<p>Seems the applications doubled with increased advertising and availability of the use of the common application. Way too much stock is put in the USNews rankings</p>
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<p>I’m certainly not going to disagree with you on that. I thought I was including the same point with some other factors when I talked about unmet demand at the top-line colleges pushing good students down to their next-best choices. It may also be relevant to consider that Chicago increased its class size from about 1,000 at the beginning of the decade to 1,350 now, so that as applications increased the number of students admitted was also increasing.</p>
<p>As for the rise in the number of applications – one of my children applied for the class of 2009 (2004-2005 application season), and what I remember is that the 9,100 applications for 2007 (2002-2003 application season) had been a big jump from the previous year (below 8,000, if memory serves, with an admission rate close to 50%). I believe – but I am not sure – that that increase reflected the beginning of the “postcard” campaign.</p>
<p>I guess my list of reasons for the increase should also have included switching to the Common App, since a good deal of the increase the last two years simply replicates other colleges’ experience when they made the same move. No one saw quite the boost Chicago did, but I think lots saw at least half of that increase.</p>
<p>Absolutely, the move to the common app is clearly the main reason for the huge increase in applications. It is really the only variable that changed as far as I am aware, since Chicago was very highly ranked before as well, and also has advertised heavily before. The only other thing that might have changed (well, maybe not only, but the most obvious I think) is if they expanded their target marketing to more kids, i.e. students that are the next tier down in test scores than who they may have mailed to previously. That would also explain a large increase, but I have no knowledge they did that, while we all know they went to the common app for the first time.</p>
<p>re: Chicago, I think that demographics have something to do with it. Over the last ten years the number of HS grad has been increasing. In addition, international applications have risen sharply. Meanwhile the number of seat at the top tier schools has basically remained flat. So the search is on for “new” elite schools. The overflow of great students that miss out on HYPMS and a dozen others need a place to land. Chicago has been a beneficiary. This does not negate the other factors cited, such as marketing and common app, but I don’t think it would have been possible in a situation where college applicants were declining.</p>
<p>If the number of college bound seniors had been declining it would not have helped push the number of apps up for sure, but you are only talking about a 1-2% change over the last 3-4 years. Chicago’s apps doubled in one year. I don’t think the increase in the number of college bound seniors is responsible for that.</p>
<p>What year did Chicago’s apps double, FC?? They went up by 43% this year, not 100%, unless I am misreading something. Looks like Chicago’s applications doubled over a 3-4 yr period. As you recall, FC, Tulane’s literally doubled in 2007-8, from 17,000 to 34,000 in one year. Has any other school seen that big a jump?</p>
<p>(and before anyone attributes that jump to the decline in applications in 2006-07 secondary to Katrina in 2005, here are the application numbers for Tulane for the past several years. Yes, Katrina did lead to a decline in applications 2 years later, but look at the overall numbers- with thanks to cc poster benetode for finding this data: )</p>
<p>8,245 (2000)
10,000 (2001)
12,986 (2002)
14,107 (2003)
17,572 (2004)
18,666 (2005)
20,757 (2006)
16,969 (2007)
34,125 (2008)
39,920 (2009)
43,834 (2010)</p>
<p>I “misremembered” xiggi’s post, that it went from about 9,000 to 19,000. They said that was over a few years. My mistake. Still, points are the same with the 43% increase. Almost no doubt mostly due to the change to the common app, as you say.</p>
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<p>JHS, you’re absolutely right about the increase to 9,100. My notes mention an increase of 12% from the prior year. I did not try to dig the exact number for the Class of 2006 because it would have probably taken a bit of late night time and … it did not seem to support entirely the point I was trying to make. </p>
<p>You know what they say about statistics - you pick the ones you like! :)</p>
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<p>Maybe this should be in the Uchicago thread, but I’m curious what sorts of things have been done over the past 20 years to improve the quality of the undergrad experience.</p>
<p>There’s been lots of discussion about this over time in the UChicago forum and elsewhere. Basically, in the 1970s and early 1980s Chicago’s undergraduate college had a near-death experience. Students liked the education, but hated everything else (and many are still resentful years later); it was apparently a pretty grim, joyless place with little cohesion or spirit among the students, and some hostility between the students and faculty. The University seriously considered closing the college altogether. Both the current President and the current Dean of the College (who is on his fourth President) were part of a group of young faculty who set out to revive the college and to give it the central role in the University and the status that the colleges at its peer universities have.</p>
<p>That has involved hundreds of efforts, big and small: new dorms, better academic and career counseling, better food, more choices within the Core, better financial aid, much more support for student organizations and athletic teams, jiggering admissions to get more people on campus who might actually lead extracurriculars or compete in athletics, creating and nurturing unique traditions like Scav Hunt and Kuvia/Kangeiko, creating internship and study abroad programs, improving the atmosphere in Hyde Park, etc. Trying to attract students who were more likely to be happy in the first place, and more likely to want the kind of experience Chicago provided. Nothing that other successful universities don’t do, really, but Chicago started late and thus has been playing catch-up.</p>
<p>At this point, they have pretty much succeeded in turning “Where Fun Comes To Die” into an ironic joke, without sacrificing the intellectualism and academic intensity that give the university its character. I’m not certain the slogan was all that ironic when it was coined.</p>
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<p>Stanford is 16??? Behind Cornell and Johns Hopkins?
I am not sure where Stanford fell behind?</p>
<p>Here is the top 20 according to that list</p>
<p>1 HARVARD University United States
2 University of CAMBRIDGE United Kingdom
3 YALE University United States
4 UCL (University College London) United Kingdom
5= IMPERIAL College London United Kingdom
5= University of OXFORD United Kingdom
7 University of CHICAGO United States
8 PRINCETON University United States
9 Massachusetts Institute of Technology (m… United States
10 California Institute of Technology (calt… United States
11 COLUMBIA University United States
12 University of PENNSYLVANIA United States
13 JOHNS HOPKINS University United States
14 DUKE University United States
15 CORNELL University United States
16 STANFORD University United States
17 AUSTRALIAN National University Australia
18 Mcgill University Canada
19 University of MICHIGAN United States
20= ETH Zurich (Swiss Federal Institute of T… Switzerland
20= University of EDINBURGH United Kingdom</p>
<p>Holy crap … 8,000 to 43,000 apps in just 10 years, jym?</p>
<p>Out of curiosity, what college has the most apps (I suppose normalized by # of students in the freshman class)?</p>
<p>^^ I guess its UCLA</p>
<p>For the largest enrollments, one has to look at the public universities in Arizona, Florida, Texas, Ohio. Perhaps, the number of applications follow the enrollments.</p>
<p>Actually, pg, TU’s admissions blog linked to an article that said that it appears it had more applications than any other private U. From their paper:
[Tulane</a> University - Applications Soar, Academic Quality Climbs](<a href=“http://tulane.edu/news/newwave/050310_admission.cfm]Tulane”>http://tulane.edu/news/newwave/050310_admission.cfm)</p>
<p>Wow! Chicago is above Stanford? That should cause lots of dinner table talk in the homes of a mom or dad or 2 with kids attending both schools.</p>
<p>I agree with JYM. The 14% yield at Tulane does not reflect well on the school. Hanna thinks it is good that Tulane accepts it’s role as a safety school and he might be right. But that isn’t the perception most universities want.</p>
<p>It is more like 16-17%, SJU, but I’d still like to see it higher. Others think yield is meaningless, and this thread is not about any one school it is about the concept of yield.</p>
<p>Tulane’s approach is very interesting in that they are 1)getting more students to apply who have not visited or previouly considered Tulane and 2)some of these students are being accepted and matriculating - much to their surprise. At my hs, many students applied to Tulane on a whim, having rcvd the e-mail with the priority application. Most of these students did not have Tulane on their “list” of colleges they planned to apply to. This year, we are sending several students to Tulane. One was very interested in Tulane from the beginning. But other who will now be attending in the fall did not have Tulane on their radar. They applied, were accepted with a nice amount of merit money and when the dust settled, Tulane was their best option. It might have been a low match or high safety school for them, but so what? Tulane is getting great students who might never have considered Tulane had it not been for the priority app. campaign. Clearly Tulane is cherry-picking - but so what? If kids who don’t get into the most elite colleges settle on Tulane instead, the result is an upward trend in Tulane’s freshman profile - which colleges love. The low yield is a side effect of this massive priortiy app. campaign - but overall - it seems to me Tulane has a good idea.</p>
<p>Jym, I agree with you that yield is an important number. I am doing college rounds again, and all of the colleges brag how selective they are by quoting how many apps they get for how many seats. A meaningless statement without the yield. You cannot possibly get a feel for the selectivity of the school from such statements.</p>