<p>You shouldn’t be surprised. Chicago caters towards a very specific type of student (though they’re trying to expand it), while WashU tends to cater towards a broader band. You’re right in calling them apples and oranges: at Chicago, academics overwhelmingly take priority over everything else save for food and sleep, while WashU doesn’t cultivate nearly the same amount of focus on schoolwork.</p>
<p>That isn’t to say we’re not happy here – I certainly don’t regret coming here one bit – but the experience is intense (though completely manageable once you realize that you simply have to sacrifice some things to get others, but such is life), and you have to be at least a little bit masochistic if you want to enjoy your time here.</p>
<p>As an old alum: the best way to describe the “Chicago” academic rigor and college experience is like attending MIT without the engineering. If you talk to most MIT students and alums they will tell you it is intense from the time you start till the time you graduate and they wouldn’t change a thing…This analogy from speaking to friends of mine who have attended MIT.</p>
<p>Since David Axelrod has been quoted on this thread, here’s another successful alum, David Auburn, AB '91, who wrote the play (and later movie) Proof. [Auburn</a> returns to Hyde Park for ?Proof? | The University of Chicago](<a href=“Page Not Found | University of Chicago”>Auburn returns to Hyde Park for ‘Proof’) I think it is a pretty good description of the intellectual environment, and it also shows that there were some quality ECs, even back in Cue7’s bad old days. Off-off is still active, by the way.</p>
<p>Just to be clear, I don’t think of my time at UChicago as “the bad old days.” Do I need to convey my affinity for the school in some other way for you?</p>
<p>Of interest, Michael Behnke (an old admissions exec at UChicago), provided a pretty solid, one paragraph description of UChicago in the late 90s:</p>
<p>“It’s true, and alumni were right to complain, that there were significant lapses in attention to the needs of undergraduates outside the classroom. This is a culture that emphasizes intellectual life and is somewhat proud of not having a lot of the amenities other places have. But our surveys show that alums felt they were not well served by career guidance and placement, they didn’t develop socially as much as they would have liked, they didn’t have enough opportunities to participate. We’ve made significant improvements.”</p>
<p>The MIT comparison, to me, seems very apt. It’s also interesting to see what a current student, neltharion, has to say about UChicago. I also would describe my time there as intense, and, at least academically, you just don’t hear that as much about many of UChicago’s peer schools. I don’t know if I would describe Penn or Wash U as academically intense places. There are certainly pockets of extreme academic intensity, but it’s not in the air the same way it is at UChicago, at least when I was there. Also, Interestingly, Behnke was dean of admissions at MIT before coming to UChicago, and he makes that comparison often.</p>
<p>I guess as an older alum, certainly one rooted in the days where UChicago was more comparable to MIT or Caltech (without the tech/engineering aspect), I do still think of comparing UChicago and WUSTL to apples and oranges. Times change, but that transition isn’t quite complete at UChicago.</p>