The University of Chicago, along with 31 other private, nonprofit institutions of higher education, was named in a class action lawsuit filed August 8 alleging the schools had colluded to “reduce or eliminate competition through use of the early decision process.”
The complaint accuses the defendant schools of binding students to early decision offers—despite a lack of legal enforceability—by colluding to prevent students from receiving and considering offers from other schools. The practice has significantly increased tuition costs for students who choose to apply under the early decision model, the plaintiffs argue.
The lawsuit, filed by four current and former students from among the defendant schools, seeks to represent students who, over the past four years, were admitted through early decision to any of the named schools, as well as regular decision admits who did not receive financial aid. The plaintiffs seek a permanent injunction preventing future collaboration between schools during the early decision process, along with any damages the court might award.
This is not the first time UChicago has been sued over its application and financial aid practices. In 2022, the University agreed to pay $13.5 million to settle an antitrust lawsuit alleging that it had conspired with 16 other schools to limit financial aid awards.
According to U.S. News & World Report, inflation-adjusted tuition at private institutions of higher education has increased 41 percent on average since 2005, from $21,476 to $48,591.
Like all of the schools named in the lawsuit, UChicago offers several rounds during which applications can be submitted, which it distinguishes as either “binding” or “non-binding.” Although the University does not acknowledge it institutionally, early application rounds are generally understood to have higher acceptance rates than the regular decision round.
The Common Data Set, which UChicago contributes to annually, defines the early decision program as a “plan that permits students to apply and be notified of an admission decision (and financial aid offer if applicable) well in advance of the regular notification date.”
In addition to early decision, the University also offers “early action” applications, which are due at the same time as early decision but are presented as non-binding. UChicago also recently began offering the Summer Student Early Notification program, which gives students who participate in the University’s pre-college summer courses a fast-track application process independent of the early and regular decision rounds.
UChicago does not publish data on the number of early decision applications it receives, nor does it publish the number of applicants it admits under the early decision plan. The University’s overall acceptance rate for the Class of 2028 was 4.48 percent.
The students’ lawsuit hinges on the distinction between binding and non-binding admissions rounds. The plaintiffs allege that the defendant schools have created a “core misrepresentation” within their application materials, namely “that an agreement to apply Early Decision to a school is a binding agreement by which the student is prevented from considering competing offers from other colleges.”
The lawsuit names several current and former admissions officers who have publicly stated that the early decision application is not legally binding, despite representations to the contrary. Instead, plaintiffs argue that the binding nature of the decision is created by the “coordinated agreement” between institutions not to accept applicants who were accepted early decision at other schools and to represent the acceptance conditions as mandatory.
The University’s “Early Decision Agreement”—which must be signed by an applicant, their parent or guardian, and the applicant’s college counselor— states in bold: “If you are accepted under an Early Decision plan, you must immediately withdraw the applications submitted to other colleges and make no additional applications to any other college in any country.”
The agreement also states that students applying for financial aid “do not need to withdraw other applications” until they have received their aid package. However, the early nature of the offer prevents students from comparing aid from other schools and selecting the most competitive package.
On its website, the University says it “meets 100% of [a student’s] demonstrated financial need” throughout their four years in the College.
The plaintiffs contend that even when schools purportedly allow students to exit the agreement for financial reasons, “[f]ew students are willing to risk the potential consequences of not attending a school after Early Decision admittance.”
“[S]tudents face the risk of boycott by other schools’ collusive enforcement of the Early Decision agreement, the immediate loss of the acceptance in hand, and the lower probability of admission in the remaining Regular Decision application process,” the lawsuit reads.
The University did not respond to a request for comment by time of publication.
Alumn, Class of '25 / Sep 13, 2025 at 11:13 am
Mr. Whyte; you claim that your opinions are substantiated over Ms. Rivkis’ due to your commanding use of “facts,” yet the only “data point” you offer in the first paragraph is the University’s “overall” acceptance rate and admissions practices. This is the only fact underpinning your conclusion that “[the university] has not, nor at this rate will it ever, rival the Ivies and Oxbridges of the world.” But since (i) these are the only facts you gave, (ii) facts, you claim, are a prerequisite of “credibility”, and (iii) (presumably) your argument is credible, then you must be comparing the university to the “Ivies and Oxbridges of the world” solely based on acceptance rates and yield protections. But if unmanipulated acceptance rates are sufficient measures of a University, what was the acceptance rate when you were admitted? Even without the yield protection, the University’s selectivity rate has increased over 10-fold in the past 20 years. I would think that would make you happy. I’ll also add that more objective research rankings like ARWU show that the university’s output has not changed with respect to its peers in over 20 years. Go look at it – decide for yourself whom Chicago is on par with and what that means.
I’m also confused about what you mean by “DEI.” Caltech, MIT, and CMU, until recently, all had “DEI” departments and practiced affirmative action. I notice they are also all renowned engineering-oriented schools. By “DEI” are you referring to schools with large humanities departments? That’s been true of Chiago for quite some time – certainly since you were an undergrad here. Go ahead and define what about Chicago uniquely makes it a “DEI funhouse,” please.
I apologize for not quoting you in longer contexts, but I wanted to keep this short. In the future, please be more precise with your terms, and do not use reasoning that can so easily be brought to absurdity – these habits erode your credibility (and my originality).
Natalie Shrock / Aug 21, 2025 at 5:39 am
I don’t know why Mr. Whyte is so full of rage and disdain. It seems likely that he’s salty because his alma mater rejected his kids.
GW / Aug 22, 2025 at 5:40 pm
I appreciate your concern. In fact, none of my children applied here. One attended MIT, the other CalTech, and the third CMU. I told them plainly that I would not bankroll enrollment at a DEI funhouse like the UC.
GW / Aug 22, 2025 at 7:57 pm
…what community college did your child attend?
George Whyte, AB MBA / Aug 15, 2025 at 12:55 pm
In my time, the U of C did not need to resort to contrivance to prove its value. As the article suggests, it now suppresses Early Decision admission data while parading a 4.48 percent “overall” rate—and for good reason. That figure is the product of deliberate manipulation: stuffing the class early with full-pay admits to inflate rankings and stabilize precarious finances. It has not, nor at this rate will it ever, rival the Ivies and Oxbridges of the world. It is too bogged down by incompetence and irrelevant scholarship (“intersectionality” or whatever they are calling it these days) .
The decline is inseparable from the suffocating influence of DEI ideology, which has displaced merit with demographic arithmetic. Early Decision already advantages the affluent; layered atop this is a preference for underqualified candidates who fit institutional optics. The result is a student body that is neither as capable nor as serious as it once was (I hear they are teaching remedial math and physics these days to accommodate under-qualified admits), but is instead curated for marketing campaigns.
The U of C is now a lost cause: an institution sliding toward bankruptcy, its reputation diluted, its graduate placements no longer worth the cost or the trouble. I have sent my own children elsewhere. The name carries less weight each year, and beneath the façade lies a middling product sold at a premium.
Naomi Rivkis / Aug 18, 2025 at 8:17 am
You do realize that the entire Common Core was created as a remedial program because students were not receiving the education in high school that Robert Maynard Hutchins thought was the minimum requisite before taking on serious scholarship, don’t you?
I’ve met a great many of the recent students, doing alumni interviews for the Admissions department. They’re substantially better scholars than the ones in my generation (BA ’91), and according to my father (BA ’67) those of my generation were better than his.
George Whyte / Aug 18, 2025 at 10:58 pm
Naomi, the Core was never conceived as “remedial” in the pejorative sense; it was and will forever be an intellectual scaffolding, meant to sharpen minds already admitted on the basis of genuine merit. To reduce it to a halfway house for underprepared students is a misreading so egregious it disqualifies you from serious discussion.
Your reliance on personal anecdotes—alumni interviews, family reminiscence—only underscores the poverty of your reasoning. “I’ve met students” and “my father says…” are not data points; they are sentimental diversions. You claim recent students are “better scholars” without a shred of evidence beyond your (questionable) impressions. It is precisely this conflation of opinion with analysis that erodes credibility. You have none.
anon / Aug 20, 2025 at 8:14 pm
My interpretation is that the Core was absolutely was created as a “remedial” course at least in part. As former Dean of the College John Boyer writes in his book on the Core (A Twentieth-century Cosmos: The New Plan and the Origins of General Education at Chicago), “Boucher was convinced that he had designed a system that would eliminate most of the glaring ills that Learned found evident in American higher education” (Boyer 11). One of its other purposes may have been to serve as “intellectual scaffolding,” but you can’t deny that it served as an equalizer given the unsteady and non-standardized high school education systems of the time period.
If you want something better than “random” anecdotal evidence, Boyer himself has noted a similar improvement of the student body’s intellectual capacity with every class (see the Chicago Maroon article “Where are all the ‘Real Chicago Intellectuals?'”). Putting that aside, the base requirements to enter any elite institution today, even one like UChicago, which admittedly tends to be a bit more lax with its evaluation of ED applicants, far surpass those of ten, twenty, thirty, and beyond, years ago, when all you had to do was have a decent GPA and enough money to pay for tuition. Most students had near perfect GPAs, near perfect test cores, were successful debaters, conducted scientific research, etc. to even think about getting into this school.
Parent UChicago / Aug 19, 2025 at 2:59 pm
Mr. Whyte,
Your comments are full of opinions/personal evaluations, too. “It is too bogged down by incompetence and irrelevant scholarship…” “I hear…”
That’s the point of this commentary section – personal comments. Please, then, do not knock Ms. Rivkis’ evaluations; she’s entitled to her comments.
A decent college education should have taught us all that there’s always more than one side to a story. An educated person should be able to discuss ideas and differences politely. It seems neither of you (none of us, in fact) has all the facts. I would claim there is some degree of truth in what each of you has posted.
GW / Aug 20, 2025 at 4:25 pm
You write as though pointing out the obvious subjectivity of commentary sections is some revelation. It is not.
Yes, comment sections contain opinions. (Riveting!) The question is whether those opinions are substantiated. Mine are. Ms. Rivkis’ airy gestures toward “intellectual horizons” without numbers, data, or trade-offs are not equivalent to pointing out that debt is ballooning, admissions corrupted, resources wasted, and remedial coursework is now rampant. These are facts, not opinions. Learn the difference.
Your sermon about “politeness” is revealing. (When substance falters, etiquette is always the refuge.) You would have us all bow, smile, and nod while unserious scholarship proliferates and the institution slides into insolvency.
If the best you can offer is that “everyone is partly right” and “we must be civil,” then you confirm my point: the culture of the university has become so delicate, so terrified of hard judgments, that even the obvious rot must be cushioned in euphemisms.
…then again, you never even attended the university!! Here is a thought: leave the judgments to your child, who at least has the standing of enrollment. You are plainly incapable of grasping the institution beyond the vantage of tuition bills and parental vanity.
Alum, Class of '92 / Aug 27, 2025 at 6:05 am
I graduated UChciago in ’92, and they had remedial math then. I know because I took the course. I actually enjoyed it, and the teacher ( a grad student named Karen, I think). was so good that later in life I taught myself basic calculus. I also took Physics for Poets taught by Nobel Prize winner, Leon Ledderman. Sadly, I was too immature to focus in that class, and missed out on a great opportunity, and barely passed it. I was an English major, and really disliked the sciences, but I do have to say that the remedial math course did start me on a journey where I came to appreciate math, and learned more throughout my adult life.