<p>My son got marketing materials from top schools including Harvard, so I don’t believe that only so-so desperate schools do direct marketing. There were several college rep visits the HS guidance counselors alerted the parents about. None included a Chicago session. If they are visiting NJ, they are either not advertising the events well, or not in right areas. One session we went to was a collective session comprising of top schools including Harvard, a couple of upper Ivies and Georgetown. As ridiculous as it sounds, just being part of that session increased the profile strength of Georgetown in the minds of the audience.</p>
<p>Consumers are surprisingly simple minded on a gut level. Armed with a Ph.D. and an MBA, I consider myself fairly “aware” of the way my mind works and yet, I am surprised to notice how my mind works in a very simplistic way when it comes to gut reaction. For instance, even before I go into the “research and investigation” mode for buying a new car, my gut reaction tells me that I would NEVER even consider buying a Cadillac if I were shopping a luxury car (never happens!) because in my mind it’s the kind of a car Mafia boss will drive. Mercedes, the same story, because I know that in Japan, Yakuzas (Japanese version of Mafia) drive black Mercedes (I am not a Japanese). </p>
<p>Consumer’s mind is surprisingly lazy, and on a gut level, it will take an “easy way out” even among the most sophisticated consumers. To break out of this “easy path” takes a lot of mental efforts and endeavors, AND human minds do not like to work that hard. Any student of cognitive science will confirm this. All this happens almost on a gut level and perhaps even subconsciously, but subsconsicous mind is a powerful thing and often sabotages the best intention of a conscious mind (just ask any Freudian psychologist). </p>
<p>Apply this to the elite college shopping students and parents. The fact that U chicago has all these Nobel Laureates and Obama taught there may convince those buyers whose radar screen already captured Chicago to begin with to close the deal. But in order for that to happen, UChicago has to be firmly established as one of the “it” schools to begin with, and it is NOT, at least not in where we live. The default grouping goes like this. One group: “HYP, Stanford, MIT” Second group: mid/lower Ivies, Duke, Georgetown, JHU… (this is a wider group). Chicago stands out like a sore thumb on its own. Since “consumer” mind is a lazy thing, rather than create a new category and thus has more things to monitor and track, it sort of discards it. </p>
<p>U chicago should NOT gloat over the fact that they “defy” conventional grouping and cheap categorization since its unique “life of a mind” is such a previous thing. It’s all good and well for UChicago to use the unique “life of a mind” yardstick to select the right students for itself, but it should NOT allow this yardstick to limit the applicant pool. In order to select better “life of a mind” students, you need a larger applicant pool of competitive students to begin with (just a simple law of statistics). I am convinced that many “life of a mind” type high performing students who would have been a perfect fit for U Chicago are not applying because it did not cut the initial potential list of prestigious “it” schools.</p>
<p>As for us, I am so glad that my son is going to Chicago. I think U chicago is a perfect school for him, but he would not even have applied to it without its econ reputation after a careful research. It certainly was not one of the schools that were automatically on our radar screen. If my son had been like many students who are not so dead set on their future path/career yet, he would have ended up in a different school.</p>