<p>A few things:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Chicago is an elite, highly-ranked school, and elite, highly-ranked schools don’t get that way without some kind of strategic decision-making. Libby has emphasized the high school transcript as the most important component in one’s application. The idea that you can get into Chicago despite not having tippy-top credentials is somewhat apocryphal and doesn’t seem to have any truth to it besides speculation by well-meaning posters here on CC.</p></li>
<li><p>Not everybody who is an intellectual gets in. This has been true at least from my year (05-06) and probably before that. If you read my other post about what I did the day of my acceptance, you’ll know that one of my good friends who is quite intellectual (she can talk about Proust and Rand in the most endearing ways) was deferred EA and then rejected; my other good friend was rejected RD. Did Chicago make the right decision regarding my friends? No, to the extent that these are my friends, I love them, they wanted to go to school with me and I wanted to go to school with them, but yes to the extent that I do not think either one of them would be too happy here. My Proust friend is extremely self-directed, had a very spotty academic record, and is much more of an arts person (RISD came calling for her), and she’s quite happy at Bard; my other friend is doing well at CMU and studying medicine and business. I’m happy that the intellectual love has been spread around-- it reminds me that Chicago is not the only school in the country where you can find people who like obscure French movies and talking about random things. That makes me incredibly hopeful for those who do not have a chance to attend the U of C.</p></li>
<li><p>I believe that there are schools that are more holistic in the way they look at applicants. Chicago is just not one of them. These schools have sacrificed elite standing in USNWR in exchange for the opportunity to admit “real” students, and I think that’s incredible. I would say that schools that go beyond numbers include schools in Loren Pope’s book, “Colleges That Change Lives” (Reed, Beloit, Hampshire, etc.) and schools like Sarah Lawrence, Bates, Bryn Mawr, and Grinnell. These schools are small enough and have a small enough applicant pool that the ad coms can pay a lot of attention to who is applying, and I imagine that a prospective Chicagoan could probably find a lot to love about the schools listed in CTCL or the others I mentioned.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>I’m happy that a lot of you think so highly of the school and its philosophy as to also think that it makes the “right” admissions decisions, but it’s also important to remember that at the end of the day, we’re just a school that’s comparable to other elite schools, not Mother Teresa or Gandhi or Martin Luther King. I’m flattered that you think so highly of the U of C, but honestly to put us on a pedestal that way is to set yourself up for major disappointment!</p>