<p>Since a few colleges took out the EA/ED options,
people have been saying that more applicants will be early applying for Chicago.</p>
<p>I want to know if Chicago can tell if some people that are early applying
for "tactical reasons" (like if they early applied for other schools) or for "safety", because I feel bad for those
who's slots are taken over by people who apply and soon decide not to go to Chicago.</p>
<p>Like let's say Harvard and Princeton didn't take their EA or ED option off... would they really accept someone who they know had early applied to Harvard and Princeton fully capable of being accepted to any of these colleges?</p>
<p>My impression is that Chicago doesn't care. No one has ever accused it of "Tufts Syndrome" -- rejecting candidates who are suspected of using it as a safety in favor of less-qualified applicants who are unlikely to have more attractive options.</p>
<p>First, I think their attitude is, We'll accept the students we like and work hard to convince them to come here. We'll lose some, and we'll win some. We have a pretty good sense of how many we'll win or lose, and we build that in to the number of students we accept.</p>
<p>Second, I don't think they are trying to improve their USNWR rating by accepting fewer students and enrolling more of them.</p>
<p>Third, while the Chicago admissions office can probably predict Harvard/Princeton admissions better than we can -- (a) they're professionals, and (b) they get to see the whole application, including essays and recommendations, not just a resume -- I would bet anything that they can't predict it with enough accuracy to make the judgments you think they should. They may be able to predict that Ms. A has a 70% chance of being admitted to Harvard, but they still don't know for sure that Ms. A even applied to Harvard, and there's still a pretty big chance that she won't be admitted there. So I think Chicago goes ahead and accepts her (if they like her application, of course).</p>
<p>Recognize that if Chicago behaved tactically, as you suggest, it would accept a lot fewer people. It's not a question of by not accepting Ms. A who will probably wind up at Harvard, they can go ahead and accept Mr. B who will shrivel up and die if he can't spend the next four years in Hyde Park. If they could accurately identify all of the Harvard acceptees in their pool and not accept them, they probably wouldn't accept one additional application. Their head-to-head success rate against Harvard is probably close to 1%, so cutting those students out of the acceptance pool doesn't actually open up any more acceptance slots for anyone more than 1% likely to enroll. No one ever has to live in a forced triple because Chicago cross-accepted too many students with Harvard. The problems come when it accepts too many people that Harvard turns down, and then lots of them show up in September expecting a dorm room and a HUM section.</p>
