Читать книгу Accepted!. Secrets to Gaining Admission to the World's Top Universities онлайн

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University of Chicago wants to handbrake the spray-and-pray, copy/paste application essay strategy and force you to use your time to answer their truly cryptic prompts. I consider myself reasonably sharp holding several degrees in applied mathematics and have written academically in law school and doctoral programs but answering a question such as “what can actually be divided by zero” is very difficult. It is difficult by design. UChicago wants to force you to do a bunch of extra work that will only be relevant to their school. They do this so that they can shake off all the candidates who aren't that committed and who can't be bothered to write their complicated essays.

Between testing your willingness to “talk” through the difficult supplementary essays to testing your “action” through their binding admissions process, UChicago has mastered the game theory of admissions for a school that is highly prestigious but not considered in the upper echelons of competitive colleges. In doing so, they have shot up the rankings in recent years, artfully manipulating their yield rates and reading through the masses of college admits to find the kids who are really willing to commit. Good on them—but I hope for your sake that the other colleges don't copy UChicago!