<p>Well, I'm in a similar situation as another poster, but I had a few different questions. UChicago is probably my first choice school, but it costs 25K more than Rice per year. The way finances will work for me for college is that if I go to Chicago, that's it. If I go to Rice, my parents would cover the difference to help pay for grad school. I'm interested in astrophysics and/or political science (with a possibility of law school, not sure on that one), which means that grad school/post-undergrad work may or may not be free. Any thoughts?</p>
<p>Also, I know that UChicago's economics department is extremely conservative. Does this hold true for the political science department as well?</p>
<p>Sorry, I don’t think I correctly stated what I meant. UChicago is DEFINITELY my first choice - I love the atmosphere, the students, the quirkiness, the campus, everything. I visited for an overnight and absolutely loved it. I like Rice, but I didn’t get the same vibe from it as I did UChicago.</p>
<p>Conservative means different things across different disciplines, so Chicago’s political science department isn’t necessarily “politically conservative.”</p>
<p>Anyway, I actually picked UChicago over Rice in a very similar situation to yours (although I didn’t much like political science) and one big factor was: if I picked Rice, I’d always wonder what I would have done, who I could have been, etc. if I’d gone to my first-choice school (UChicago). I think that’s something to consider.</p>
<p>OK, but come on; sure, there’s the standard preamble, Chicago represents a broad and multi-diverse rainbow of opinion etc etc, but it does have something as a reputation as the intellectual powerhouse of American conservative ideology. I’d be really interested to find out exactly whether that translates into slightly-less-liberal-than-average politics among the student body, or is it the expected, more or less uniform teenage leftist romanticism?</p>
<p>Both, I think. Teenage leftist romanticism is the plurality mode, but it is less dominant, and there are more conservatives, than at most peer institutions. So the student body, on the whole, leans left, but somewhat less so than elsewhere. Also, the local standard for polite and intellectually honest debate means that people on both the left and the right treat each other with respect, eschew slogans, look for common ground, and rarely are doctrinaire or demagogues. That isn’t the case elsewhere, either. It’s probably the best thing about the University of Chicago, as far as I am concerned.</p>
<p>Re the OP: People really like Rice. Chicago is special, but I don’t know that it’s twice as special, and $100,000 is an awful lot of money.</p>
<p>I am a Poli Sci major here at Chicago, and I’ve studied closely with several professors here. Most of my experience is in International Relations, so I can only really speak for those professors. We really can’t identify the prof’s persuasions based on standard liberal/conservative spectra. Rather, we can look at their level of conservatism within their field.</p>
<p>The four main IR profs are Charles Lipson, Duncan Snidal, Robert Pape, and John J. Mearsheimer. The latter two are “NeoRealists” and the former are “Neoliberals.” As a IR school of thought, Neoliberalism is characterized by an adherence Democratic Peace Theory, Economic Interdependence Theory, and the value International Institutions. In practice, the strategies of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush (with neoconservative twist) conform closest to liberal beliefs.</p>
<p>Pape and Mearsheimer identify with the realist paradigm (Mearsheimer is responsible for the development of offensive realist theory). That is, they believe that the international system is in a state of Hobbesian anarchy, where every actor is in a state of fear, is completely self-interested, and is ever cognizant of balance of power. Within American politics, no particular party openly ascribes to realism as its guiding influence. If I had to describe anyone’s foreign policy as realist, I would probably point to George H.W. Bush or Henry Kissinger (though neither fit the bill entirely).</p>
<p>liberalism and conservatism in the academic arena don’t really jive with their counterparts in the American political arena.</p>