<p>Sam Lee, I am at Chicago and you are not at Chicago. You would not know the kids who “call it a day” after an EA application, as they are all at Chicago. Duh.</p>
<p>Certainly I have no evidence to support that “more than a handful” of kids applied to Chicago and only Chicago EA, though it would be interesting to look at how many Chicago EA admits end up attending. These numbers too, get tricky, considering that many also combine EA Chicago and ED elswhere. Even if Chicago is tied for number one, after an ED admittance, the opportunity to attend Chicago disappears.</p>
<p>I don’t know what argument I am trying to make here, other than Chicago remains attractive to enough students that, provided they can afford it, choose to attend without filing any more applications. This was true for me and it was true for at least four of my good friends whom I’ve bothered to ask, and I believe it was true for some of the 2011ers on this forum. </p>
<p>However, that in itself doesn’t mean much. A lot of students only really discover Chicago after admittance and visiting the school-- they apply to it as a “maybe” and, upon visiting, that “maybe” turns into an “absolutely.” </p>
<p>As a high school senior, it’s so difficult to determine what you want, anyway. Had I had the chance to redo my college applications, I probably would have applied to schools RD along with Chicago EA, not because I like Chicago less, but because I shouldn’t have limited myself. I knew for sure that I liked Chicago more than any other of the superelite schools, and the superelite schools were the only ones that were in my range of sight at the time. If I were to do it all over again, I would have applied to would have been the likes of Bryn Mawr College, Oberlin College, Carleton College, Reed College. and Colorado College RD. These are colleges I only became familiar with long after my deposit to Chicago was sent and colleges I would have probably liked less than Chicago had I attended, but colleges that nonetheless offer a distinct intellectual experience similar to what I like so much about Chicago.</p>