Yes, we were REA and were deferred to regular admissions

by MattG, Friday, April 10, 2026, 11:37 (9 days ago) @ Jay
edited by MattG, Friday, April 10, 2026, 18:11

Ultimately, it is a numbers game. There are going to be 3300 students offered admission (with about 2200 accepting), and about 50% of those are going to be women. So there are ~1650 admission offers left for men.

40% of the class (1,320 students) were people of color or international students. Presuming that the 40% enrollment was a target and an equivalent # of offers were made, and half of those 40% were men, then another 20% of the original 3300 offers (660) were not available, leaving right around 1000 spots.

Then there was the geographic imposition. 35% of the class was from the Midwest, and assuming that was a target/limitation, basically there were 350 possible offers available for D, full stop.

That said, based on the overall stats of the 2200 students eventually admitted, he had better scores than more 75%, or 270 of that 350, while taking a substantially more difficult course load.

Now - REA students probably trend toward the top 2 quartiles of scores for the eventually admitted students... but given that they are 1,724 of the 2,200 ultimately admitted (78% of the class), the math shows that almost the entire two median quartiles were likely comprised of REA admits, and several were in the bottom quartile.

So it's not like D got blown away by more qualified REA admits - that's simply not possible based on their large number, and what we know about the scores of who was eventually admitted.

However - It could be that the 1,724 REA applicants who got offers and were admitted in 2024 were 1) dramatically overrepresented by top-quartile Midwestern male applicants, and 2) resulted in all 350 of those male-majority-midwest offers being used up by top 15% students. (This seems unlikely, given that the top 15% highest scoring offered students was like ~500 students, so what are the odds that 70% of them were midwest white males?)

But if that were the case, then D was simply not admissible in the standard process, regardless of how he stack-ranked against the remaining applicants.

If those 350 offers were used up in REA, then there were only 1700 remaining offers to the class to be filled (aiming to yield only another 500 students to bring the total to 2200), and demographics and geography were primary drivers ... then D simply could not be offered even if he was the single most qualified remaining applicant.

(But we happen to know 2 Chicagoland white male students from our immediate area who WERE offered in the regular admission cycle, and neither had D's test scores or AP credentials. So it can't be THAT cut and dried. But it could be close.)

TLDR - there has to be something more than "well we kinda just flipped a coin and yours came up tails 270 consecutive times". I'm guessing that his essay was not well received, or that we were not seen as a family that supported the university an appropriate amount.

Also, for the 2024 cycle they stated that test scores were optional and that the admissions process had the discretion to ignore them as needed. Which may have made the essay even more critical. D's was about working with undocumented kids, and someone who read the essay may have just hated that. Could have been anything.