from the mix, after the Early Round. She didn’t fail to be material for Chicago. Frankly, Chicago, failed to be material for her before she even completed the app, because of their very own recent (at the time), documentable track record for FA. She was intellectual material for them; they were not financial material for her – at least not in time, because Yale was Single Choice which prohibited a simultaneous app to Chicago. </p>
<p>FOOTNOTE: Cambridge U was also a financial challenge for our family, because even though she might have gotten a tuition break of sorts, the living expenses and the continual mandated moving between semesters made that option financially prohibitive at the time.</p>
<p>Applying to Chicago reminds me of applying to TASP. I think that a lot of the screening for TASP occurs when students screen themselves out because they don’t want to do all of those essays or they don’t want to take the time to do the essays thoughtfully.</p>
<p>I think that students can have the stats to qualify for TASP or Chicago, but the students who “qualify” are the ones who have the stats and are so excited about TASP or Chicago that they will move heaven and earth to apply and to do their best possible jobs with the applications. For space reasons, some of those who “qualify” won’t get in, but it won’t be because they didn’t qualify for admission using my definition of “qualify.”</p>
<p>I learned something from years of practicing law.</p>
<p>Good excuse: death or hospitalization</p>
<p>Everything else: lame excuse. </p>
<p>I would note that the daughter who was admitted to Yale is NOT the one who is making the excuse. My impression is that she wouldn’t. She was happy with her Ivy admit, and probably had enough respect for the Chicago admission committee to refrain from wasting their time when she had no intention of applying, and enough respect for kids who dearly wanted to attend Chicago to not inject herself into the competition. </p>
<p>All of the other applicants who DID apply to Chicago had really busy schedules and other activities and applications to attend to, and school demands and ECs and what-have-you, and those who needed financial aid were worried about Chicago’s rep for coming up short. </p>
<p>It’s not Chicago’s fault when some kids choose not to prioritize completing their application.</p>
<p>I have something to add:</p>
<p>I think it is very immature and disrespectful for a young person or a parent to go around trying to take credit for a college that they didn’t attend on the theory that they would have gotten in to the college and done well except that they never bothered to apply.</p>
<p>My daughter had a high school English teacher who thought she was the smartest student he ever had and who told her over and over again that she should apply to Harvard. He made a big point of saying that he wanted to write her letter of recommendation. My daughter did not apply to Harvard. It would NOT be appropriate for me to go around telling people that my daughter was “Harvard material” but she just couldn’t be bothered with an application. </p>
<p>My son had a high school teacher who was a Brown alum who though that my son was, in his words, a “genius”. (Full exact quote: “He’s the laziest genius I’ve ever met.”) The teacher said over and over again that my son was “Ivy material” and urged him to apply to Ivies, especially Brown. But at the time, Brown required all applicants to submit handwritten essays. My son was dyslexic, dysgraphic, and, as noted by his teacher, not in a hurry to do extra work; in any case, he wasn’t going to suffer through the handwriting thing just to please Brown. I kind of thought the requirement was discriminatory against kids like my son who had a tough time writing legibly … but my son didn’t want to apply to Brown badly enough to justify our making a federal case of it. He simply decided not to apply. </p>
<p>And thus I don’t go around telling people that my son was “Ivy material” or make a point of explaining to anybody that he would have gone to Brown but for their dumb and since-abandoned policy about handewritten applications. </p>
<p>I even have to watch what I say about Columbia, even though my daughter has taken half her classes there and will graduate with a degree that says “Columbia University” (in latin) at the top… because some people are very touchy about the Columbia/Barnard relationship. Clearly my daughter COULD have done well as a Columbia student – she has earned A’s in every class she ever took at Columbia – but she did not ever fill out an application and apply to Columbia College. I don’t go around telling people that the problem was that Columbia doesn’t take the common application like Barnard does, or making other excuses. She didn’t apply, she didn’t take the core, therefore she is not the same as students who did.</p>
<p>My d. was accepted to but did not attend Chicago. As noted, Chicago was nice to us except in the financial aid dept, and I didn’t take that personally, so I think its a great school. But because my daughter chose not to attend, she did not take Chicago’s core, she did not run the gauntlet of Chicago’s notorious workload, and it is a disservice to every student who now does attend or did attend and graduate to try to equate “would’ve” or “could’ve” with “actually did”. Those kids – even the one who used the screen name IHateUofC – deserve the respect of acknowledging that they have accomplished something that everyone who didn’t attend Chicago did not. A person can’t get Chicago-attending-credit by attending a school they think is harder, or one that is more prestigious, or by smugly declaring that they were just too busy or too special or too smart to bother with the application process. </p>
<p>That’s just the way it works. It’s got nothing to do with prestige, but when a school is especially known for its rigorous academics and heavy workload - whether it is Chicago or Reed or MIT – it is particularly irksome when people who didn’t apply and didn’t attend try to pretend that they earned some sort of equivalency by, of all things, deciding not to apply.</p>
<p>Updates: New articles see link below:</p>
<p>Controversy Over Sexy College Admissions
Opinions are divided about the U of C’s attempt to lighten the mood with a somewhat sexy sample college admissions letter. What do you think?</p>
<p>Officials Get Earful Over Cheeky University Essay New York Times
The essay, comparing the college to an elusive lover, has had a very different effect.</p>
<p>Should admissions dean have sent this essay around or am I too strict? College ConfidentialI’m not against the selection of the student, but I dislike the decision of the Dean of sending this kind of “Essay” to prospective students…kind of romantic (?), a private love story…?</p>
<p>Square Parents Turned Off By Sexxy EssayGawker
The kid who wrote the essay is obviously a genius, and these other kids/parents are insecure and/or jealous about this issue, because he clearly understands what’s important.</p>
<p>[Controversy</a> Over Sexy Sample College Admissions Letter From University Of Chicago - District 299: Chicago Public Schools Blog](<a href=“http://www.chicagonow.com/blogs/district-299/2010/01/controversy-over-sexy-college-admissions-letter.html]Controversy”>http://www.chicagonow.com/blogs/district-299/2010/01/controversy-over-sexy-college-admissions-letter.html)</p>