Amherst, Chicago, or Williams

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of Chicago ✅
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<p>Hey guys!!</p>

<p>I’ve posted this on a few other forums, but wanted to get you all’s opinion. I know this topic has been gone over hundreds of times, but I, of course, had to make yet another one of these threads. I apologize.</p>

<p>Imagine you’re really, really hungry. Super hungry. Haven’t-eaten-in-days hungry. Then imagine you’re given three whole meals. All delicious, all tasty, all yummy. Your stomach growls. Your three favorite foods, right there, staring you in the face? Awesome.</p>

<p>But hold up. The catch? You can only eat one of them.</p>

<p>Not so awesome.</p>

<p>That’s how I feel right now. How do I decide where to apply early decision/early action? How can I choose from these three wonderful foods?</p>

<p>I know each is extremely different. The equivalent of comparing apples to oranges. From Williamstown to Chicago, Open Curriculum to structured Core, these three have it all. But that’s what I have to do. I’ve visited all three, am going on second trips to all three, and need help.</p>

<p>A little background on me. </p>

<p>I’m an athlete.</p>

<p>That means I’ll be competing for one of these colleges. It also means I have to choose between them in a few months (October 31st.) I come to you guys asking for your opinion. I want to make sure I choose the right place. This is four years of my life—I just want to be happy for them.</p>

<p>I love nature.</p>

<p>I’m a backpacker. </p>

<p>Nature soothes me, centers me, makes me a better person. I know some kids at Williams who hike up Mount Greylock every weekend. I can’t picture anything on Earth making me happier, or making me more content.</p>

<p>I love to write.</p>

<p>Amherst seems like the best bet here. I mean, if I want to major in philosophy or English, what better place to do it than Amherst? I know both of the other schools have incredible humanities programs, but for some reason I peg them as more science and math focused. Is this true, or am I simply reinforcing stereotypes? Is Amherst truly my best option?</p>

<p>But… Fundamentals.</p>

<p>I love Chicago’s Fundamental’s program. It FITS me, somehow. It’s one of those gut feelings—I can’t explain it. All I can say is that Fundamentals makes this though decision even tougher. Or is this type of option available at Amherst and Williams? Some kind of create your own major?</p>

<p>I love tight-knit communities. </p>

<p>While Williamstown isn’t appealing to everyone, it’s a dream come true for me. I go to a private school with around a hundred kids in my class. So Isolation? Cool. Trees? Even cooler. Being stuck with the same people for 4 years? Coolest thing imaginable. That’s how true, lasting friendships are formed.</p>

<p>I love to learn.</p>

<p>Don’t get me wrong, I’ll learn at any of these three. They’re all incredible, difficult, and rigorous institutions. All of them love learning, all of them have nerds, and all of them would suit me perfectly. Just… the life of the mind? That’s pretty epic. My vision of a perfect evening is sitting with friends, talking about the meaning of life. From visiting Chicago, I felt like my nerdy side would not only be embraced, but cherished. It’d be allowed to grow. My love of learning would turn into an unbridled passion. </p>

<p>But I’m also laid back.</p>

<p>I’m not the kind of person who’s uptight, studies all night, and wears fancy clothes. I drink coffee. I don’t think about what I wear to school. I like having a good time. I got that ‘vibe’ from Amherst—that relaxed, calm, soothing atmosphere I love so much. I didn’t get that from Williams or Chicago.</p>

<p>I want to go to Grad School. </p>

<p>Isn’t Williams amazing at grad school placement? One of the top feeder schools in the country? I could be wrong. Or maybe Amherst’s better for my interests, with their strong humanities. It just seems like Amherst and Williams have the edge here, with the amazing relationships students develop with teachers and all. Also, Chicago has a reputation for being kick-your-ass hard. Destroy-your-GPA hard. And while the idealist in me doesn’t care about grades, if I’m looking at grad school, suddenly that meaningless number becomes a lot more important. </p>

<p>Thank you guys for reading my rambling (Probably not the most engaging thing in the world.) Any thoughts, advice, comments, or clarifications are more than welcome. Thank you.</p>

<p>Oh, and before I forget! To make matters worse, I look damn good in both purple and maroon.</p>

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<p>Chicago would definitely feed your desire for learning, but it is in an urban area (though you are close to Lake Michigan and Lakeshore Drive) so there would be that buzz of the city. For my son, that was an attraction. He was thinking about the top LAC’s (Swarthmore, Middlebury) but ultimately decided the urban buzz was desirable. Like you, my son went to a good private HS with about 110 graduates, and although he enjoyed it, he did not want to repeat it in college which kind of led him away from the LAC’s. </p>

<p>Your sport is important if you truly want to pursue it diligently. Williams and Amherst have many more sports than UChicago, although UChicago is making strong efforts to improve the ones they have. </p>

<p>As a parent, I can tell you the intellectual atmosphere at UChicago is unreal. </p>

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<p>You are over-thinking things more than a little. Williams, Amherst and Chicago are three great options, and any of them will meet your core academic needs. You can drive yourself crazy trying to figure out which one will meet your needs bestest of all (!!!), because the important differences are either too subtle or too massive to calibrate accurately.</p>

<p>You really have two different choices to make: Chicago vs. a New England LAC, and (assuming you are still interested after you complete the first analysis) which of the two New England LACs generally considered best you like more.</p>

<p>On the first question, don’t get bogged down in minutiae. Fundamentals is a great sounding program, but a lot more people are interested in it than do it, and you can almost certainly replicate what you like about it at any other intellectual campus, including Williams and Amherst. </p>

<p>The Big Differences are: Chicago is a big, sophisticated city, and Williamstown (really!) and Amherst are not. You like climbing Mount Greylock? There is nothing to climb in Chicago. Not even the Willis (nee Sears) Tower, where you have to take the elevator. It is totally flat. Everything about it that’s great (which is a lot) is urban-great. Which is wonderful, if that’s what you want, and completely unlike your other options. Chicago is a big university, with lots going on, and undergraduates are only part of the show. Between graduate students and undergraduate majors and prospective majors, the number of students with some kind of literature focus at Chicago is probably larger than an entire class at Amherst, and close to an entire class at Williams, but it’s not even 10% of the student headcount at Chicago. There’s a constant parade of visitors, too (including at Northwestern, UIC, DePaul, Columbia). (Amherst has some of that because of the critical mass of the five colleges; Williams not so much.) Chicago also has the Core, which lots of people love as an idea, feel ambivalent about it when they are doing it (some courses and sections work, some don’t), and appreciate more in retrospect because it really does give all students a shared frame of reference and shared values. Amherst and Williams, obviously, do things differently. You would have little trouble replicating the Chicago Core for yourself at either school; what you can’t do is replicate it for everyone else around you, including people you don’t know at all.</p>

<p>Also, here’s another big difference: At Williams and Amherst, half or more of the students are involved in intercollegiate athletics. It’s a big part of the culture of both schools. At Chicago, half or more of the students have heard that intercollegiate athletics exists, but probably only about a quarter of them have ever witnessed it in operation, much less participated in competition.</p>

<p>What’s not a big difference: You will get excellent preparation for graduate school at any of them. The path is different, but the goal is the same, and all the paths work. Chicago actually has fraternities, Williams and Amherst don’t (officially, at least), but Chicago’s fraternities are almost completely benign with little impact on anything unless you are really into them. The underground frats at the LACs, and frat-like behaviors in the dorms, probably have more impact on student life there than the actual fraternities have at Chicago.</p>

<p>Anyway, that’s plenty of basis to choose between Chicago and your LAC options: City vs. country, research university vs. LAC, core vs. no or loose requirements, almost no sports culture vs. strong sports culture. Midwest vs. western Massachusetts. Your gut has to have an opinion on those, and I would follow it. (From your writing, it seems your gut wants to be in Massachusetts.)</p>

<p>Williams and Amherst are almost Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum. You have to be very sophisticated to tell the difference between them. They even seem to have the same colors! And they were both named for near total nonentities, and have among the stupidest sports team names in existence. (UChicago sports teams don’t really have a name, or if they do no one cares much.)</p>

<p>Amherst/Northampton, compared to Williamstown, looks a little like Chicago (but only a little) – there’s a lot more going on, especially if you leave the campus (which Amherst students seem not to do that much). Williams is a little bigger. If you like art, the Clark and MassMOCA pwn anything in the Amherst area. Williamstown, as you noted, is kind of in what passes for mountains in New England; Amherst is on the edge of a big valley. You can get to and from Amherst on Amtrak, at least if you want to go towards Boston or New York, and it’s not much more than half an hour from a sort of decent sized airport; Williams is more isolated. At Amherst you can take whatever you want; Williams has tutorials people love.</p>

<p>Again, go with your gut, or with the coach you like more. Nothing really turns on whether you choose Williams or Amherst. The same types of people love each of them about the same, for slightly different reasons you will only fully appreciate once you are at one of them and not the other.</p>

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<p>Hi Polymatheia. I’m a rising third year at UChicago. I won’t try to sell you on UChcago, but I’ll try to answer you on the points I know about. Consider each comment to be a reply to the headline and the short paragraph that you write. Please forgive my poor usage, grammar, and spelling.</p>

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<p>I suppose recruiters and coaches are better sources than people on the web. For what it’s worth, from what I’ve seen, athletics here sort of fade into the background. But you already knew that.</p>

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<p>Obviously Chicago won’t be able to show much for nature other than parks and conservatories. BTW when you visit again be sure to check out The Point.</p>

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<p>I sometimes bring a backpack to class. ;)</p>

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<p>Academic writing seems to pervade all academic disciplines, so it seems any field can satisfy your interest in writing. I’m majoring in two sciences, where all the writing I’ve done is highly technical (i.e. motivation->definition->theorem->proof->repeat), but the core courses have definitely given me my fair share of humanities type writing as well. The first year academic writing seminars gets mixed reviews from students, but I think that has to do with the variance in skill levels of entering students. In hindsight, I myself learned quite a lot.</p>

<p>My guess is you like creative writing. If so, I don’t know what this has to do with Amherst in particular. I Imagine all three schools have comparable creative writing programs. </p>

<p>Any place could be better than Amherst to study philosophy or english. It all depends on what exactly you’re looking for. However, undergrads (myself included) rarely know exactly what they’re looking for, and their interests are often shaped by what’s available or strong on campus rather than what they initially wanted to do. In any case if you like to write, my guess is you’ll end up writing a lot wherever you go.</p>

<p>Chicago is NOT math and science focused. Chicago is NOT humanities social science focused. I think it’s fairly balanced in terms of undergraduate majors. That being said, what you major in will have a huge influence on the academic environment you encounter. For example, if you major in econ you’ll encounter more people interested in business (vague umbrella term alert), if you major in physics you’ll encounter more people interested in math science space etc…, and if you major in a humanities subject you’ll encounter more people interested in reading the classics and creative writing.</p>

<p>My point here is that your environment will have less to do with global factors of the campus as a whole, but rather it will be affected by local influences.</p>

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<p>For your reference: <a href=“Fundamentals: Issues and Texts < University of Chicago Catalog”>http://collegecatalog.uchicago.edu/thecollege/fundamentalsissuesandtexts/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Fundamentals is NOT a make your own major. If you’re interested in it, I’m guessing you’d have to get all of your core humanities, social science, and civ out of the way by second year so you can make informed choices about your particular program. There is an application process and there are interviews. That being said, many majors (and especially non-hard-science majors) have quite a lot of freedom to pick different classes, so it’s probably a very specific set of interests which really require a fundamentals major.</p>

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<p>Well there is the Housing System. This thing is a mixed bag. Some dorms have close knit houses, some don’t. The general rule is that larger dorms means less tight knit. Also closer to campus means less tight knit (the glaring exception being Snitchcock). My biased advice to an incoming first-year would be to select Broadview (there’s always a spot) since it is small and far from campus. :wink: I’d say my house is on the tight knit side. In a given year in a house of seventy you can usually count the people you don’t see on one hand. </p>

<p>There is also Greek Life if you’re into it, but as is well known, they’re not as pronounced as they are at peer institutions.</p>

<p>In general, although the campus as a whole is not tight-knit, many pockets of varying sizes are tight-knit. Trust me, if you’re not a loner or a sociopath you’ll make some proper close friends.</p>

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<p>The life of the mind is both what you’d expect…and also not. Sure there are plenty of impromptu (and often lengthy) discussions about philosophy or literature. However, I think the real life of the mind is a general willingness of students to intellectualize (and rigorously I might add) literally anything. It’s not about sitting in a room with a bunch of friends discussing the meaning of life per se. But rather, knowing that at any moment a single word you or a friend say can erupt into complex and analytic discourse. You might discuss literary references in rap music over lunch, learn about different kinds of infinity from a math major friend in the evening, and then round out the night by arguing about the cinematography and editing in pr0n movies. Everything is fair game. You will beat every topic to death. People will call you out on ■■■■■■■■. You will reevaluate how you view things. It is truly an amazing experience.</p>

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<p>So are most people. Once again it depends on who you roll with. Many people dress well. Many people wear the same shirt every day. Most of the people I know and hang out with fall somewhere in between. Even my more fashionable friends seem to not care about others’ clothing. Don’t sweat it.</p>

<p>As for coffee, there are a LOT of coffee shops on campus. Many are student run, and students seem to take their coffee seriously. A friend and I once sat down at a cafe for an entire afternoon so we could taste test every roast they had. </p>

<p>I think the general vibe here is intense when it comes to academics. And academic intensity usually means everyone holds each other to a high standard. Yet it’s not cutthroat competitive. Even when grades are on a curve there’s a sense that people really want to help each other. Everyone understands that the academics are hard, so they want to help each other get through the rough patches and come out succeeding. </p>

<p>In non-academic matters people seem pretty chill. People try to have a good time, and they rarely go crazy trying to make that happen. The one exception is scav. People go hard in the paint during scav. You have to see it to understand. Other than scav (and maybe ironic hatred for Northwestern) most people seem to be for the most part chill.</p>

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<p>All three are good at placement, but what really matters is what you end up doing while in college. Any college can feed you into grad school. </p>

<p>This does depend on what you want to study, but GPA is only one factor for grad school applications. For PhD programs the bottom line is research potential which is really gauged from your letters of rec. So GPA is not as important as it is for med school or law school. </p>

<p>As for relationships, your core HUME and SOSC (5-6 classes) are all discussions of <20 people. Your professor will remember who you are. In general if you’re proactive and seek out instructor attention and academic opportunities you’ll have plenty given to you. </p>

<p>School is hard here, but it’s survivable. You an definitely take hard classes and get solid (>3.5 GPA) grades. Check out canigraduate.uchicago.edu.</p>

<p>Hope this helps, and good luck!
Before I forget, absolutely nobody looks good in Maroon.</p>