<p>I just read this thread. Like everyone else, I am annoyed by serchingon's attitude, and bemused at the notion that anything here would be truly objective. However, "subjective" does not in any way imply dishonest or in bad faith. When I read what jack, or corranged, or amykins writes here, there is no question in my mind that they attend the same college my child does, and that they are representing their experience fairly and honestly, even though their experience and their reactions to it differ in some small and large ways from my daughter's. (Idad . . . well, he can be a bit of a homer . . . ) I have also seen plenty of things critical of the University of Chicago here, and have written some of them. I really don't know what the hell serchingon's problem is, and I would love to know what the radically different views of his purported PM correspondents are.</p>
<p>In the end -- and assuming he is not merely a troll -- what serchingon seems to want is someone to say a few things critical of Chicago, or to display some difference of opinion. So I will:</p>
<p>-- By and large, her Core classes, other than Sosc, have been a disappointment to my daughter. I have quoted her line in several posts: "They place people into six different levels of math, so that someone like me doesn't hold back people who already know a lot and who care about it. I wish they had at least two levels of reading, so that I didn't have to sit in class with kids who have no idea how to read poetry, don't believe there is any reason why they should learn, and feel privileged to take up my class time expressing their hostility to the whole idea. I've been there and done that -- it was called 'high school'." My daughter really liked the idea of the Core -- it was one of the reasons she chose to go to Chicago. She did really like her Sosc sequence, in part because she didn't know as much going in, and in part I think because her Sosc sequence was more mainstream than the Hum sequence she chose. She is not excited about Civ offerings or PhysSci, and the math and Bio she had to take will haunt her transcript forever. (Curiously, she still likes the idea of General Education, even though she hates taking math and science classes.)</p>
<p>-- The dorms are not exciting. Max P -- who thought that was a good idea? And I can't imagine living in The Shoreland and being assigned to eat at BJ. If you wanted to have breakfast before an 8:30 class, you'd have to be out the door by 7, and I bet few kids are. At least those people probably don't gain a lot of weight their freshman year. </p>
<p>The lack of good dorm space for upperclassmen, and of good dining halls that are reasonably convenient to the dorms, is an annoying barrier to a better quality of student life. On the other hand, the ubiquitous, idiosyncratic coffee shops are great, and the off-campus housing is pretty good.</p>
<p>-- Hyde Park lacks amenities. Compared to the other urban universities with which I am familiar -- Harvard, Columbia, NYU, Penn, Yale, Berkeley, UCLA, Brown -- Chicago's immediate neighborhood is really underwhelming in terms of shops, restaurants, bars, stuff to do. They should detail someone to study what Penn has done in the past decade.</p>
<p>Chicago itself, of course, is great. Maybe not as great as NYC, London, or Paris (but less expensive) or Boston (from a college-student standpoint), but pretty darn great. </p>
<p>-- Chicago has a decent public transportation system. But the University of Chicago is not terribly well-served by it. The major arteries are located well east and west of the main campus area, and the only El stop that is walking distance from anything is in a neighborhood marginal enough to keep kids from using it. The 55 Bus, which crosses the campus on the east-west axis, is really useful (it goes right to Midway, and to good connections for the Loop), but maddeningly unreliable.</p>
<p>-- I've never raised indie-rock-loving teenagers anywhere other than Philadelphia, so I don't know much about cities other than Philadelphia and Chicago. But shows here are much cheaper than in Chicago, and are much more likely to be open to 18-20 year-olds. </p>
<p>-- The Maroon does not compare well with the student newspapers at competitive institutions. Publishing 18 or 19 issues a quarter clearly strains everyone's capacity. </p>
<p>-- Corranged is very high on the Fundamentals major. My daughter thinks the presence of more than a few Fundamentals majors in any room is a good argument for not sitting down there.</p>
<p>Which goes to a more "fundamental" issue: All that stuff about the kids at Chicago being genuinely intellectual kids is absolutely true from everything I've seen -- and what I've seen recently tends to be the bohemian-slacker quadrant of the student body. But if you get a bunch of intellectual teenagers together, a certain number of them are going to score fairly high on the insufferability scale, especially until they stop thinking of themselves as the Only Intelligent Being For Miles Around. That is also absolutely true at Chicago. If insufferable, pretentious intellectual teenagers really bother you, you may not be happy at Chicago. It's not at all true that everyone there, or even a majority, are insufferable or pretentious, but there are more insuffeable, pretentious kids than at most other colleges, and no one at Chicago beats them up or gives them wedgies. Most of them tone themselves down eventually; some not for a loooooong time.</p>
<p>There are insufferable, pretentious kids at HYP, too, but (a) they tend to be a little smoother about it, (b) they are probably a little less concentrated, and (c) people there sometimes do beat them up, sort of. What you don't see at Chicago, compared to HYP, is every other kid planning his future Presidential campaign.</p>
<p>-- Chicago isn't the only school that draws intellectual kids, or where they can be happy. It probably has the greatest concentration of them, since they're not diluted much with big-time athletes, politicians, or frat boys. Almost every school has a decent number of them, and the "elite" schools have lots. Every kid I know at Chicago would have been perfectly happy at HYP (or Brown, Columbia, Swarthmore, Reed . . . ), and most of the kids I know at those schools would have been perfectly happy at Chicago. I don't think the educational experience it offers is really much different from that of those other schools.</p>