@HydeSnark Kindly expound on your : “expecting Princeton or Yale. And, well…we aren’t”.
@denydenzig I apologize for that, that was a little too snarky. I just saw that you quoted me and thought you were calling me out for hypocriticism or something - I have edited my comment to include a response.
@Chrchill I didn’t really mean anything super deep - I helped with orientation this year and it’s incredible how many first years come in not knowing that we have a core. The amount of work people have to do catches people off guard, many professors grade harshly and hold people to very high standards - you don’t get a break in Sosc for being premed - and the prevailing campus cultural view is still that no one has heard of us and that the suffering is really only for the Life of the Mind, so if you don’t like that, well…should’ve gone somewhere else.
There was a post on the UChicago 2020 Applicants thread last year right after admissions came out where someone who went to the Lab school wrote about how UChicago students sit around complaining about how unhappy they are and how they wish they went to an Ivy and how going here isn’t worth it. This post was meant as consolation for those who got rejected.
It was a slight exaggeration, sure - but not enough for me to say that they were totally wrong. It takes a certain kind of person to truly love this school, and I think the admissions office knows it’s their job to make sure that applicants don’t know that.
“The prevailing campus cultural view is still that no one has heard of us and this is all for nothing… UChicago students sit around complaining about how unhappy they are and how they wish they went to an Ivy and how going here isn’t worth it”
This is the special culture you think the school should try to preserve?
First of all, that was a very misleading way of quoting me - if you’re going to take out half my post, you should definitely cite it in two different quotes rather than letting readers think you only took out a few words with an ellipses.
Second of all, I’m a big fan of the anthropological definition of culture: “[it is] …a particular way of life which expresses certain meanings and values not only in art and learning, but also in situations and ordinary behavior.” (Raymond Williams, 1965). Pointing out one one-dimensional characteristic of the school and then saying “See! That’s all of UChicago culture!” is fallacious at best and an alternative fact at worst. Not everyone is like that, just a small segment of the school that is generally characterized by a desire to get good grades, to take only classes immediately relevant to their career, and that chose UChicago because of the US News ranking. I think it is not too much of a stretch to say that those people may have been better off at a different school.
I also edited my post, though you responded before I had done that - what I really meant was
So yes. I think this is a special culture that we should try to preserve. I think I would not like this school nearly as much if there weren’t so many people that wanted to learn for the sake of learning.
@HydeSnark Seriously ? Misleading in quoting you? I did not realize that the issues we are discussing here are worthy of misleading quotes. Just wanted to know what you meant, which you now explained. Go and enjoy your culture of suffering. Thankfully UChicago is turning away from the culture of faux self consumed intellectual misanthrope.
@Chrchill It’s good to avoid misleading quotes in most situations, internet arguing not excepting.
And I hope you aren’t referring to me when you say that - that would be a personal attack and is not allowed on this forum 
@HydeSnark , I think you do a wonderful job of representing Chicago students here. This board has always had a few current students participating, and for the most part they have been the best possible advertisement for the quality of education and culture at the University of Chicago.
Given what you said in #63, I am puzzled by your suggestion above that the University somehow made a decision to be a “second-rate Princeton” rather than a “first-rate UChicago.” (And I’ll put aside the criticism that maybe you don’t know what you are talking about w/re Princeton, and it’s less unlike the good parts of Chicago than you imagine.) I will take responsibility for my own argument that it was necessary and good for Chicago to become somewhat more like, well Princeton, but I think people there have done an awfully good job of retaining the old Chicago culture. It’s not so much of an intellectual Parris Island anymore, where first years spend months slithering in the mud with live ammunition being fired an inch above their heads. But it is a place where mainstream students really value learning, and specifically academic learning, and intellectual inquiry. And where people are engaged with their academic experience, not just their career plans, their networking, or their brands. And, I believe, where people genuinely value both rigor and civility in argument. Very few people shout slogans in each other’s faces, and very few people are unwilling to concede when an opponent has made a valid point, or hesitant to adjust their position to account for it.
Chicago doesn’t own the patent on those qualities, but they suffuse the fabric of student life there more deeply than I have seen elsewhere, at least in a university of decent size.
I’'ll also say this: My older kid spent much of her first two years at Chicago grousing about the Core and wishing she had gone to Brown, where she could have studied what she liked and taken more professionally-oriented creative writing classes. By the time she graduated, she had decided that the Core really worked and that she loved Chicago (and also that she didn’t want to be a professional writer). Having now spent a number of years in the real world, she understands (a) how much respect from others she gets for having a University of Chicago degree, (b) how much more satisfying her college academic experience was compared to many of her peers, and © there are very few if any college communities with an intellectual culture as strong as Chicago’s. (On that last point, however, I think she has found that Yale and Princeton come close.)
The admissions office does what it does. I don’t know whom they are admitting this year. I know a couple of kids who are third years now, and they are both classic UChicago types: really thoughtful, really smart, love ideas, love working through them, more excited by challenge than by money, but not likely to be elected prom king or president of anything anytime soon. Both admitted EA, but only one committed immediately. Obviously, not a representative sample, but not much of an argument that Nondorf is engaged in changing the culture of the college. I think at least so far the people he has been admitting have been buying into Chicago’s culture, not turning it into something else.
Bottom line: If you think ideas and culture have power, you have to give them time to work, Also, listening to people complaining in the dining halls is not necessarily a good way to understand a complex institution.
@HydeSnark I’m sorry. I was not trying to misquote you or mislead anyone - just trying to emphasize the most salient points I wanted to highlight.
I don’t think UChicago should be exactly like Princeton or Yale, but there are many aspects of those schools that the UChicago of the past desperately needed, and is now finally achieving. I also don’t think you realize how intellectual and demanding those schools really are. If UChicago ultimately becomes “The Top 5 School that is known for its emphasis on intellectual rigor and draws from the same pool as HYPS but tends to get the nerdiest ones” - well that would not be a bad thing at all.
@HydeSnark I assuming arguendo that it was a personal attack – which it was not – you must concede that it would have been a rather well crafted one …
@ThankYouforHelp It already is a top 5 school. Excepting MIT and Caltech from this as sui generis.
@JHS Thank you for the kind words! I think the way you describe UChicago comes closest to the UChicago I experience every day, and I entirely agree with most things you say.
That said - I do actually have some familiarity with Princeton. I’m no expert, but my closest high school friends attend (the kind I text nearly every day), and I have visited, not as an admissions visit, but as in sleeping on my friend’s floor and seeing what life is like for them there. I think UChicago and Princeton are similar in some ways (i.e. intellectualism) and different in other ways (i.e. people at Princeton talk about jobs and grades more than here, and there is a lot more drinking).
Regardless, I think that choice describes more how UChicago could present itself. The choice isn’t so much UChicago [as a school] vs Princeton [as a school], it’s UChicago [as an idea] vs Princeton [as an idea]. Where UChicago represents suffering (for a greater purpose, we hope) without recognition, Princeton represents the pinnacle of prestige and higher education in the public’s mind. When people say UChicago, it signifies something. When people say Princeton, it signifies something else. One day the administrators decided they would rather have UChicago signify what Princeton (or Harvard, or Yale…) signifies, rather than celebrating what UChicago is (to me, and many others). I think that’s a pity.
@ThankYouforHelp It sounds like we mostly agree then. That is essentially my stance on this school, and I think that’s pretty much where we are now.
@Chrchill I think calling me a “faux self consumed intellectual misanthrope” is not particularly well crafted and is basically the same as saying “I have no counter arguments and I concede you are correct on every point”, but what do I know? I’m just a faux self consumed intellectual misanthrope.
@HydeSnark Did not call you that, just as I was not misleadingly quoting you. Had I wanted to call you that, I would have. I talked about the culture. While you may well be the center of your own universe, you are not the center of the universe. Obviously you would benefit from a little sense of levity.
@hydesnark My oldest is a first year at UChicago. He’s one of those math/econ kids that are probably causing some of that dreaded Princetonization. And he talks about his future and jobs and worries about grades all the time. And he is forever looking for people to drink with but not having as much luck as he would like. He’s also extraordinarily curious, intellectual, smart, sarcastic, and generally awesome. I’ve met several of his friends there and they seem very similar. Wanting a career in banking or consulting rather than academics doesn’t make one less Maroon.
@notveryzen lol. Thank you for sharing that candid moment with us. Very much appreciated it
@notveryzen he should join the rugby team asap. Lots of exercise, drinking and comraderie, and you don’t have to be any good (or even athletic) to participate. Just be willing and a good sport. Plus there are a lot of grad students from Booth on it, so he can learn about their career paths.
The rugby team saved my sanity when I was at U of C.
As an alumnus I always very much enjoy these impassioned debates about the soul of the old school. That too is part of the culture of the place. Fifty years ago we were also having those debates mutatis mutandis. Even then we undergraduates worried about the Princetonizing ambitions of the Administration, though success in that endeavor seemed implausible at the time. As many have said, a dose of Princeton was probably needed. But pushback is also needed, and I applaud the spirit and bravery of HydeSnark, who seems a very characteristic product of the University, both in his realism about the place but even in his ambivalences. I can recognize a live mind when I see one, and I always read his comments attentively.
I too am ambivalent about certain aspects of the new world a-makin’ at the University. If we were to lose our distinct character as an idea-intoxicated place, that would be a loss indeed. And, yes, in my view that character implies a degree of seriousness and even suffering that many want to abolish as if it were some old skeleton in the closet. But my belief is that the recent popularity of the University is in some measure due to the rediscovery in young people just at this present moment of our history of a longing to be serious, to think for oneself taking into account the thought of
Well, honestly, it kinda does. There are plenty of people like that at Chicago, but they are still something of an oppressed minority, a subculture. They aren’t the universally admired alphas that they are on some other campuses. Also, if they are having trouble finding someone to drink with, maybe it’s time to broaden their social circle. That’s not a complaint I ever heard from my kids or their friends. (I wish . . . .)
I think the real tipping point question is this: Are they avoiding tough courses to protect their GPAs? Nothing could be more anathema to the mainstream University of Chicago ethic than that.
Seem to have inadvertently hit the “post” button. Meant to say simply that it is my hope that the old magic in the old books will survive at the new-model College and believe it will do so. The perennial things are always awaiting rediscovery by serious people, and those people more than ever see the college as a destination.
I think the real tipping point question is this: Are they avoiding tough courses to protect their GPAs? Nothing could be more anathema to the mainstream University of Chicago ethic than that.
The impression I get from DS and friends is that this isn’t much of an option. You can take brutal classes or you can take sort of brutal classes. But easy A classes just don’t exist. Or if they do, they haven’t discovered them yet.
Worrying about GPAs is a real and valid thing now. Maybe it didn’t matter in the 60s or 70s when just surviving 4 years at UC was enough to get you into that PHD program you wanted. But today it matters. Whether we’re talking about IB, MBB, law school, med school, or a PHD program. GPA matters and you don’t get a pass just because you are at UC.
As a full pay parent I am very glad that he is concerned about his GPA. If he wanted 4 years just to explore passions and learn just for the sake of learning and not worry about grades, he could have done that for a lot less than $70,000 a year.
@Sam-I-Am I’m from NYC and always assumed Chicago was called the “Second City” because it’s second in importance or something.
Took a boat tour in Chicago a couple of years ago and it turns out it’s called that because the entire city burned down in a fire and was rebuilt - the second city to stand on that spot.
Who knew?
Regarding Amherst and UofC and international reputation @Chrchill …all I’ll say on that is that liberal arts colleges don’t really exist outside the US so the model is unfamiliar to many international families.
Yet here in the US they are among the oldest and most respected institutions of higher learning.