UChicago Acceptance Rate Falls Below 0%, Current Students Must Reapply
In an unprecedented shift, the University of Chicago’s acceptance rate has dropped to -2.4% in 2025. As a result, all current students must reapply for their spots in order to remain enrolled.
A statement released by the Admissions Office cited increasing application volume and declining admission rate as the main causes of the change. Over time, the acceptance rate of the University has steadily lowered from 38% in 2006 down to 5.4% in 2022. “When you think about it from a mathematical standpoint, the hyperbolic decay function tells us that the shift into negative numbers was inevitable,” explained Ethan Chu, who majored in Applied Mathematics before he was unaccepted to UChicago.
The negative acceptance rate has caused widespread student panic. Second-year Prescott Montgomery II voiced his concern: “My father paid my way into UChicago. What if the admissions officers don’t accept bribes anymore?”
Third-year Sam Cohen shared this worry: “I wrote my Common App essay about a day in my life from the perspective of a sentient traffic cone,” he said. “Please, I just don’t have it in me to do that again. And what happens if I get rejected? I’ll have to go to some safety school, like Northwestern.”
As the acceptance rate continues to plummet, experts predict that by 2026, UChicago will begin rejecting students preemptively—before they even apply.
