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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Can someone please explain all the hate and nastiness on this thread?!

I hire / work with U of C grads and they are terrific.  The school is very nice. Anyone should be proud to send their kid there.[/quote]

It all started after a poster pointed out, truthfully, that chicago admit rate was 40% just 10 years ago. Go figure. [/quote]

No, in fact, the admissions rate 10 years ago was just under 28% [b]according to the link that PP posted[/b].  (Read the thread — not the URL).  Not that it should matter.  But if it does, recognize that 10 years ago the Common App was very new.  UChicago first accepted it for the class of 2012 (after it saw what the CA did for application numbers at Northwestern and Penn).  Basically, college admissions and demographics have changed dramatically over the past 10 years in ways that have benefited UChicago, which has always been an elite university but whose College has suffered lots of ups and downs over the years.  IMO, there’s certainly a Moneyball style game being played with Admissions, and UChicago started playing it very well after they hired a guy who learned/developed his strategy at Yale.  As a PP noted, to move up as far and as fast as UChicago has in the past few decades, you have to start out with excellent fundamentals (and, probably, being underrated or relatively unknown).  Same admissions guy, between the Yale and UChicago gigs, was very successful at RPI, but RPI isn’t headed to the top 10 anytime soon.[/quote]

[b]If you go beyond 10 years, you'll see that Chicago admit rate was significantly higher than 28%. [/b]This was part of the tightening of the admit trend. Also OP has expressed surprise that Chicago is losing students to Richmond or even to UVA. If you look at the historical admit ratio where Chicago used to hover around 40%, you'll be able to connect the dots. Chicago fans, not surprisingly, are refusing to see the connection, constantly pulling in Yale to the picture as if it has the same pedegree or historical reputation that Yale has. Any one familiar with chicago's marketing effort can easily see that Chicago and Yale's marketing strategies are very different.  Yale doesn't need to market itself. If Chicago were to stop it's WWE marketing strategy, it knows its admit rate will eplunge back down to the 40% level. [/quote]

Yes, I (the PP you’re responding to) am well aware of the fact that UofC had a 40% admit rate in the past 20 years.  In fact, it was in the high sixties when I was college/grad school-aged.  It was always the example I used to explain to kids that admissions rates weren’t an indicator of the quality of a school.

Reacting (in part) to the changing Admissions environment, UChicago has made significant investments (e.g in dorms, in Arts, in career advising/internships, and study abroad — even food services) to improve the quality of life for undergrads.  It’s also done a very good job of connecting kids to the city (bus/subway pass, free shuttle, ArtsPass with deep discounts to plays, museums, house field trips to neighborhoods, school events held at downtown locations, etc.).  So marketing/“gaming the system” isn't all that’s going on.  Basically, the University decided to invest in the College rather than treat it as an afterthought.

Re Yale.  Yeah, different pedigrees.  Historically, Yale was a rich kids’ school and UChicago was a smart kids’ school.  Now they’re starting to converge.  Yale’s reputation was based more on undergrads (and stronger domestically); UChicago’s rep was based more on faculty/grad schools (and stronger internationally).

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Various people in this thread have simply pointed to the obvious that there are surprisingly many students who would choose other schools over Chicago, and that much of the Chicago high stats are not what they purport to be. Isn't this everyone's job when attending college, to learn to be critical thinkers? Just not sure why all the hatred. Good for you u have kids attending Chicago. It is a fine school. 
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