Chicago's new Provisional Acceptance program

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Duke has ED and RD.
Princeton has single-choice early action and RD.

Chicago has SSEN or ED0, ED1, EA, ED2, RD and now provisional acceptance. Is it all just a game to them?

Yes, it's game theory, don't hate the players, hate the game (admissions process). For the home of Economics, this is what they do, I admire it, super smart to match university/student. This is an intellectual approach of matching, from one of the most intellectual places. For those that don't know, game theory is the mathematical study of strategic interactions between rational decision-makers. This is what every college should be doing. They are just outsmarting you lol

You don't know what game theory is, do you?

The problem is that Chicago is not transparent, esp. re EA (which has an acceptance rate near 0% and is merely a mechanism to get more applications/ try to get those students to switch to ED 2.

It's the lack of transparency that people (ok, me) resent.

PP isn't entirely wrong. UChicago is just playing the hand it was dealt with; they would lose kids to top Ivys if competing for them without these tactics. They have to use gamesmanship to get as many full pay, smart kids through the door as possible, which they appear to be doing successfully. And none of this detracts from the fact that the school is truly a great research university. If anything, their strategy will likely pay dividend with a robust alumni base in the future. Also, having a school where the admissions outcome for a bright, high stat kid is more predictable than some isn't a bad thing. With so much criticism lobbed at UChicago, perhaps its worth scrutinizing others as well.

I fully agree with you. Always surprised how the same people who dump on UChicago have no issues with Princeton and Brown accepting athletes with 1200 SAT scores (yes, you can see that on Scoir!).

There is a vast difference between accepting a few athletic recruits with low test scores and U Chicago accepting so many students ED that they have the highest yield in the USA. Do you really think that U Chicago attracts more fervent admirers than HYPS or is U Chicago just taking advantage of nervous students who want to get in “somewhere good” and are willing to give up their choices for a large admissions preference from Chicago

Well that’s cute that you believe it’s just a few athletes with low test scores. Many of the top schools fill more than 3/4 of the class with their priority candidates - VIPs, athletes, legacies, etc. As for taking advantage of kids? Stop with the victim mentality. These are mostly well off kids with high stats and with the ability to decide how to play the game. You can’t whine just because one school thinks the applicants shouldn’t hold all the cards. What Chicago clearly wants is a match - they want you to want them and vice versa. Medical residency programs for example also do a variation of this. And lastly, Chicago is not just “somewhere good” - it’s somewhere great. All the belly aching about one school using a different strategy for admissions is ridiculous. Move on. Or go complain about Yale admissions with its love for field hockey and lacrosse recruits or Duke with it legacy ones. Spread the whine elsewhere.

Yes, they want well-off kids. So they provide add’l avenues to acceptance for those with money.

I agree with the PP: it’s a very good school that plays games with admissions to maximize yield of wealthy students while talking all about how much they care about mental and emotional well-being.

As far as well-off kids are concerned, the UChicago demographics is not any different than Duke’s. (Take a look at their respective common datasets).

And yet Duke can achieve the same without the admissions games. Why is that?

Well, Duke can’t do an ED -18. It would come off as too elitist. Chicago is about merit; ED is a great way for Chicago to ensure that top, high stats kids can be admitted to a top school. Newborns can be tested; if they are high stats in grasping etc. they should have a way to apply ED -18 to Chicago.

Duke is all about $$$, started way back, do you not know this, it was revealed in a book The Price of Admission. This is a huge scam.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Duke has ED and RD.
Princeton has single-choice early action and RD.

Chicago has SSEN or ED0, ED1, EA, ED2, RD and now provisional acceptance. Is it all just a game to them?

Yes, it's game theory, don't hate the players, hate the game (admissions process). For the home of Economics, this is what they do, I admire it, super smart to match university/student. This is an intellectual approach of matching, from one of the most intellectual places. For those that don't know, game theory is the mathematical study of strategic interactions between rational decision-makers. This is what every college should be doing. They are just outsmarting you lol

You don't know what game theory is, do you?

The problem is that Chicago is not transparent, esp. re EA (which has an acceptance rate near 0% and is merely a mechanism to get more applications/ try to get those students to switch to ED 2.

It's the lack of transparency that people (ok, me) resent.

PP isn't entirely wrong. UChicago is just playing the hand it was dealt with; they would lose kids to top Ivys if competing for them without these tactics. They have to use gamesmanship to get as many full pay, smart kids through the door as possible, which they appear to be doing successfully. And none of this detracts from the fact that the school is truly a great research university. If anything, their strategy will likely pay dividend with a robust alumni base in the future. Also, having a school where the admissions outcome for a bright, high stat kid is more predictable than some isn't a bad thing. With so much criticism lobbed at UChicago, perhaps its worth scrutinizing others as well.

I fully agree with you. Always surprised how the same people who dump on UChicago have no issues with Princeton and Brown accepting athletes with 1200 SAT scores (yes, you can see that on Scoir!).

There is a vast difference between accepting a few athletic recruits with low test scores and U Chicago accepting so many students ED that they have the highest yield in the USA. Do you really think that U Chicago attracts more fervent admirers than HYPS or is U Chicago just taking advantage of nervous students who want to get in “somewhere good” and are willing to give up their choices for a large admissions preference from Chicago

Well that’s cute that you believe it’s just a few athletes with low test scores. Many of the top schools fill more than 3/4 of the class with their priority candidates - VIPs, athletes, legacies, etc. As for taking advantage of kids? Stop with the victim mentality. These are mostly well off kids with high stats and with the ability to decide how to play the game. You can’t whine just because one school thinks the applicants shouldn’t hold all the cards. What Chicago clearly wants is a match - they want you to want them and vice versa. Medical residency programs for example also do a variation of this. And lastly, Chicago is not just “somewhere good” - it’s somewhere great. All the belly aching about one school using a different strategy for admissions is ridiculous. Move on. Or go complain about Yale admissions with its love for field hockey and lacrosse recruits or Duke with it legacy ones. Spread the whine elsewhere.

Yes, they want well-off kids. So they provide add’l avenues to acceptance for those with money.

I agree with the PP: it’s a very good school that plays games with admissions to maximize yield of wealthy students while talking all about how much they care about mental and emotional well-being.

As far as well-off kids are concerned, the UChicago demographics is not any different than Duke’s. (Take a look at their respective common datasets).

And yet Duke can achieve the same without the admissions games. Why is that?

Well, Duke can’t do an ED -18. It would come off as too elitist. Chicago is about merit; ED is a great way for Chicago to ensure that top, high stats kids can be admitted to a top school. Newborns can be tested; if they are high stats in grasping etc. they should have a way to apply ED -18 to Chicago.

Duke is all about $$$, started way back, do you not know this, it was revealed in a book The Price of Admission. This is a huge scam.

Seriously, you all haven't read this book?? How can you ever say a bad thing about UChicago, when all the other top 20s are so much worse, you need to get a grip...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If Chicago is such an amazing school, why are they so desperate for students?

I don't think they are desperate for any students. I do think that they are competing with Ivies and other Ivy+ for very bright, motivated students.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If Chicago is such an amazing school, why are they so desperate for students?

Well, Chicago is not desperate for any student. We just want to maintain metrics so that our ranking doesn’t fall out of top 20.

By "metrics" do you mean yield?

[Anonymous]

The Price of Admission is a 2005 investigative book by Pulitzer winner Daniel Golden, revealing how wealth, connections, and privilege secure spots at elite universities like Harvard, Brown, Notre Dame, and Duke (as detailed in the Project MUSE snippet). It's not a textbook but a critical look at admissions favoring legacies, donors, and the well-connected, exposing the myth of pure meritocracy in America's top schools, including unfair practices against Asian Americans.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There is a poster (or posters) on there who now call anyone who posts about Chicago admissions practices as a "Chicago hater."

None of us hate Chicago. The simply do a lot of things with admissions that are not done by other top20 schools:

-ED0
-practice of regularly taking middle-of-the-pack kids who apply ED from some private high schools
-new guaranteed transfer program (which has been done for years by Cornell)

ED0 was not middle of the pack kids. Where do you get this information?

You didn't read my post correctly. I did not say that ED0 is always middle-of-the-pack kids.
What I said is that one of Chicago's admissions idiosyncrasies (of the 3 I listed) is to regularly take middle-of-the-pack kids from SOME top private high schools if the kids apply ED1 or ED2. There are a few of these schools DMV (Sidwell, STA, NCS, Potomac) where this is the case. This is not to say that every kid who goes to Chicago from these school is middle-of-the-pack as some are very top kids who choose Chicago. But they will also very regularly take kids who are surprisingly not near the top of the class if they apply early. None of the other top20 colleges do this and it's well known within these highschool communities.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There is a poster (or posters) on there who now call anyone who posts about Chicago admissions practices as a "Chicago hater."

None of us hate Chicago. The simply do a lot of things with admissions that are not done by other top20 schools:

-ED0
-practice of regularly taking middle-of-the-pack kids who apply ED from some private high schools
-new guaranteed transfer program (which has been done for years by Cornell)

ED0 was not middle of the pack kids. Where do you get this information?

You didn't read my post correctly. I did not say that ED0 is always middle-of-the-pack kids.
What I said is that one of Chicago's admissions idiosyncrasies (of the 3 I listed) is to regularly take middle-of-the-pack kids from SOME top private high schools if the kids apply ED1 or ED2. There are a few of these schools DMV (Sidwell, STA, NCS, Potomac) where this is the case. This is not to say that every kid who goes to Chicago from these school is middle-of-the-pack as some are very top kids who choose Chicago. But they will also very regularly take kids who are surprisingly not near the top of the class if they apply early. None of the other top20 colleges do this and it's well known within these highschool communities.

Seriously? Go talk to your low end of the pack athletes at Harvard or Yale, give me a break. There was a girl bragging online about her 1370 and Yale acceptance in 2025, and she wasn't an athlete. I am sure these HM or HW students didn't have that score...this is not a UChicago problem.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There is a poster (or posters) on there who now call anyone who posts about Chicago admissions practices as a "Chicago hater."

None of us hate Chicago. The simply do a lot of things with admissions that are not done by other top20 schools:

-ED0
-practice of regularly taking middle-of-the-pack kids who apply ED from some private high schools
-new guaranteed transfer program (which has been done for years by Cornell)

ED0 was not middle of the pack kids. Where do you get this information?

You didn't read my post correctly. I did not say that ED0 is always middle-of-the-pack kids.
What I said is that one of Chicago's admissions idiosyncrasies (of the 3 I listed) is to regularly take middle-of-the-pack kids from SOME top private high schools if the kids apply ED1 or ED2. There are a few of these schools DMV (Sidwell, STA, NCS, Potomac) where this is the case. This is not to say that every kid who goes to Chicago from these school is middle-of-the-pack as some are very top kids who choose Chicago. But they will also very regularly take kids who are surprisingly not near the top of the class if they apply early. None of the other top20 colleges do this and it's well known within these highschool communities.

HAHAHA! Now THAT is funny.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There is a poster (or posters) on there who now call anyone who posts about Chicago admissions practices as a "Chicago hater."

None of us hate Chicago. The simply do a lot of things with admissions that are not done by other top20 schools:

-ED0
-practice of regularly taking middle-of-the-pack kids who apply ED from some private high schools
-new guaranteed transfer program (which has been done for years by Cornell)

ED0 was not middle of the pack kids. Where do you get this information?

You didn't read my post correctly. I did not say that ED0 is always middle-of-the-pack kids.
What I said is that one of Chicago's admissions idiosyncrasies (of the 3 I listed) is to regularly take middle-of-the-pack kids from SOME top private high schools if the kids apply ED1 or ED2. There are a few of these schools DMV (Sidwell, STA, NCS, Potomac) where this is the case. This is not to say that every kid who goes to Chicago from these school is middle-of-the-pack as some are very top kids who choose Chicago. But they will also very regularly take kids who are surprisingly not near the top of the class if they apply early. None of the other top20 colleges do this and it's well known within these highschool communities.

Seriously? Go talk to your low end of the pack athletes at Harvard or Yale, give me a break. There was a girl bragging online about her 1370 and Yale acceptance in 2025, and she wasn't an athlete. I am sure these HM or HW students didn't have that score...this is not a UChicago problem.

What we know is that, according to Harvard Westlake's public applicant data, Chicago takes unhooked kids with 3.2 gpa from HW.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There is a poster (or posters) on there who now call anyone who posts about Chicago admissions practices as a "Chicago hater."

None of us hate Chicago. The simply do a lot of things with admissions that are not done by other top20 schools:

-ED0
-practice of regularly taking middle-of-the-pack kids who apply ED from some private high schools
-new guaranteed transfer program (which has been done for years by Cornell)

ED0 was not middle of the pack kids. Where do you get this information?

You didn't read my post correctly. I did not say that ED0 is always middle-of-the-pack kids.
What I said is that one of Chicago's admissions idiosyncrasies (of the 3 I listed) is to regularly take middle-of-the-pack kids from SOME top private high schools if the kids apply ED1 or ED2. There are a few of these schools DMV (Sidwell, STA, NCS, Potomac) where this is the case. This is not to say that every kid who goes to Chicago from these school is middle-of-the-pack as some are very top kids who choose Chicago. But they will also very regularly take kids who are surprisingly not near the top of the class if they apply early. None of the other top20 colleges do this and it's well known within these highschool communities.

None of the other schools do that?! Only last year, at our DMV private, the following schools took kids who were not in the top 20 percent of the class: Dartmouth, Columbia, UPenn, Cornell, Vanderbilt. Note that UChicago is not on that list: all admits were in the top 10.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There is a poster (or posters) on there who now call anyone who posts about Chicago admissions practices as a "Chicago hater."

None of us hate Chicago. The simply do a lot of things with admissions that are not done by other top20 schools:

-ED0
-practice of regularly taking middle-of-the-pack kids who apply ED from some private high schools
-new guaranteed transfer program (which has been done for years by Cornell)

ED0 was not middle of the pack kids. Where do you get this information?

You didn't read my post correctly. I did not say that ED0 is always middle-of-the-pack kids.
What I said is that one of Chicago's admissions idiosyncrasies (of the 3 I listed) is to regularly take middle-of-the-pack kids from SOME top private high schools if the kids apply ED1 or ED2. There are a few of these schools DMV (Sidwell, STA, NCS, Potomac) where this is the case. This is not to say that every kid who goes to Chicago from these school is middle-of-the-pack as some are very top kids who choose Chicago. But they will also very regularly take kids who are surprisingly not near the top of the class if they apply early. None of the other top20 colleges do this and it's well known within these highschool communities.

Seriously? Go talk to your low end of the pack athletes at Harvard or Yale, give me a break. There was a girl bragging online about her 1370 and Yale acceptance in 2025, and she wasn't an athlete. I am sure these HM or HW students didn't have that score...this is not a UChicago problem.

What we know is that, according to Harvard Westlake's public applicant data, Chicago takes unhooked kids with 3.2 gpa from HW.

I hate to be a bubble burster but I would take a HW kid over a rando public beyond inflated 4.0 anyday. Most publics are a joke.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There is a poster (or posters) on there who now call anyone who posts about Chicago admissions practices as a "Chicago hater."

None of us hate Chicago. The simply do a lot of things with admissions that are not done by other top20 schools:

-ED0
-practice of regularly taking middle-of-the-pack kids who apply ED from some private high schools
-new guaranteed transfer program (which has been done for years by Cornell)

ED0 was not middle of the pack kids. Where do you get this information?

You didn't read my post correctly. I did not say that ED0 is always middle-of-the-pack kids.
What I said is that one of Chicago's admissions idiosyncrasies (of the 3 I listed) is to regularly take middle-of-the-pack kids from SOME top private high schools if the kids apply ED1 or ED2. There are a few of these schools DMV (Sidwell, STA, NCS, Potomac) where this is the case. This is not to say that every kid who goes to Chicago from these school is middle-of-the-pack as some are very top kids who choose Chicago. But they will also very regularly take kids who are surprisingly not near the top of the class if they apply early. None of the other top20 colleges do this and it's well known within these highschool communities.

Seriously? Go talk to your low end of the pack athletes at Harvard or Yale, give me a break. There was a girl bragging online about her 1370 and Yale acceptance in 2025, and she wasn't an athlete. I am sure these HM or HW students didn't have that score...this is not a UChicago problem.

What we know is that, according to Harvard Westlake's public applicant data, Chicago takes unhooked kids with 3.2 gpa from HW.

JHU only takes 3.8+ gpa band from HW. Who is a real T10, it's clear.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There is a poster (or posters) on there who now call anyone who posts about Chicago admissions practices as a "Chicago hater."

None of us hate Chicago. The simply do a lot of things with admissions that are not done by other top20 schools:

-ED0
-practice of regularly taking middle-of-the-pack kids who apply ED from some private high schools
-new guaranteed transfer program (which has been done for years by Cornell)

ED0 was not middle of the pack kids. Where do you get this information?

You didn't read my post correctly. I did not say that ED0 is always middle-of-the-pack kids.
What I said is that one of Chicago's admissions idiosyncrasies (of the 3 I listed) is to regularly take middle-of-the-pack kids from SOME top private high schools if the kids apply ED1 or ED2. There are a few of these schools DMV (Sidwell, STA, NCS, Potomac) where this is the case. This is not to say that every kid who goes to Chicago from these school is middle-of-the-pack as some are very top kids who choose Chicago. But they will also very regularly take kids who are surprisingly not near the top of the class if they apply early. None of the other top20 colleges do this and it's well known within these highschool communities.

Seriously? Go talk to your low end of the pack athletes at Harvard or Yale, give me a break. There was a girl bragging online about her 1370 and Yale acceptance in 2025, and she wasn't an athlete. I am sure these HM or HW students didn't have that score...this is not a UChicago problem.

What we know is that, according to Harvard Westlake's public applicant data, Chicago takes unhooked kids with 3.2 gpa from HW.

JHU only takes 3.8+ gpa band from HW. Who is a real T10, it's clear.

Yes, because they want robots, duh.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There is a poster (or posters) on there who now call anyone who posts about Chicago admissions practices as a "Chicago hater."

None of us hate Chicago. The simply do a lot of things with admissions that are not done by other top20 schools:

-ED0
-practice of regularly taking middle-of-the-pack kids who apply ED from some private high schools
-new guaranteed transfer program (which has been done for years by Cornell)

ED0 was not middle of the pack kids. Where do you get this information?

You didn't read my post correctly. I did not say that ED0 is always middle-of-the-pack kids.
What I said is that one of Chicago's admissions idiosyncrasies (of the 3 I listed) is to regularly take middle-of-the-pack kids from SOME top private high schools if the kids apply ED1 or ED2. There are a few of these schools DMV (Sidwell, STA, NCS, Potomac) where this is the case. This is not to say that every kid who goes to Chicago from these school is middle-of-the-pack as some are very top kids who choose Chicago. But they will also very regularly take kids who are surprisingly not near the top of the class if they apply early. None of the other top20 colleges do this and it's well known within these highschool communities.

None of the other schools do that?! Only last year, at our DMV private, the following schools took kids who were not in the top 20 percent of the class: Dartmouth, Columbia, UPenn, Cornell, Vanderbilt. Note that UChicago is not on that list: all admits were in the top 10.

This is Holton, right? Well the Darmouth, Columbia, UPenn kids were all URM or pretended to be. The Vanderbilt kid knew someone in admissions or on the board. I don't know about the Cornell kid.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If Chicago is such an amazing school, why are they so desperate for students?

Well, Chicago is not desperate for any student. We just want to maintain metrics so that our ranking doesn’t fall out of top 20.

Ranking has nothing to do with admissions rate (acceptance, yield, whatever.)