To be clear, UChicago is not suggesting any manner of “special look” at the application. They are pitching a timing advantage/benefit.
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You are being quite generous!
Here’s what they say about an advantage for summer students. Obviously they are going to accept some students (all of whom attended a summer session) in this new round, but we will never know how it compares to other rounds.
Will applying through the SSEN option increase my chances of admission to UChicago?
This application option is best for students who, after spending time at UChicago, have identified UChicago as their absolute first choice and who will enroll if offered admission. UChicago reviews every application within the context of a student’s school, environment, and opportunities. The admissions committee considers a candidate’s entire application – academic and extracurricular records, essays, letters of recommendation, and optional testing – before an admissions decision is made. There’s no one piece of information that alone determines whether you would be a good fit for the College.
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So, if this is a “special” ED round, can kids still apply ED1 elsewhere if they don’t get in? Yet another statistical selectivity bump for UC.
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That’s a really good question that doesn’t have a clear answer. If the student has their U Chicago decision back by the ED 1 deadline, it would seem ok. BUT some counselors might not approve this (similar to some counselors not allowing a kid denied or deferred in Wake forest’a rolling ED.) Common app doesn’t easily handle this situation either, it requires a call into their staff to allow another ED 1 in effect.
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So obviously I don’t want to be argumentative, but there is actually something I am not really understanding that I am interested in seeing if we can clarify.
In our experience with the marketing for these programs when we were looking around, none suggested they would not consider the participants in the same way they would any other applicants should they end up applying. And I think most of them in some way or another suggested many participants might well want to apply. Like, the program we went with did in fact basically include a pitch sessions for that university, they explained how credit for the summer classes would work if you matriculated there, and so on. And I think there often was some sort of vague “do this program and maybe you will write a better why us essay” sort of vibe.
I suspect, though, you mean something else by a “serious look”. Like, not just that they will evaluate that applicant on even terms with other similar applicants as long as they are typically well-qualified, but actually that they will give some additional boost or such to the kids just because they did the program.
And I agree no program I know of actually promised any such thing. But the thing that I am confused about is Chicago is not actually doing that either. In fact, this in their FAQs:
Will applying through the SSEN option increase my chances of admission to UChicago?
This application option is best for students who, after spending time at UChicago, have identified UChicago as their absolute first choice and who will enroll if offered admission. UChicago reviews every application within the context of a student’s school, environment, and opportunities. The admissions committee considers a candidate’s entire application – academic and extracurricular records, essays, letters of recommendation, and optional testing – before an admissions decision is made. There’s no one piece of information that alone determines whether you would be a good fit for the College.
That is very vague. But there is a sneaky (sneaky in my view) implication in there, that bit about “there’s no one piece of information that alone determines where you would be a good fit for the College.” So is this implying that attending one of their programs IS one piece of such information, even if it won’t be enough on its own? If so, how big a piece?
But they didn’t actually say that, so maybe it means nothing at all.
Again, I’m not saying Chicago is the only college to ever do this sort of thing with its summer programs, but I don’t like it any time I see it. No promises, but nudge-nudge-wink-wink, but no promises . . . this sort of thing stresses out families and kids in ways I just don’t like.
And for the record, I doubt it ever REALLY is more than just possibly a good way of exploring that college up close. Meaning I really doubt they ever give any other sort of boost to people who do their program as opposed to some other program or anything else smart and ambitious kids do with their summers.
Edit: this ended up partially redundant–sorry!
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It is clearly intended that people would be able to apply ED1 elsewhere if they don’t get in. They say decisions will be back by Nov. 1.
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ED 0? Maybe ED -1?
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Many schools have 11/1 as their ED deadline. If UC doesn’t release until 11/1, that’s not enough time to submit another ED1 application especially since it would require GC support.
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It absolutely would be enough time. The kid would have to prepare the ED1 application ahead of time, to be sure. But GC’s don’t have to meet the same deadlines that the kids have to.
That was the implication… you’d get to REA as well.
My question is, what are results like? Will they defer or simply accept/reject? This likely has implications on what move the student can make next.
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My D’s old HS would have to completely change their policies to allow for a second ED1 application.
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They can’t have a policy on something that doesn’t exist, right? This is not applying to two ED1 schools….
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Depends on how common app is programming it. But, I have already heard counselors saying they won’t allow another ED1 (so they are considering it as ED1)
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I don’t like this because it seems like a tactic that other schools will adopt as well, creating a whole new round of application anxiety during junior year for students that decide to go these routes.
I half heartedly interviewed a college counselor even though my kid has already said she’s not having it. After explaining that kid is applying strictly to UCs, CSUs, a couple OOS flagships and maybe one or two LACs as safeties, the first thing the counselor did was try to steer me towards looking at schools that offer ED.
For the whole college counseling industry, this business model is catnip. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if this was developed with precisely that channel in mind.
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On that note, just a friendly reminder UChicago does quite terribly compared to other elite schools in terms of generosity of financial aid. Around 63% were full pay 21-22 and they’ve only recently just bothered to start publishing common data sets. (Princeton & MIT do about the best with about 40% full pay, which obviously doesn’t reflect society, but is significantly better).
I appreciate the used car salesman analogy - it works. The marketing we got from that school was obscene. There has been ongoing news they have had financial woes in recent years. One could draw conclusions about choices like this.
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Worth noting that every time I visit this thread, I get a blocker-proof pop-up ad for UChicago. It’s the only school I’ve seen this from so far. It does rather illustrate the point. I wonder what UChicago’s annual budget for prospective-undergraduate advertising adds up to. At least they’re supporting College Confidential’s bottom line, I guess.
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Chicago can’t be super generous with financial aid, it doesn’t have the resources. Their endowment per student is $577,000, whereas Princeton’s is $4 million per student.
$577,000 is decent, and better than most schools. But it’s a far cry from the elite schools with whom Chicago tries to position itself. Harvard’s is $2 million, as are Yale’s and MIT’s. Even LACs like Williams, Amherst, Bowdoin, Swarthmore (schools I’d previously looked up) are $1.5 million plus per student.
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Very true. Still, a number of other elite schools do fine with this level of endowment. UChicago’s neighbor, Northwestern, is at $563K/student, and yet they give pretty generous aid and manage not to behave like the “We’ve been trying to reach you about your car’s extended warranty” people. (They do give a pretty big ED bump, though.)
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This is interesting. Everything I have read about UChicago is how less generous they are with financial aid packages yet during my son’s admissions cycle, they were definitely more generous that Northwestern.