<p>i was accepted!</p>
<p>Congrats! I don’t know if my last message came through properly, but when does RD come out? </p>
<p>Yeah no it makes you question uchicago a bit. I mean come on, harvard has early admit rates above 20% (yes i understand it’s single choice but it’s not binding)…there hardly seems to be a purpose in applying ea to chicago if it’s just a major play in increasing yield/decreasing admit rate (obviously there’s a purpose if you get in! and congrats to those lucky souls). Uchicago is the first choice for many…they really should consider a binding or single choice plan. </p>
<p>REGARDLESS of all that, I can’t deny how much I wish to attend and so I’m looking for schools that even scrape the surface of what chicago has…where is everyone looking? I’m looking at schools with the similar vibe (reed, berkeley, wesleyan)…any other suggestions (more <em>accessible</em> schools would rock too)? What I really loved about chicago was that it had the cerebral culture of say reed, but in the setting of a research university. They do it right. Sigh. </p>
<p>I’m looking at Vanderbilt and they seem like a nice second compared to Chicago but that might just be me</p>
<p>I only have an UW Gpa of 3.68, so I am not competitive for other cool universities. At first I was surprised I was not outright rejected by UChicago, but now that I learned about their, uh, “interesting” method of admissions, I’m not all that surprised.</p>
<p>I have, though, already applied to Rice University and a hodgepodge of other LACs. I was rejected by WashU ED last week!</p>
<p>As someone who had a sister attend back when UChicago’s acceptance rate was very high (I think she mentioned her year was near 40% with the uncommon app), I see UC a little differently. </p>
<p>I think they certainly play the game. Obviously, the mail and move away from “Where fun goes to die,” as well as the very concentrated push by the university to make Hyde Park better are all ways of selling themselves to people as a mainstream university like Harvard, Yale, Princeton and the likes. (By the way, I very much think of UChicago as equal to Columbia, but it is closer to Stanford, MIT, HYP, and the likes than Duke, Penn, Northwestern and that slightly lesser tier of amazing schools. Almost every academic program at UC is top ten, none of those schools can boast the same. So saying its true peers are the latter is simply not true to me.)</p>
<p>The truth is, however, that UChicago is not a mainstream college, and they know it. In a lot of ways, UChicago is more intellectual and less pretentious or ostentatious—Ivy League feely. This means that as they sell themselves, trying to gain further acceptance into that elite club or the top 5, they get more recognition, which leads to more applications. Their 40% acceptance rate is not about because they had more relaxed standards; it’s because they had fewer applicants. The school realized it needed money, so it joined the rat race it had long avoided. You can’t get mad at a school for not accepting people, deferring this much is a ridiculous move, but you could look at it non-pessimistically: they don’t know who they’ll get in the RD round, so they can’t accept everyone because they don’t know how people will stack up in the end.</p>
<p>Secondly, as someone once said to me, college acceptance is weird. The student is selling him- or herself to the university, and the university is selling itself to the student, but neither party is certain he, she or it wants what the other is selling. So, yes, UChicago defers because they aren’t sure about kids with ED, or who are just doing UChicago as a safer early than Harvard or Yale, in the same way that students decide to send or not send certain SAT and ACT or apply to UChicago as a safer early than Harvard or Yale. Both sides are trying to make themselves as sellable as possible, so we all play the game by choosing what to send, how to present activities, how best to present ourselves, and they play it by trying to get ranked. It sucks. It’s a stupid system, but not one that’s gonna leave anytime soon.</p>
<p>UChicago is also much more about fit than any other school in the top 10. Most students who go to Harvard would be perfectly happy at Yale, Princeton, Columbia, Dartmouth, MIT, Stanford, or Penn. I’m not sure the average UChicagoan would be and not sure the average Harvard student would love UChicago.</p>
<p>So, for those accepted, congratulations. For those deferred, keep your heads up! There are other fantastically fantastic universities and UChicago is not lost (a few friends have gotten in off deferrals), and for those rejected, who cares! It’s one college. You will never think about this moment again because you’ll find another university to thrive in, so don’t worry about what one admissions officer at one school thought.</p>
<p>Who is my regional counsellor? Is he/she the person who interviewed me? How do I contact him/her?</p>
<p>What are some colleges most like UChicago? I know it’s unique in its own right, but I do love the <em>bloody cough</em> “life of the mind” sentiment. I’m applying to Reed, but even Reed is characteristically different.</p>
<p>@Sajidur4 Go to the “admissions” page of U Chicago site. There is a map you can click on to find your “regional admissions counselor”. Or google “regional admissions counselor” “Chicago” and the same map should pop up. </p>
<p>HEY GUYS!!! CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL OF YOU WHO GOT IN!!! so happy for you guys and i will hopefully see you on campus next fall ^.^ i’m excited to meet you future first-years! if you do choose uchicago, it is definitely a wild ride with highs and lows, but so worth it. </p>
<p>just some personal experience/advice: the percentage of deferred applicants accepted in the RD round for last year was 3%, not 10% - sorry to burst some bubbles 
also, there ARE a substantial percentage rejected, though apparently not a lot on CC because it is a highly unrepresentative population sample of applicants. </p>
<p>just a personal anecdote: last year i was deferred EA - uchicago was my dream school, my o n e and o n l y and i was d e v a s t a t e d - i basically took it as a rejection and moved on to my RD apps. then in march i found out i was accepted and could not believe the world and was deliriously happy. i also got into other great schools as well! so the moral of the story is, THE ROAD DOES NOT END HERE. you don’t know what will happen, but it will all work out in the end! when you graduate in the spring, very far from now, you will look back on this process with a lot of bittersweetness and with a lot of joy as well. </p>
<p>i think it’s also important to note as well that uchicago admission counselors know what they’re doing, and they know what kind of student would flourish and excel at a school like uchicago. to answer a question from like 50 pages ago directed at me:</p>
<p>@DavidTaleb: “I probably wont get in. But if I do, how tough is the UChi curriculum? I mean, I love the challenge and to quote Frank Wright, ‘The human race built most nobly when limitations were greatest’, but realistically, to see where I stand, can a person who only done Calculus AB and doesn’t write well ( I intend to improve this) perform in UChi?”</p>
<p>uchicago core definitely gives the school its world-renown rigor - but it’s also differentiates uchicago students. challenge is what you will inevitably get but the students here thrive on that, and suffering through the long days (and nights) with others going through the same struggles as you definitely makes the experience much more manageable. this is just personal experience of course, as there is definitely an adjustment period and some students inevitably do better or do worse according to how well prepared they are and how quickly they adapt. </p>
<p>surprisingly, there are a lot of people here who aren’t math geniuses (or even proficient at math), so only having completed calc AB is completely normal and to be expected. there are many levels of math classes to accommodate that. having weak writing, though, that may be a problem as the the core (especially humanities and social sciences) is quite writing-heavy and requires a strong ability to formulate an argument and defend that via writing. </p>
<p>tl;dr: don’t worry, ALL WILL BE WELL IN THE END. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Darn, I wish I could be able to flourish and excel at UChicago. I guess I’ll move onto less challenging endeavors.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Another question for you - what if it doesn’t work out well in the end? I still don’t know if I will be rejected everywhere affordable until March.</p>
<p>ACCEPTED!!! Couldn’t be any happier. I love love love UChicago and it is my dream school</p>
<p>Deferred…</p>
<p>I honestly was expecting rejection considering how competitive it is…but at the same time i’m hoping that showing continued interest will make the difference. My friend got in… happy for him/totally jealous of him</p>
<p>I just wanted to put my twopence in –– I feel like Chicago was so much about fit. I wrote extremely “quirky” essays, i had an interviewer who I talked to for almost 2 hours, not about academics or anything but instead mainly about my development as a human being. The interview was really what turned me on to Chicago, as the other interviews I had felt more like investigations into my academic achievements versus an actual genuine conversation. Also, whereas I felt incredibly unsure about my UPenn essay, partly because I didn’t really understand/necessarily like the vibe of the school (and I was outright rejected), I loved the application I put together for Chicago. I thought it was risky, because a lot of the subject matter was weird/random, but it also fit into the idea I had for Chicago. </p>
<p>I don’t really know what I’m trying to say other than this: if you truly think Chicago is your fit, then just go for it and don’t hold back. I didn’t win any great prizes or anything. My SAT was great, but my APs were horrible. Don’t write sob story essays just because you think they’ll let you in as a result (another applicant from my school did this and was deferred) –– write something that comes from an introspective part of yourself. If you feel like you would fit in at UPenn, or Brown, or Columbia, chances are that you favor a more traditional sort of curriculum. After having had a few hours to ponder this decision (and wig out a lil bit let’s be real) I’m fairly sure I’d be my happiest at Chicago. </p>
<p>OKAY. YEAH.</p>
<p>That’s my take on it. I just got off work so I’m probably fried, but I wanted to try to give some sort of advice. To those who have been deferred; don’t give up if this is what you truly want! </p>
<p>@Jamesesesess; I don’t get it. I don’t watch the show D:</p>
<p>Watch this celebration from an admitted student to Chicago! It’s amazing!
<a href=“- YouTube”>- YouTube;
<p>^^^Haha this guy may want to join one of the dance organizations at UChicago!</p>
<p>lol got accepted but I’m going to upenn! thankful that the admissions process has been a breeze for me. :)</p>
<p>sorry @annwank - I guess I was confused because on an earlier post you said your daughter withdrew her application before decisions came out (on the 16th). I was hoping that somehow there was a glitch and although my son had withdrawn his application we could see his results. He is double legacy U of C and we were very curious. Though with the volume of talented and incredibly smart students that were deferred, I guess I’m glad we will never know…we will just assume he was accepted!</p>