- UChicago doesn’t have an “undergraduate business school.” How familiar are you with the College, exactly?
- Who is UChicago’s competition for the TX market, in your view, and why?
It is a peculiar phenomenon of this forum that any discussion of the policies or character of the University of Chicago among parents and alums will eventually attract those without affiliation to or much knowledge of the school who will attempt to turn an otherwise substantive debate into yet one more silly war over rankings. What is the motivation, I wonder? One never sees such interventions on other forums.
You fellows should go start threads with titles like “Why UChicago is not so hot” or “The pathetic attempts of Chicago boosters to throw shade over all the rest of us” and leave us here to discuss the far more interesting question (to us, if not to you) of Chicago’s initiatives in the Lone Star State.
@JBStillFlying : This is exactly my point–UChicago does not have an undergraduate business school yet a claim was made that Chicago was looking at UPenn in it’s “rear-view mirror”.
As to UChicago’s competition in the Texas market, I have not given it much thought, but I do know that it is not putting down other outstanding colleges & universities.
@Publisher - there’s a lot more to both Penn and UChicago than a business major 
And perhaps you SHOULD give the Texas market some thought, because that’s kind of what this thread is about.
This thread is, on one level, about UChicago’s intent to pursue the Texas market, but it is also about how UChicago is going to market itself in Texas.
Making unsubstantiated assertions about other outstanding schools is not likely to be an effective approach as it reflects poorly on UChicago & is inaccurate.
Marketing a school should focus on that school’s strengths & on that school’s fit for a student.
P.S. And, yes, I am well aware that both Chicago & Penn offer programs other than business. (And that UChicago does not offer an undergrad degree in business.)
So, let me get this straight, @Publisher . OP tells us that the Chicago muck-a-mucks believe they have a competitive advantage in Texas against some very good schools. You don’t agree - fair enough, that perception may or may not be accurate. But why so huffy about it? It clearly gets under your skin, but are you seriously saying that you believe it means the Chicago marketing effort in Texas will consist of “making unsubstantiated assertions about other outstanding schools”? That’s what is known as a non-sequitur. But non-sequiturs happen for a reason, Dr. Freud tells us.
@Publisher at #64 - congrats. Strengths and Fit are pretty much what UChicago mentions in all its marketing efforts. So you are in agreement with them.
BTW, you can rest easy. Admissions at the very least is very respectful of the choices that these top kids are making. Overhearing snippets of conversation at various events, I’ve always been impressed that the admissions officers will answer questions thoughtfully and knowledgably without trying to puff up UChicago or put another school down. Most families who visit are pretty informed already and practically everyone can see through a tacky sell job. They want genuine answers. I’d be very surprised if this approach differs at any top school (though I don’t know for sure). Most administrators know the industry well and want to share their knowledge and insights, with a view toward helping the student and family make the choice that’s right for them.
I am not going to even respond to the silliness written in post #65 above.
Re: Post #66: So ?
In fairness to UChicago, the assertion that it has left Columbia and Penn in the rear view mirror came from bronxborn rather than the University itself. All the OP stated was that the University has data showing an advantage over non-HYP ivies among Texans. I would assume Rice, Duke, Vandy and WashU share a similar advantage based on enrollment data.
@jgladney: I think that if you reread OP’s post which started this thread that you may come to a different understanding. For example: OP referred to Chicago’s peer schools as MIT, Stanford, Harvard, Yale, & Princeton having left Columbia & Penn in the rear-view mirror.
You appear to be a more level-headed, less emotional poster.
Agree that Rice, Duke, Vanderbilt, and WashUStL in addition to Northwestern University and the University of Texas at Austin have a strong presence in the state of Texas.
Ok, chill, everybody! UChicago is officially MIT’s peer! 
And if peerhood (peership? peerdom?) is transitive, it is also a peer of HYPS, Columbia, and… Middlebury College?
Who the heck is Middlebury College? I wonder if people on its CC board are as certain that it left Columbia in the rear-view mirror?
http://web.mit.edu/emcc/www/MIT-WCET-C-LMS-Final-Report-07-19-06.pdf
"MIT selected ten peer institutions to be surveyed:
Carnegie Mellon University
Columbia University
Harvard (College of Arts and Sciences)
Middlebury College
Stanford University
University of California, Berkeley
University of Chicago
University of Texas at Austin
Princeton University
Yale University"
Here we go down the rabbit hole again. How any of this could interest a serious person is hard to fathom. Relevance to the topic - a forlorn hope - is at least one sure thing that’s in the rear view mirror.
It would be interesting if the University of Chicago could initiate a campaign to raise funding for scholarships specifically reserved for students from Texas. This would facilitate opening up the Texas market for UChicago.
The primary reason that I suggest that the University of Chicago initiate a scholarship program is that without a substantial financial incentive it is unlikely that the University of Chicago would do well in cross-admit battles with Harvard, Yale, Princeton, MIT, Stanford or UPenn-Wharton. Or, in my opinion, Columbia. And, for Texas residents, with the University of Texas at Austin.
Brown, Dartmouth, & Cornell probably appeal to a different sort of applicant as Brown’s open curriculum & liberal campus culture are in stark contrast to the University of Chicago, as is Dartmouth College’s rural location. Cornell also has a rural location.
As an aside: The major cities in Texas tend to lean liberal as reflected by voting patterns. This includes Austin, Dallas, Houston, &, if I recall correctly, San Antonio. This helps explain UChicago’s plan to target those with a military background & rural areas in Texas (in addition to targeting Hispanic students & first generation college students).
It would be interesting to see any data on actual cross-admit decisions involving the University of Chicago and Vanderbilt, Duke, Cornell, WashUStL, Northwestern, and Rice and any or all of the above mentioned schools.
The inclusion of Middlebury necessitated the exclusion of another institution. Clearly a tongue-in-cheek jab at CalTech.
Hahaha! I love that!!
If only all the world’s rivalries were like the MIT-Caltech one.
@marlowe1, perhaps it’s a manifestation of the famous UChicago-Middlebury rivalry? :^)
Some highly dubious assertions being made at #73, Publisher.
OP, whose son is at U of C, gave several reasons that make the school attractive to Texas kids. You simply reel off a list of the usual suspects in the cross-admit wars and assume that in the prestige sweepstakes, which is all that matters to you, they all are on an equal playing field in competing for the top kids in the state of Texas. This fails to take into account the cultural, geographic and educational issues that would tend, in OP’s opinion, to give Chicago an edge over Columbia and other eastern schools. It would not have that edge in competing on the eastern seaboard, though there too it would be in the game given the particular features of a Chicago education beyond mere prestige that you are unwilling to admit.
As for the politics of this, it is over-simplistic to say that because the big cities of Texas are liberal redoubts in general elections that it follows that Chicago must be attempting to find kids in the backwoods because (a) those kids must be conservative, and (b) Chicago is interested only in conservative kids. Firstly, that’s a cartoonish version of a Chicago education and Chicago students, who are generally leftist broadly speaking but are not monolithically so and all of whom have seen fit to attend a university in which there are long traditions of free speech and respectiful attendance to all views. Clear analysis trumps blinkered ideology whether in the classroom or in the dorm. Secondly, I suspect it’s highly likely that the nascent political views of lots of the kind of kids in Texas’s big cities who would consider UChicago do not correspond particularly closely to the voting patterns of those cities. By the same token, small town kids can be darn radical. I was one such once. Beware stereotypes. Chicago is looking for the Chicago type without the fixation on politics that you want to impose on this motivation.
I suppose it’s possible that a rich Texas alum might establish a scholarship fund for Texas kids, but I don’t see the necessity for this as a recruiting mechanism, and I certainly don’t favor the University unilaterally setting aside funds for such a purpose. Why should a kid from Texas be privileged over a kid from Oklahoma or New Mexico - or Idaho or Oregon or Massachusetts, for that matter? You don’t believe there is any good reason for a kid from Texas to go up to the U of C without such an incentive. I did that once upon a time, OP’s son did it, fifty other kids did it last year. For those kids there was a reason.
UChicago would likely not need to do a Texas-specific scholarship. As OP has stated a couple times in the past, cross-admit numbers from the relevant schools have been going more in Chicago’s direction in general and - from the info. on this thread - it’s quite possible that the students being recruited in TX may not be looking for an East Coast Ivy to begin with.
OP’s statements about Penn and Columbia I found to be interesting. UChicago has the data on this one way or the other, and they know which schools are considered to be more comparable from a “fit” (as opposed to “prestige”) standpoint. UChicago’s current admissions policies probably make it very difficult for someone to specify a preference for all three except in the non-binding rounds . . . and the number of RD-admits is about 600-700 or so (at most). My guess is that there are plenty of highly qualified candidates for all three schools so the need for UChicago to “compete” for the few who might have cross-over potential is pretty small.
@Vulcan - how do you explain MIT’s peer selection criteria?