<p>felipecocco: Do you know if the thirty full scholarships include those reserved for City of Chicago students?</p>
<p>I thought there were only 10-20 full-tuition scholarships?</p>
<p>In checking the school's web-site, it says 20 full-tuition scholarships, but added to that, I believe, are full-tuition scholarships awarded to students from the Chicago Public Schools. That is why I asked the earlier question.</p>
<p>Personally, I ended up choosing UChicago over UPenn (and many others) with the scholarship as an important factor. I didn't apply (dont' qualify) for financial aid, but $10,000 + National Merit Scholarship is a pretty significant amount. It also helped that I wasn't the biggest fan of UPenn, but I'm think that without the scholarship, I probably wouldn't be attending UChic this fall - it really made me reevaluate my options and take a more careful look at the school.</p>
<p>I think Chicago is a good university. It concentrates on academics, the atmosphere felt very intellectual, and people seem very friendly. However, I do believe that its students, at least most of them, suffer from an inferiority complex. They get worked up over little things like how people on the street think the university's a state school, why the office has such a low yield/high acceptance rate, allegations of grade deflation etc. I generalize, obviously, but it seems like chicago students have a ...need to prove to the entire world that, yes, the number 8 position on usnews is completely warranted, yes we're better than brown, cornell, northwestern whatever. In this respect they tend to get snotty. Thats probably why i've read/heard comments like 'dartmouth? thats a school for drunks', 'brown students are just hippies who like to get high', "Chicago gives you an academic experience the ivies can only dream of'. Before one of the people i'm talking about comes up and points out the princeton review undergraduate academic experience rankings or whatever, I would like to point out that UChicago was my number one choice at one point. I applied EA, it was the only school i visited and i adored it. What stopped me from enrolling? This feeling that everyone needed to prove the schools worth to the rest of the world, almost as a compulsion. It's a little ironic that the same people who keep insisting, almost to the point of being unreasonable, how amazing their school is, cannot feel secure enough to not have to do so.</p>
<p>I think that it is an incorrect generalization to state that Chicago students have an inferiority complex and try to tear down other schools to make themselves feel better. My child just finished her first year there and loved it. Chicago was always her first choice because it offered the kind of education, experience and education that she wanted. Plus, the city of
Chicago is awesome and offers many extracurricular opportunities. She indicated that most of the people she met and became friends with had no attitudes whatsoever like that. They chose the U of Chicago because they believed that the school was a good fit for them and couldn't care in the least about U.S. News and World Report Rankings or about comparing Chicago to other schools. I believe that there may be students at Chicago who have some sort of complex, but they are clearly in the minority and are probably more apt to post in places like this then the majority of students who are happy, confident and comfortable with themselves and their decision and just don't feel the need to complain or compare themselves to others. There are certainly going to be students who did not get into the Ivies and resent it, but you will find students like that at many schools including places like Tufts,etc. that are often second choices for people who really wanted to go to Yale and didn't get in. Chicago, like other schools, has a tremendous diversity, which only continues to grow, and there are all sorts of people there. It is a great school, but there are many great schools and it is important to pick that school which offers what you are looking for and where you will fit and be comfortable. For my child and for many others it is Chicago. But to turn down a school because you believe in mispercieved generalizations when you feel that a school is a good fit for you can be a mistake without really knowing the truth.</p>
<p>Ammarsfound, that has not been my experience at all. Where did you gain such insight into the U of C psyche? If this was your experience at an overnight, students are almost always joking around if they call a school like Dartmouth a "school for drunks." Many of my friends at Chicago were admitted to Dartmouth, as a matter of fact (I always thought it was interesting since the two are in such different locations and have such different atmospheres--I also have friends at Dartmouth who were admitted to Chicago).</p>
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Where did you gain such insight into the U of C psyche?
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<p>No it wasnt an overnight stay, but i was in chicago for a week and i visited the university almost every day of that week. I sat in for classes, went around for tours, talked to the admissions people etc. They were really cool and nice and everything, but there was this air that 'we're better than other schools, since we almost exclusively concentrate on studies'. Admittedly the tour guides were genuinely very chill about the school.</p>
<p>A recent alum and neighbor counseled my D that UC would not be a good fit. Can't get much more objective than that</p>
<p>Ammarsfound, I understand how you came away with a feeling arrogance on our part, while I agree with corranged that I don't find the student body arrogant about their position in the USNWR food chain.</p>
<p>If you want to look at schools where students are bitter about not getting into Yale and Harvard, look no further than Penn, Dartmouth, Brown, and Columbia. If you want to look at schools where students are angry about not getting into Penn, look at Yale. Almost nobody gets into every Ivy League they apply to, especially if they apply to all of them (one girl I know came close-- got into every one except Brown-- and is now at Chicago. She didn't come out with this information herself, but rather a mutual friend told me).</p>
<p>When I visited other schools, I felt that those schools were arrogant about the fact that they got in and others did not, and that somehow they were markedly better people for having the opportunity to spend time at such an elite school. At Chicago, most kids have found their own pathways to the school, beyond Fiske or any other college guides, and remain adamant about the quality of the school in order to save face when others sneered and ask why, if you're so smart, you're not at an ivy.</p>
<p>That was my experience, at least. Given my grades and EC's, I was sitting in the Harvard/Yale seat at my school. I was the one who always did the readings and was always thinking about them. Anyway, while others expected me to apply to Yale or another ivy, I felt like I was defying expectation when I applied to Chicago. (I realize, in retrospect, that it was hardly a rebellious thing to do, though at the time it felt rebellious). As a result, I came up with an elaborate way to defend the school and my decision to go there, even though admissions was "easy" and "nobody there has any fun, it's the kind of school where you go only if you have to," and that whole defense deteriorated by the time I arrived on campus.</p>
<p>It's funny -- I see the attitude ammarsfound described on CC from time to time, but not from any of the current Chicago students who post here. But I never get it from any of the current or recent Chicago students I know in the real world.</p>
<p>I think the following describes the attitude of my children fairly accurately: Both of them loved Chicago when they looked into it / visited it. They grew up in a context (school, relatives) where people respected Chicago a lot, so they always thought of it as an elite-type college. It wasn't the absolute first choice of either -- that would have been Yale in one case and Columbia in the other -- but it was always in the "first choice group" for both: a school they would be thrilled to attend. They have absolutely no interest in saying that it's superior to this or that Ivy or any other college. As with every college they looked at, they thought it was superior in some respects, equal in others, and inferior in others, depending on which school they compared it to. As a practical matter, both of them applied to Chicago and didn't apply to a number of other highly-ranked schools for which they were perfectly good candidates, which reflected the fact that they would be thrilled to go to Chicago and would feel ambivalent about the others. In my daughter's case, she cut off the application process at a bunch of schools when she was accepted EA at Chicago. So, they clearly think Chicago is better for them, on balance, than, say, Brown, or Penn, or Dartmouth. But they respect those schools plenty, and understand perfectly why this or that friend may prefer one of them to Chicago. Mainly, they're just happy to have the chance to go to Chicago.</p>
<p>Ammmarsfound,
Well, Chicago was obviously not the right "fit" for you. Glad you found that out before you matriculated there. Chicago does attract a certain type of student, and often that student is not as interested in other universities, such as some of the Ivy's, for various reasons.</p>