“U. Chicago’s decision to move to ED essentially was an admission that they could not compete with those schools for the best students”
Could be. Without being part of the board’s decision making, we’ll never know. But I suspect a larger factor was to help in the self-selection process for applicants. Within the very recent past, UChicago was known as a school where the ultra-intelligent weirdos who were more interested in talking about science than socializing and who wanted to win a Fields medal rather than be a politician went. The facilities were grubby and not much attention was paid to safety, which meant the surroundings discouraged the “nonserious”. That grubby, slightly dangerous campus where intellect was prized above all else was part of why the admit rate was so high - students self-selected and only those that really yearned for that weird and aggressively academic atmosphere without caring if they might be mugged on the way to class with their Nobel winning professor applied in the first place. People who cared more about how things looked or that the dorms were pretty or that they’d possibly be roommates with the next President instinctively knew that this was not the place for them… they should apply elsewhere. Truly passionate, weird academics didn’t care about any of that stuff and were drawn to UChicago’s mysterious Nobel nerd scent like flies to honey.
With the rising interest in things like USNWR rankings and the internet, things have changed. Now it’s not just the ultra nerdy who hear about and are drawn to UChicago. Since it’s currently ranked #3 on the USNWR list, all sorts of students are now interested, most of whom wouldn’t have even heard about it in the past much less considered applying. At the same time, the University has made a concerted effort to update the dorms and other facilities, including purchasing more “buffer zone” land and buildings and hugely increasing private security. The efforts have been successful and now UChicago appears to be not just visibly safe, but beautiful, with a mix of sparkly new facilities and gorgeously maintained classic buildings. The spiffing up combined with the USNWR ranking is attracting a new type of students, which frankly traditionalist UChicago alums, professors and leaders are not sure they want to attract. In general, they don’t want the nonserious social climbers who would chew off their left arm to go to Harvard because their roommate might be the next president and are only applying to UChicago because it’s a top 5 school. They still want the brilliant types who want UChicago for what it is. ED is one way to separate the prestige seekers from those that really want to be at UChicago. And there are enough fantastically talented, top students who prize a UChicago education over any other that they are easily attracting enough tip top students to fill their class multiple times over just in the ED rounds. It’s a big, big country and not all top students want the same thing.
(BTW, I don’t personally agree with 100% of those beliefs, just reiterating my understanding of the position as I understand it from reading the UChicago subboard and the Uni literature.)
Sorry about the mixed/awkward phrasing regarding the preference of flies. I originally wrote what flies are truly drawn to but it just seemed so icky. Honey sounded better, but I forgot to change flies to bees.
Although I guess if we’re going with the weird UChicago thing, maybe the UChicago flies were mostly drawn to honey because of some obscure reason and they just didn’t give a damn whether the bees liked it or not…
Chicago’s reputation does set it apart much like MIT and Caltech from HYPS. From my observation top students either do SCEA at HYPS or do a Trio–MIT/Caltech/UChicago EA, though the later involves a lot of work in EA round.
@milee30 I think your metaphor was correct. That is why you can catch more flies with honey. On the other hand, bees are not actually attracted to honey. They are attracted to the nectar which they use to make honey.
Plenty of strong students may prefer LACs to larger universities, but generally not top STEM kids.
This is overwhelmingly true in mathematics. Take a look at the Putnam, which will sweep up practically every mathematically talented college student in North America. You have to go back to 1985 to find an individual top-5 finisher from an LAC (Williams College), and all the way to the early 1970s before you find a top-5 team (a few appearances by Swarthmore or Oberlin). No extremely strong math kid is looking at LACs as a first choice these days.
“Chicago’s reputation does set it apart much like MIT and Caltech from HYPS. From my observation top students either do SCEA at HYPS or do a Trio–MIT/Caltech/UChicago EA,”
Yes, and…
Yes, UChicago, MIT and CalTech attract top students. But I think other colleges, do, too. There are so many thousands and thousands of top students and so many awesome schools that are great for different reasons, why would we think that “top” students would only be drawn to a few schools? It just seems so odd to think every single top student wants, prioritizes, values the same thing.
There are top students applying ED to UChicago. And IMHO there are top students applying ED to a wide range of fantastic schools from Columbia to UMich to Rice to Duke … each has their own flavor and their own draw that attracts TOP students, not just leftovers from a few colleges. It’s so dismissive and disrespectful to those students when people act like they are all just Harvard wanna bes, when the truth is that many of them truly, madly deeply loved their first choice and felt it was the best fit for them. That’s not saying they hate Harvard and would spit on it rather than attend. But is it really so controversial to think there are some top students who have a first choice other than Harvard or the very few we’ve been mentioning?
True, but if they are super confident about their chances they could have done EA. And the beauty of Chicago EA is that it lets you take three bites at the super selective schools–MIT, Caltech and UC in early round.
Maybe they don’t care about taking a bite at other schools because they want to go to Chicago first and foremost? Why is that so hard to fathom? Not everyone is chasing super selective which BTW Chicago is.
Even for many STEM kids, places like Caltech and MIT aren’t that appealing. There are many STEM kids who want a different atmosphere, who might want to double major in STEM and art history, or STEM and philosophy, or who might be into STEM but are also a ballet dancer or some other interest or EC that is better served on another campus or location.
There’s a video on youtube from the MIT director of admissions where she states flat out it is more difficult to gain admission to MIT through EA rather than RD. She says in 2014, they received 6k applications EA. Because MIT will only fill up 30% of their class through EA, they were only going to accept 600 applicants (they also know their yield, so acceptance on that would be about 30% of the incoming class).
She states outright that they “only skim the best cream off the top” during EA and unless an applicant believes their application is as strong as it can be by the EA deadline - she recommends applying RD.
I would highly recommend watching the video if you have time to watch, it was incredibly enlightening and again goes to show that there is lots of information and transparency available if you are willing to look for it and are also willing to hear what is being said rather than what you might want to hear.
We are talking about “top high school students” here, right? The kids that I know of, who fit in that category, all believe that they have a decent chance of getting hefty merit scholarships, lot of them full ride in Feb. which is way pass the ED deadlines. They want to compare offers; that means they prefer an EA route to being locked in early.
If you believe vast majority of top students care about merit scholarships over $200k and ED option would eliminate them then it should not come as a surprise they all go for top EA schools in early round.
“The kids that I know of, who fit in that category, all believe that they have a decent chance of getting hefty merit scholarships”
And a lot of the kids I know of don’t chase merit at all because they don’t need to. Rich kids can be super smart, too. Or they are applying to meet full need schools and are content with that. Different strokes…
“If you believe vast majority of top students care about merit scholarships over $200k”
Honestly, I don’t buy that premise when many top schools are a good 50% full pay or close to it and are only need based.
Oh, wait, you know how 2 or 4 or even 100 “top students” in your particular area think and want? Then of course you know exactly what thousands and thousands of top students across the US think and want and it’s the exact same thing.
Yes, grandpa, you’re right - everybody really, really does secretly covet a Cadillac.
There are lots of practical middle class tippy-top students who opt for a great education at an LAC over HYPS not only because of the atmosphere but also because they qualify for large merit awards. When our “needs met” calculation at HYPS equaled 25% of annual income, opting for a great education offering a free merit ride was a good deal. My daughter did the Ivy tour and did not like any of them (although I loved Princeton) and when she crunched the numbers, competing for merit money at various LACs and elite state University Honors colleges made her much happier. Save the money for a “prestige” graduate school.
“And a lot of the kids I know of don’t chase merit at all because they don’t need to. Rich kids can be super smart, too.”
Families that do not care about $200k+ and would rather choose a school outside of top EA ones are indeed a very small percentage of households.
When most say “strong students”, they don’t mean at the rarity of the top 5 Putnam finishers. Looking at the list of the colleges with the the largest percentage of undergrad students being in the Putnam top 1-184 grouping last year, I get the order below, with 3 of the top 10 being LACs. If you look at total number of students, rather than % of students, then larger publics start appearing, like UCLA and Berkeley.
Interesting, @Data10. Stanford is notably absent. Surprised Yale is in there; it’s not often considered strong in undergraduate mathematics.
Could you post the raw numbers rather than just the rank ordering?
Not surprised about Harvey Mudd, although its being above Princeton is a little unexpected. But Harvey Mudd is not an LAC for these purposes in my opinion, despite the USNWR categorization. It is well represented even in top finishers in the source I linked.
@jzducol You are really over-generalizing. My anecdata is different. Most of the people I know who can easily afford $200k send their kids to UT, TAMU, SMU, and Texas Tech. Please stop generalizing based on the few people you know.
Many of the numbers are small enough that I’d expect a lot of random variation from year to year. I wouldn’t be surprised if Stanford is in the top 10 some years, and Yale out of the top 10 other years. This is especially true for LACs, with their low enrollment. This low enrollment also relates to why LACs can have a significant % of undergrads in top 1-184, but little chance of high team ranking.
@itsgettingreal17 I think you may have misunderstood my posts. I am talking about a choice between going to UT for free and spending $280k going to a school ED. Most families I believe would like to have a chance of weighing those options at least.
Let’s be intellectually honest. If some of these colleges are so desirable for the very top applicants, why do they need to lock in the applicants with ED and/or offer merit aid as incentive?