I bet you weren't expecting this now! We are so early. Actually, we’re not early; we're hitting our target date, a rare enough occurrence around here. We are so good.
Here is how this will work. Your admissions decision is available on the online application. When you log in, you will see a message in a yellow box. When you click on it, you will see your official admissions decision. We also put all of the admissions decisions in the mail, so you can watch for an envelope.
Scholarship letters are not available online; you will have to wait for the mail for that. We mailed all scholarship notifications today as well. Please remember that only scholarship winners are informed, and that there is no waiting list for merit scholarships and no appeals will be heard. Financial aid will come in the mail later, but not until your financial aid credentials are all here. International students who received aid will get their aid information with their offers of admission.
We sent you emails in waves today. The first wave went to the East Coast, the last to the West Coast. The email is just to notify you that the decision is up.
Now I usually say a few words about being admitted and not being admitted and choosing the right school. Sometimes it’s a little sappy. Well, this year it’s going to be really sappy, because I just heard from all my schools, and now you, the biggest applicant group ever, are hearing from your schools, and it’s my last year in the admissions office. Working for students like you has been a privilege. Whenever I or my colleagues interact with current students, we realize that this school is an amazing place, and we’re so glad that such a place exists for people like them.
However, times have changed a bit--it is much harder to get in now. This year we saw more highly qualified and cooler applicants than ever. However, this year we can’t admit everyone we want, everyone who’s qualified, or even everyone who we just think is cool. We have to put a lot of them on the waiting list, and even deny some because there is just not enough room.
You know that we saw a 45 percent increase in early action applications. With the 10 percent increase in regular notification applications, the boost in applications leveled out to a 20 percent increase overall--12,300 applicants. We also admitted fewer students – around 3,400 instead of our usual 3,600. We put more students on the waiting list and hope to use it more than we did last year, the number to be determined by the kind of response we get by May 1.
Students should never take admissions decisions personally. Your personal worth is not what we evaluated during the admissions process. We evaluated your accomplishments and writing, but we also evaluated the number of beds we have. I think that the deny letter I got from one of my schools on Monday (two denies in one day!) was one of the nicest I’ve read—it said that they were overwhelmed with the unprecedented number and quality of their applicants and had a lot of tough decisions to make. The same is true of us, and of any school that practices selective admissions. Even if they send that same letter every year, it made me happy to be reminded. We’re always overwhelmed by the quality of the applicants and happy that people are so interested in the school we work for. That 12,300 people would write an uncommon essay for us is a great honor.
On the other hand, sometimes you also get admitted. I was admitted to a few places, and got more money than I thought I deserved at a few as well. Schools that didn’t admit me (or you) don’t deserve more than a glance and an eye roll—it’s the ones who did admit us that count. Right now I’m visiting schools and trying to make my decision. I won’t just base it on money, though—I’ll be thinking about the rigor of the programs, how I feel on the campus and in the environment, whether the values of the school and faculty fit with mine, the type of support I’ll receive from faculty and staff, and all that stuff. And I’ll be sleeping on a few floors in the meantime.
Now, logistical stuff.
There is no need to call the office for your decision. We do not give decisions over the phone, by email, or any other way except for the letter in your online application, or in the mail. If for some reason you are unable to retrieve your decision online and do not receive it in the mail for a few weeks, we will resend it in the mail.
Wait listed applicants can reply to their wait list letter online this year. This is how you hold your spot on the waiting list – if you don’t reply, we’ll just assume you aren’t interested. Another great way to show interest is to contact your admissions counselor, as the letter says. Also make sure that you reply to another school’s offer of admission by May 1, with a deposit. If you are eventually admitted to the University of Chicago and you want to attend, you will have to forfeit that deposit, since it is most likely that we will only be using the waiting list after May 1.
This blog will keep running for a little while, so you can continue to talk to each other and we can post news for the wait listed applicants. However, people generally lose interest around April 15.
There is no appeals process for scholarships or decisions. There is no waiting list for merit scholarships – we’ve given out all that we will give out.
