UChicago 2024 RD/ED II

[JBStillFlying]

@marlowe1

The kid making that choice certainly believes that Chicago offers something different from HYPS. Other kids will make other choices, and, yes, some kids will end up at Chicago and be happy there after being rebuffed by a preferred school. These kids are also okay in my book, and there’s hope for them too. Just let them not be the dominant majority.

Interestingly, the kids at Harvard and Stanford in the study you cite also think that Chicago offers something different from their schools and other top schools. They preferred what their own schools offered - greater prestige, greater social life, etc - and they feel Chicago doesn’t have enough of all that, but they were in no doubt about what it does have - that purer focus on studies and even a somewhat “scary” intellectualism. That’s the brand. It is not a large leap of logic to assume that the brand attracts a type and that the type reinforces the brand. We see evidence of this constantly on cc.

• My son was rebuffed from Yale (well, if getting deferred from SCEA can be considered "rebuffed") but he's very happy to be at Chicago. He probably fits the "type" both for ED2 as it is currently playing out and for @MohnGedachtnis. He believes he would have been happy at most of the schools from his list as they were all pretty hard to get into and selectivity is usually highly correlated with a top-rate academic experience. I'm sure he believes he would have been able to thrive academically at any of them; however, he does recognize that both the curriculum and the intellectual experience he's receiving at Chicago is probably a step up from what he would have received most elsewhere. He's also found that most if not all of his classmates and housemates (all of whom are super smart) are focused on being serious scholars. That's why they are at UChicago. (And, unlike prior generations, these kids had other excellent choices for their college).
• "Scary intellectualism," "useless intellectualism" or, simply, "too much work and not enough fun" is not what some applicants are looking for. While of course possible that the UChicago of today wouldn't turn out to be quite as scary or unfun had they just given this school a try, there is no need to take that risk because there are plenty of other options that are known to be less scary and more fun. UChicago doesn't brand itself as distinct from other places due to "rigor" - for instance, it doesn't claim that other places are LESS rigorous. But it does point out that its goal is to provide a very rigorous undergraduate education, that all colleges and universities should be providing a rigorous undergraduate education consistent with the unique purpose of the institution, and that some of them may have lost that focus. So it doesn't identify itself as distinct from other places, as much as acknowledge that this might be the case.