<p>Does anyone know the Early Action acceptance rate for U of Chicago?</p>
<p>According to collegeboard.com, last year 3,054 people applied and 1,222 were accepted, so the acceptance rate was 40%.</p>
<p>wow it’s pretty high! how can it be?</p>
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<li><p>That’s 2006 information. In 2007 (class of 2012 admissions), the numbers were slightly more than 4,000 EA applications and about 1,500 acceptances.</p></li>
<li><p>In general, Chicago’s admission rate is high relative to its competition because it draws fewer applications. If you factor out binding Early Decision programs at other colleges, every selective college (other than HYPS and a few others) accepts something between 2.5 and 3.5 times the number of spaces available, and Chicago is right in the middle of that range, accepting about 3,600 applicants. But Chicago only gets 7-8 applications per slot – about the same as Northwestern, actually – whereas colleges like Columbia, Penn, and Johns Hopkins draw significantly more applications per slot. So Chicago’s admission rate is higher.</p></li>
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<p>That doesn’t mean it’s easier to get admitted, though. The sense is that because of Chicago’s location, its reputation for hyper-intellectualism and hard work, and its quirky, off-the-wall required essays, it draws fewer “what the hell” longshot applications than some similar colleges, and it is a popular “match” college for students who are legitimate candidates for HYPS or MIT. (And no one has ever had a sense that anything like “Tufts Syndrome” applies there, where students are rejected because they seem likely to be accepted at Harvard, etc., and to enroll there.)</p>
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<li> Most colleges with early admissions programs seems to target filling about 40% of their classes through early admissions. Even with non-binding EA, a slightly higher percentage of early acceptees enrolls compared to RD acceptees. So Chicago is going to accept 1,300 to 1,500 applications from its early pool. It was at the high end of the range last year probably because there was a belief that the EA pool included lots of people who might have applied early to Harvard or Princeton if they had the chance, so the expectation was that enrollment yield from EA might be lower than usual, but that turned out not to be the case. So I would expect EA acceptances to be a little lower this year. It’s anyone’s guess how many EA applications there will be.</li>
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