I lumped Amherst with Harvard, Stanford, and Wharton and you consider that disparaging? Obviously I wasn’t making a list of the biggest party schools that had undergrads who went into finance!
I’ll be interested to hear what your daughters have to say a year or two from now, when they compare workloads/stress levels/and time for non-academic pursuits. (And I’m not being snarky – I do hope you post about it. You’ve got access to a more realtime comparison than I do.)
Yeah, that will be interesting to see. I just felt that a bit of shade was being directed at Amherst from several different directions not just you, and it seemed odd to me - knowing both schools the way I do.
Sorry for derailing the thread.
I think @exacademic is fundamentally right that it’s not really possible to enjoy the University of Chicago unless you are turned on by intellectual inquiry and academic study. There’s much more fun to be had there now than in the past, and less needless pain, but it’s still a place where what fundamentally binds people together is talking about what they are studying, and practicing their evidence- and logic-based argument skills. It’s not like that doesn’t happen elsewhere – it certainly does, at Amherst and elsewhere – but the relative weight of that vs. other kinds of fun is higher at Chicago.
By the way, I am close to three recent Amherst grads. One is in a STEM PhD program at Penn. One is a lawyer at the Department of Justice, having gone to Harvard Law School and clerked for a Federal district judge in Boston. And the third is a woman who at 28 is among the 2-3 most highly placed women in her industry, in a dream job literally millions of people would kill to get. Ain’t nothing wrong with Amherst.
This celebration of money is a little scary. I suspect that this essay was pre-formatted for the eager parent to insert into his appreciation for fancy events, kind of like those form letters interested citizens are supposed to sign and send to their congressional representatives.
I just hope the poor kid gets to choose his major without reference to his expected “return” in the marketplace.
My son and I have visited a few times and I just don’t believe the “where fun goes to die” moniker is all that applicable these days. With the city so close and all the outgoing students we came into contact with, I seriously doubt any kid would “need more fun”.
Coupled with being part of the M5, I don’t think any kid with a desire to study Econ would choose poorly to choose over the other elite institutions.
I know I might annoy people with what I will ask but anyway. I am applying to college next fall, have already figured out my early school and Chicago is amongst my EA or RD choices. i am only asking to figure out more about Chicago. So here we go:
After looking at the various top school threads on CC, I have noticed that people on Chicago’s thread seem to be excessively focused on admission statistics, yields, acceptance rates, reaffirming the standing of the school, constantly comparing the school to others. More so than any other top school on CC by a long shot.
Just curious, is that just a CC thing or are Chicago students, alumni and the culture in general this prestige-focused and hyper competitive for these things? Again do not mean to offend anyone, just curious about the culture of the school and the students given that I am thinking of applying.
I think it’s a CC thing (and an upper middle class parent thing). My kid’s a first year at UofC now and isn’t sensing any of this among the students she hangs out with. That was my experience of college as well – where you go to college is a non-issue among your college classmates because, hey, we all go to school at the same place and we know from experience that there’s a range of different experiences and different types of people here. Basically, among classmates, it’s a non-interesting (non-defining) fact. Yeah, you commiserate about institutional culture/demands (and in a school with more of a sports culture, you may celebrate), but that’s about it.
@ivyoxbridge1, Chicago is often called the “Second City.” Its beaches are sometimes referred to as the “Third Coast.” The Cubs went generations (108 years) without winning a World Series. Chicagoans know what they have it their great city and its institutions and they don’t feel that any of it is second or third rate. So Chicago (and UChicago by extension) may have a bit of a chip on its shoulder being reflected on certain CC threads. You’ll understand if you move to Chicago. Of course, this thread is fairly labelled “Admission rates…etc” so if you don’t like it…check out some others. And some Ivy threads, for instance, are similarly inward looking, particularly over likely letters and phone calls from admissions. Oh yeah, and UChicago recently added ED1 and then ED2 in rapid succession after years of only EA … so this naturally generates a lot of analysis and discussion!
@ivyoxbridge1 Your acronym and your expressed strong interest in UPenn and Yale seem to indicate to me that you are the one who is actually more concerned about prestige. It is somewhat bewildering to me that you would decide to accuse all of us “excessively focus” on the standing of the school.
Yes, you annoy me personally.
Is this what parents do on their free time…argue over which prestigious college is more prestigious…?
@ivyoxbridge1 A small segment of the student population is like this. Most aren’t. There seems to be a disproportionate amount of hyper-prestige-conscious parents on here, compared to the student population.
Luckily most students aren’t as interested in making as much money as they can so they can host fancy luncheons as Nondorf would have people believe. If Chicago were like that I’d have transferred to Swat by now.
And yes, plenty of students are still miserable a lot of the time. Come visit campus in the 5th week of winter quarter and sit at a random house table, don’t make any decisions off of a staged propaganda event orchestrated by Nondorf on some fake farm run by rich people who want to live their idyllic agrarian fantasies.
I know I’m not a mod, but can we keep the personal attacks to a minimum here?
Honestly, if I were reading this thread before I had any personal experience with UChicago I would probably think it had a strain of people who are very “prestige-focused and hyper competitive”. I’m glad I actually go here and can tell @IvyOxbridge that this is NOT my experience.
I mean, there are currently 5 threads on the front page talking about UChicago’s admissions rate and self-consciously speculating about how everyone sees UChicago. Cornell, supposedly the insecure Ivy, has 0, for comparison, and I’d be surprised if any school usually referred to as “elite” has more than us, though I haven’t checked.
I think @Sam-I-Am gave an excellent answer giving some speculation as to why there are so many threads talking about it. Insulting people is not doing any good except making UChicago look even less appealing on this forum and making someone feel bad.
MODERATOR’S NOTE:
I am a mod, and I agree. Let’s abide byToS and keep the discussion civil.
@ivyoxbridge1 I dont think its an obsession with prestige as much as obsession with analysis. I mean, these are big changes in the numbers. The reaction that you observed is par for the course for a school that emphasizes analytical and critical thinking (benchmarking, trending, logic/decision trees, risk aversion/management, feedback loop).
I bet that if what is happening right now to UChicago’s admissions happened in other schools there would be a lot of chatter too - even in schools that are not as geeky. :bz
what is a "mod " ?
MODerator - they make sure everyone plays nice and follows the site/posting rules.
Tks. See I went to college for nothing. Did not know this 
Thanks guys for your detailed responses and for keeping it civil. Have never visited the university so just wanted to clarify some things. Glad to hear that the culture at Chicago is different from my original perception.
@85bears46 wow that was quite rude…Yes of course I want to go to a very good school with great quality and great name. But that doesn’t mean that i want to be in an environment where people constantly have to reaffirm and compare the standing of their school to others. I am glad many people took the time to provide their insights and share with me the fact that the actual culture at Chicago is not like that. I am glad about it because I am seriously thinking of applying.
@ivyoxbridge1 completely off topic, but I’ve visited with my son three times now and we never got that impression. UChicago definitely has a midwest feel to it where everyone is friendly and courteous. Many of the students spoke of working together and collaborating on studying and helping the underclass navigate the schedules and professors.
Personally I see UChicago moving the right direction, the President and the Director of admissions have the right idea and if you don’t like it blame the system that they have to operate within.
Rankings: Rankings are important as they are usually where elite students look when they are starting out. Its important to parents also, how else would we know what USNWR means?
Recognition: UChicago is weak in this area and needs to improve. There are many times (around 75%) that I mention UChicago to someone and get a blank look back as they had never heard of it. I also mention Harvard and its immediately recognized as an elite school by virtually everyone. How do you improve recognition? By getting a higher ranking. It is what it is.
Academics: On par with any school.
Grading: This is also an area that looks to be improving, having talked to students at Harvard they tell me that Harvard is “as hard as you want to make it”, (IOW’s your probably not going to receive anything below a B in a class). It appears that UChicago is also moving toward grade inflation (good or bad), as that does affect retention rates and graduation rates (which affects rankings). When I went to school in electrical engineering at a public university they told me to look to the left and right in my first class and that those students wouldn’t be there when I graduated, and they seemed to be proud of that fact (why would you be proud of that?) I graduated with 33 of the 100 people that were originally in my class 4 years later (well at least they were accurate). My oldest daughter went to the same school 30 years later and they still washed 60-70% of the kids out of engineering. What does that say about the professors teaching if there failing half their class?
Admissions: Most complaints are centered on the fact UChicago is recruiting kids that have no chance (maybe very little chance is a better description). Unfortunately that comes right out of the Ivy league playbook, nearly half of Harvard’s applications aren’t academically qualified to go there. One of my daughters started receiving emails from Harvard based on a slightly above average PSAT…really?
None of what the UChicago administration is doing is revolutionary, they are just taking from the Ivy League playbook and trying to get UChicago the recognition it deserves among prospective students and parents.