In the summer of 2024, the University of Chicago, one of the best universities in the county and an elite institution frequently cited as Ivy Adjacent, announced a new admissions option that will fundamentally change getting into the university. “Announced” is a mischaracterization, though, and a huge one. There wasn’t an announcement at all. Nothing on the admissions website. No press release. No blog post. Nothing.
It wasn’t until a small little note on the summer session page started trickling into the social media sphere that many people had even heard whisper of this change — let alone verification that it’s real. Well, it is. There is a new way into UChicago, and we’re going to break it down here.
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If you jumped away from this post to start searching the internet for the new University of Chicago path to admission and have returned confused and frustrated, we get it. This new option is a big deal, but they’ve introduced it with a trickle, not a splash. You have to dig around to even find it, and it’s easier to find posts on Reddit about it than the actual information page. This has led to a ton of misinformation that we’re going to dispel now.
First: The name. The new path to admission to the University of Chicago is called Summer Student Early Notification.
The only place, as of this writing, that you can find information about Summer Student Early Notification is here, on a page on the University of Chicago Summer Session website, tucked away and not at all highlighted. But what actually is this program? Let’s see.
The Summer Student Early Notification path to admissions is a clever way to do three things:
Increase demand for the summer session programs at the University of Chicago.
Increase demand for early decision admissions, potentially boosting the yield rate.
Decrease pressure on the undergraduate admissions department in the Early Decision cycle.
And this is how they are doing it.
Beginning in the fall of 2024, students who have participated in a UChicago Summer Session at any point in their high school career — not only the summer before senior year — are invited to apply to the University of Chicago on an expediated Early Decision track. There isn’t a special application, but instead of submitting your Early Decision application in time for the normal deadline, you would submit through the Common App between September 1 and October 15th.
The Common App will not have a specific designation for this admissions pathway, so it’ll look like you’re simply sending in your application super early. Except, they know to look at it early because you’ll also need to fill out and submit the Student Early Decision Agreement in the “Forms” section of the UChicago Account that you gain access to after submitting the main application through the Common App. Do not submit the Early Decision Agreement through the Common App in addition to this. We’ll explain why in a little bit.
If you’re asking, “but how will I have everything ready by October 15th?” that’s a fair question. First, you need to start early. We recommend that students begin their essays in July and their supplements when released (most often in August). Next, you need to talk to your school counselor fast. While UChicago will not require a school counselor letter, nor new teacher recommendations beyond those submitted for the summer session application, from applicants through the Early Notification program, we still highly recommend that you try to have them as part of your application.
Once all this is submitted, you will receive a decision from the University of Chicago within three weeks. This means that you could know if you are into UChicago before the Early Decision deadline for basically every other school that offers ED in the county. This is why you must not complete the Early Decision form for UChicago in the Common App.
If you complete and submit the Early Decision form for UChicago in the Common App as part of your early application and you do not get into UChicago, you will not be able to apply ED to another school. You're going to UChicago, congratulations. However, if you follow the instructions correctly, you could apply ED to another school after receiving your rejection from UChicago. Of course, you’ll be aiming for acceptance here, not rejection, but you need to know your options in advance, and this is a crucial part of the process.
Of course, all good things come with drawbacks, so it’s important to identify the challenges, and even potential negatives, of applying through the Summer Session Early Notification process.
First, you won’t get to send meaningful fall grades. You’ll have only been at school as a senior for a few weeks, so if you’re banking on boosting your academic profile through senior year performance, this track isn’t a good option for you.
The University of Chicago also doesn’t require new teacher recommendations for applicants pursuing this early track. Instead, they will consider the teacher recommendations for the summer session applications. If you feel like that recommendation may have been weak, you’re stuck with it.
The final drawback may be the most important: cost. The UChicago Summer Sessions are expensive. While financial aid is available, most families balk at the price. This may be the big reason why UChicago has introduced this new path to admission. Now, you aren’t just paying for a summer session, but also for a potential increase in your chance of admission as an undergraduate.
If you are passionate about UChicago and it is your first choice of school, there are more pros than cons to the Summer Session Early Notification option, though. We can’t know what the boost in acceptance rate is yet, as there aren’t any stats (and it’s likely none will be made available even when they could be calculated). It’s possible, even that there is no increase in the rate of acceptance for students in the SSEN track…but that’s unlikely. We expect to see a higher rate of admission for students in the SSEN track than standard EDI applicants.
The next benefit is certainty. Through this track, you know if UChicago is in your future by the first week of November. We appreciate the clarity that provides if you end up needing to rethink your college application plans.
The last benefit that we can see right now, before we’ve even had an admissions cycle with this option, is that the SSEN track does not change aid eligibility. You will not lose out on academic support because of applying in what is functionally Early Early Decision.
Our overall assessment of the Summer Session Early Notification option is that this is an amazing option if you’ve already done a Summer Session program, and may be a reason to considering doing one in the future — but we don’t know whether this option will stick around, so you shouldn’t do a Summer Session only because you want a boost for undergraduate admissions to UChicago. As with everything, it needs to be part of a bigger strategy that keeps your goals and passions at its center.
If you’re a rising senior considering UChicago, or a rising Junior wondering if you should plan on a Summer Session next year, get in touch.