<p>I read that statistic in 2005, it must have dropped. How could it sink so low?</p>
<p>Here is an interesting article on Chicago athletics and academics.</p>
<p><a href=“http://maroon.uchicago.edu/online_edition/news/2004/11/09/university-athletics-department-picks-brains-over-brawn/[/url]”>http://maroon.uchicago.edu/online_edition/news/2004/11/09/university-athletics-department-picks-brains-over-brawn/</a></p>
<p>thanks for the links idad! i enjoyed both even though i couldnt care less about all this sport talk.</p>
<p>“My guidance counselor saw both applicants entire profile, including essays and recs, and she told me that the primary reason the boy got in was because he played football.”</p>
<p>Your guidance counselor wasn’t on the admissions committee, no?</p>
<p>if I was agreeing with her I wouldn’t have made the thread, no?</p>
<p>Thanks for the sports article idad, I saw the other article in another thread.</p>
<p>“I’m not sure playing football at Chicago is all that much of a hook. The coach can send a letter of support, but does not get to choose players.”</p>
<p>While this is true, I’ve also heard a lot about Chicago making a real effort to diversify applicants and this includes recruiting heavily for sports. I know the coach of my track team was aggressively recruiting a lot of kids, so their admissions priorities might have shifted in recent years (or for one particular year, if they lost a large number of seniors for example).</p>
<p>hmmm, I didn’t think of that, thanks.</p>
<p>I guess I was fixated on the idea that chicago’s only priority was academics.</p>
<p>“what kind of pieces make up the mosaic?”</p>
<p>If you go back and read the decisions results for your schools of interest, you can get a little bit of a feel for this. If you are, say, an azure ceramic tile from the east coast, its fine to apply to schools that are popular with azure ceramic tiles … just put in a couple of app’s where eastern azure tiles are a bit less common. </p>
<p>I think that one of the traps that it is very easy to fall into is to try to figure out what Chicago - or any school - wants, and sort of reverse-engineer the application to match. One of the dangers of doing so is losing your own, authentic voice within your application. If you are a wonderful azure tile, you need to present yourself well - brush off the dust, clean of the groat, point out the sparkly gold and copper flakes in your glaze … but don’t present yourself as a red earthernware tile if you are not one.</p>
<p>I am liking the tile metaphor more and more now</p>
<p>lol, smirkus… thanks ohio_mom, I wasn’t planning on manipulating an essay or anything; I just want to know which of my strengths and weaknesses are important to mention. Maybe something I see as a strength, UChicago thinks is a weakness. If I found out it was a weakness I could always mention why I think it’s a strength.</p>
<p>No, no, grasshopper, what you think is what matters. Watch Kung-Fu reruns this summer and <em>believe</em> in yourself. Give yourself time to write your essays, and have someone you trust read them - mainly to verify that you don’t lose the reader somewhere along the line.</p>
<p>Weaknesses in the form of less than stellar GPA or board scores can’t be erased … but sometimes they can be trumped by other factors. Remember that in is going to take an adcom maybe all of 2 minutes to evaluate your application’s numbers: scores, gpa, rank. If those aren’t hopeless, the rest of the application will take longer to review. </p>
<p>If Chicago is at the top of your list, I have another suggestion. Apply to a couple of other schools first. Your first app likely won’t be your best, and you always think of something to improve after hitting the submit button. But … Chicago should’nt be the last application - you will get sick of doing them after a while!</p>
<p>Football Average GPA’s</p>
<p>2004 3.21
2005 3.07
2006 3.04</p>
<p>In 2006 the breakdown was 2.81 for rising sophomores, 3.11 for rising juniors and 3.02 for rising seniors</p>
<p>very interesting… so when they started recruiting is incredibly obvious now.</p>
<p>oh boy, reading that article makes me so uncertain, idad…</p>