Look, @Cue7 can you avoid turning this thread into a massive argument about whether or not UChicago has grade inflation like every other freaking thread on this forum? First 1) I don’t know why you think average law school applications GPA’s rising .09 points is “persuasive proof” (c’mon didn’t you read Hume?) that there’s grade inflation considering I find it very, very hard to believe that law school applicants are a representative sample and it’s even more unlikely that that group that applies now is identical to the group that applied 4 years ago and 2) it has pretty much nothing to do with the “experience on the ground” (if you will) of going here.
Hasn’t it been observed time and time again that UChicago seems to be attracting smarter and better students? In my anecdotal experience here the (objectively) smartest students get straight As. Maybe there’s just more of them? Yet - I wouldn’t tell anyone banking on being able to pull off excellent grades to go here because I have personally watched way, way too many people’s GPA dependent dreams get destroyed in a fit of reality.
Now - they usually end up fine. GPA isn’t that big of a deal and you’ll live without Yale Law or Harvard Med. But do you really want to bet on being one of the smartest people in the room full of people selected to be the smartest people? Heck no. And some people genuinely can’t handle that, a group that I suspect correlates and overlaps strongly with people who make posts on College Confidential asking how easy it is to get good grades.
Agree with everything @HydeSnark wrote above. Here’s my $0.02.
First of all, @HydeSnark is right that all other things are almost never equal. Doubly so when you’re talking about law school applicants. Throw in differences in career options, interest in academia, the self-selecting nature of law school applicants, and differences between common pre-law majors and other subjects (like our large STEM/Economics contingent) and that pool is not particularly representative of a university as a whole.
The general impression I have gotten of essay-based classes is that two factors predict about 90% of grades. The first is a student’s writing background; the second is time spent on essays. Everyone will struggle to get A’s - some more than others - but there’s a direct relationship between work and grades for 99% of students. The trick is fitting enough work into your schedule to do well in four classes - which can be tougher if you’re trying to catch up. Your first HUM grade is generally a decent indicator of the baseline you’re working from.
Cutthroat behavior hasn’t been a thing in any of my classes. Can’t really speak for STEM, where it’s more possible in theory (how does one even sabotage an essay?).
Grade-grubbing does happen; the harshest TA tends to draw scattered complaints even when grading rotates between TAs. This behavior seems to be more common in fields (public policy, economics, sometimes political science) where A. many students are looking at consulting/finance/professional school and B. there isn’t always an objective right or wrong answer. I also know people who’ve just straight-up asked professors to raise their grades. It’s a thing people do, but not too common in my experience.
Participation grades are a weird, nebulous thing that I don’t trust one bit, and professors’ approaches can vary widely (some compile grades for individual discussion sessions, some use quizzes, and some award an overall mark at the end of the quarter) but generally TAs will aim to keep it from affecting your overall grade too much because class participation is more variable, with a smaller sample size, than most indicators of learning; not everyone in a 25-student section is going to speak during a 50-minute TA session, and even 3+ hours of discussion (HUM/SOSC) can be dominated by a subset of the class.
In theory, professors also have the right to award any grade they want. This power largely moves grades up, because straying from the syllabus to lower grades would lead to a lot of (justified) complaints. This means professors can adjust for extenuating circumstances, which can be nice. I missed two weeks of class with the flu last year, and walked out of one final fully expecting to fail the class - only only to scrape by with an OK grade. I’m pretty sure my professor for that class showed some mercy there.
Other professors plan on adjusting grades upwards from the start; it’s entirely possible to average a B on your essays and receive an A- in the class. It always feels weird, and I wouldn’t count on this happening, but that’s what one of my professors did last year.
Then there’s the one professor who managed to lose a stack of essays worth 40% of the grade for a class (!) and resolved the issue by giving every student an A in the class.
If you do the reading, learn the material, and put in the work, you’ll do well enough in 99% of classes. Putting in the work (and balancing it with the need to stay sane) is usually the tough part - there are only 24 hours in a day. That’s where the (relative) grade deflation comes from.
@HydeSnark and @DunBoyer - as you’re two current Chicago students on this board, you have the most current perspectives.
So, correct me if I’m mistaken, but isn’t your general thesis that Chicago - academically - is hard, and the mindset of Chicago students make it occasionally masochistic? I’ve read your posts for some time, and I rarely see anything that points to a punitive grading scheme, or the sheer albatross of a Chicago education deadening potential exit options. You note that pain in academics can sometimes be self-induced, but students, if mindful, can find a decent balance.
All I’ll add then, is that Chicago does not seem completely removed from the rest of the top schools’ pack. It’s closer to an apples to apples comparison now more than ever. Again, this is a GOOD THING. Academics are hard, you’ll have to earn your grades, and if you’re not careful, the quarter system and intensity of the courses can pound you down, BUT, this is different from a more punitive, resource-barren environment. It’s harder than most other top schools. The experience is not different entirely.
If I’m hearing you both correctly then, you’re saying that Chicago is on the harder end of the spectrum - not that it’s off the spectrum entirely and in its own (distressing) place. Does this sound right?
Also, I’d have to go back and check, but I believe the median GPA for law applicants from Chicago six years ago was around a 3.45.
So, in six years, we’ve gone from 3.45/162 (I think) to 3.59/166.36. That’s an impressive change. It also gives some truth (note I said some truth, @HydeSnark !) that there is, at least in some sectors, grade inflation occurring at Chicago - that meaning, in some majors, professors are happy to give out more high grades if they believe the quality of the student has been increasing.
(Contrast this to say, Princeton, which had an active grade deflation policy - no matter how strong each incoming class was, for many subjects, they would still compete for a finite number of As - a number that wouldn’t change much from year to year.)
It looks like Chicago - while still offering a notable approach to education - is now not separate and distinct from the rest of the top schools’ pack! (And this is a GOOD THING.)
Please make another thread if you want to talk about law school admission data or comparisons of the Chicago now to the Chicago of before. Don’t make new first years sift through pages of alumni arguing philosophical points when they mostly just want to know what dorm to apply for and what to expect when they get here.
@HydeSnark - look at you being a model of efficiency! Apologies, @Chrchill we can continue this talk (which seems more like mutual agreement - Chicago undergrad is a much better place now than before, and @HydeSnark and @DunBoyer certainly have it better than my cohort did!) somewhere else.
(Although, @HydeSnark this thread has now taken a very Chicago tone, no? It started as a discussion with questions about dorms and workload, and veered into a philosophical dialogue of Chicago now v. before, and, somehow, law school admissions.)
Please – by all means, get back to the discussion of dorms and workload – don’t let an old alum like me (or an old Harvard alum like @Chrchill ) get in the way of that!
Has he already visited the campus? If so, probably not worth the trip. If not, it might be. My daughter skipped it and felt her original visit (over the summer evenj gave her an accurate impression of the school. (In case it matters, her initial impression was positive, daughter enrolled, and is now a happy second year for pretty much all the reasons she anticipated).
I started my Chicago career with every intention of going into a field where GPA and *alma mater/i are secondary qualifications at best. Now I’m sorely tempted to go to law school and help the SEC lock up half our economics department. I don’t think UChicago has hurt my career prospects either way, and I know I’ve become a better and more interesting person in my time here. Some might call that regression to the mean, but I digress.
There’s no denying grades are higher than they used to be. The undergrads might be a little smarter, but I don’t think we (or our peers at H/Y/P/etc.) are that much smarter.
One other change that might be a factor in my view (and, to be clear, this is less significant by far than straight-up grade inflation) is the advent of the internet. In my experience, professors are creatures of habit just like the rest of us, and that extends to syllabus and course construction. Many completed their PhDs before the internet went mainstream, and so their view of what constitutes a “reasonable” amount of research for an undergrad is anchored by the resources available when they were in college.
I’m not suggesting older professors are a band of luddites wedded to rote memorization of lecture content. Everyone’s expectations seem to be higher than they were when good research meant finding the right books at the Reg, and the older professors I’ve had so far have been just as willing as their younger counterparts (if not more so) to use online tools in ways that are that’s helpful to students. But the anchoring effect is a real thing - and many professors’ expectations are anchored by their own experiences with research in college. So there’s a chance the average U of C workload, while still very challenging, is less demanding relative to the tools at students’ disposal than it was 20-odd years ago.
This would explain why the younger professors I’ve had tend to assign longer papers and incorporate more independent research in their classes - but so could any number of other factors, and the plural of anecdote is not evidence, so take that with a grain of salt.
@BrianBoiler Agree with @exacademic. I too visited once in the summer, didn’t go to the overnights/admitted students events, and feel like I went in knowing what I was in for.
Admitted students weekend, if it’s anything like most admissions events, will be a glorified indoctrination session. I happen to agree with much of the propaganda, but wouldn’t skip a prior engagement and pay airfare to hear it.
Thank you @HydeSnark and @DunBoyer for providing the on the ground close up perspectives for prospect’s parents like me. Please keep the insight coming.
@Cue7 Who are you calling old … WHO ?? and yes we are having an interesting discussion elucidating key comparative data. I don’t see any arguments. And this is not about ranking.
Thanks to @dunboyer@hydesnark and @cue7 for replies. This is very helpful. My dad is a graduate of the College and had a rough experience. I’m trying to make up my mind if I should accept the EA offer or not. Look, I want to work hard in college and learn. But I might want to apply to professional school or internships. And getting into these are closely tied to GPA. I don’t want to spend 4 years burning both ends of the candle and end up with a 2.8 GPA.
If you assume that the average law school applicant from Ivies/Duke/Stanford/UChicago aren’t really that different from each other intellectually, then its pretty clear that UChicago has more stringent grading. Its not a huge difference (only 0.17 points), but its there. The other notable point is that median GPAs have been rising steadily. Perhaps this is due to smarter students, or to loosening of standard. But its undeniable that the GPA from UC has been rising over the years, and this is fundamentally good.
How difficult is it for UChicago undergrads to get summer internships in financial careers? What type of financial/consulting companies recruit on campus at UChicago? Looks like you need a Handshake account to see the list of firms that recruit on campus.
I’m politically conservative, and heard that UChicago is filled with vocal liberals and progressives. I tend to keep my political opinions to myself. But is there a backlash against conservative thought on campus? Will I face retribution from professors for expressing a conservative point of view in papers and during class discussion?
I’m not an econ major, so others can probably give more helpful/complete answers, but anecdotally/based on friends’ accounts the Neal approach doesn’t sound like current practice. If it was, I doubt we’d see 30% of each graduating class finding jobs in consulting/finance.
For what it’s worth, honors eligibility in political science requires a 3.7 GPA in the major, and this reflects the fact that some professors grade with kid gloves (physics, by contrast, requires a 3.0). Math requires a 3.25. For PubPol, the figure is 3.4. The magic number in economics is 3.5 (higher than for PubPol, which seems weird).
Caveat: I don’t know how much the prevalence of honors is harmonized across departments.
Among other things, that report lists full-time recruiting partners and Metcalf employers, and shows that 9 of the top 20 post-graduation destinations are somewhere in the finance/consulting universe.
UChicago leans left - probably more than your average campus. There will always be people convinced that [insert ideology here] is an unprecedented threat to all things good and pure, and must be put down by any means necessary. They’re vastly outnumbered on both sides by the people willing to have a reasonable (if sometimes over-the-top) debate, and that’s generally going to happen only if you start or join a conversation about politics. Your housemates are not going to interrogate you to figure out which way you lean.
Fiscal conservatives are the minority, but they’re hardly rare on campus; a quarter of the class majors in economics, after all. If you oppose gay marriage or support The Wall, you might find yourself outside the mainstream. More generally, our president is not a popular guy on campus, although he does have his supporters. The College Republicans who plan to run for office, mindful of the way history might treat President Trump, have carefully avoided saying anything about him on the record.
The prevalence of groupthink might vary by department, but political science is about as left as they come and I’ve seen very little silencing of any viewpoint in class or in essays. I did take a CRES class that rarely questioned the assumptions behind several key theories, but that’s a sample size of one class taught by a PhD student. Many Core classes touch on concepts relevant to contemporary issues, but you’ll rarely debate the issues themselves in class or in your essays. It’s all about the texts.
Even when you do debate current issues in a class context, as long as you can present a well-reasoned argument and support it with adequate evidence you’ll be fine. I started out as a Radical Centrist™ and have no complaints.
Edit: Also wanted to address this.
Unless you major in something like computer science, face serious and unforeseen issues (mental health/a serious illness/etc), or stop doing your work, this is very unlikely. Even with some of these challenges, it’s still not all that likely.
In 2006, one estimate put the average GPA at 3.35, and I’m sure it’s gone up since then.
@DunBoyer is obviously far more familiar than I with conditions at Chicago today. But my strong impression is that, while the foregoing statement may be true as applied to a universe of campuses that includes all sorts of religious institutions and public colleges in red states, Chicago does not “lean left” as compared to its relevant peer group (Ivies and Ivy-equivalents). I believe Chicago actually leans a little right – or maybe, more accurately, stands a little straighter – than its peers.
That’s not true when it comes to social issues like abortion or marriage equality. “Right” at Chicago overwhelmingly tends to mean libertarian, not Moral Majority. There is a really strong tradition of intelligent, libertarian conservatism on the Chicago faculty. That gets honored in the discourse that goes on there all the time, and tends to attract enough like-minded undergraduate students to form at least a critical mass for mutual support. Not necessarily a majority or even close, but a lot more than the embattled subculture you might find at other elite institutions.
The other thing I think is true about Chicago, or at least used to be true when I spent more time there, is that people of all political stripes try to avoid “discussions” that really amount to shouting slogans at one another. There is (or was, and I hope still is) a high value placed on listening to each other’s arguments and responding to them thoughtfully, looking for common ground and shared premises, and then identifying at exactly what point people’s thinking diverges, and why, and exploring whether there are ways to agree further. People demand, and respect, evidence, logic, and courtesy. And people tend not to think, “I’m a socialist” or “I’m a conservative” and that means I have to adhere to whatever this week’s talking points are for socialists or conservatives.
@DunBoyer can you please expand a bit on computer science? That actually was one of the majors I was considering. Is it especially difficult to get good grades in Comp Sci??
@JHS thanks for the feedback. I consider myself as fiscally conservative, but with moderate views on social issues. Not really libertarian. But its good to see that the campus would value a good discussion.
and yes we are having an interesting discussion elucidating key comparative data. I don’t see any arguments. And this is not about ranking.