@f77a9b82 Computer science is a tough and time-consuming major almost anywhere, and that’s no less true at UChicago. The grading and workload makes CS one of the more challenging majors in the College. I don’t know enough to comment on the particulars that distinguish our department from others, so that’s all I can say with any certainty.
Hey! In my experience students tend to go downtown frequently, especially on Fridays and Saturdays. My friends and I typically go downtown every Friday before going to a frat party. Also I know a lot of people who hang out in other interesting neighborhoods besides the downtown like Chinatown and Wicker Park and Lincoln Park. I’m going into investment banking so I know a lot about finance at UChicago. We have great relationships with firms (especially Goldman, JP Morgan, and Credit Suisse) and that’s really important in the recruiting process. We also have a couple of highly prestigious finance/consulting RSO’s that look great on a resume. As for grade deflation, I have a 3.9 GPA and I have a fairly balanced life between working and playing hard. You remind me of how I was last year when I was hesitant about UChicago, which is why I decided to take the time to write this post. I was worried about grade deflation and the “where fun comes to die” stereotype, but thankfully those are not true and coming to UChicago was an excellent decision for me.
There’s another variant of conservatism associated with the University of Chicago, which is neither the free-market conservatism of classical economics nor the social conservatism one might find at a church-related school. It was particularly associated with the figure of Leo Strauss, who was in the Committee on Social Thought in the 50’s and 60’s. The concept of natural law was important in Strauss’s analysis, which heavily drew on the Greek philosophers and the classics generally. Strauss’s great enemies were relativism and modernism. He was in some sense a cultural conservative, though his thought was subtle and even esoteric. Strauss had many students who spread Straussian thought far and wide. Allan Bloom was one of them. Twenty-five years ago Bloom returned to the University of Chicago to write the surprising best-seller, “The Closing of the American Mind”, and then was canonized by his friend Saul Bellow after his death in “Ravelstein,” Bellow’s last novel.
There were some companion strains of this cultural conservatism at the University. One of these was the Aristotelianism and neo-Thomism for which the University was once famous and which influenced many of its departments in the humanities. Robert Maynard Hutchins himself was in some sense a conservative in respect of his educational philosophy, which he distinguished from that of the arch-liberal, John Dewey, who began at Chicago but moved to Columbia. Then there was the thinking and writings of one of the founders of modern American conservatism, Richard M. Weaver, a southerner who was associated with the southern agrarians and was for many years a teacher in the English Department.
This cultural conservatism in its more militant form may be virtually extinct at Chicago, and it never put its stamp on the institution in the way the giants of the Economics Department did. Undergraduates even in my day knew little of Strauss, though he was then at the height of his influence. Yet the whole ethos of “the great books” does tend to foster the concept of “perennial thinking”, or traditional wisdom, which is conservative in tendency if only because it looks for truths in old texts and old ideas and refuses to be moved by presentism and faddism. That attitude has been true at the University of Chicago for a long time and of course lies at the heart of the still living and functioning undergraduate core of general studies. Perhaps it has also had some effect on the University’s attitude toward freedom of speech.
Sorry, @f77a9b82 , this is a bit more than you asked for on this subject. However, better get used to that - it’s the way at the University of Chicago!
Many thanks for all of the thoughtful responses. This is really nice to have such a loyal bunch of alumni and current students answering questions. I really appreciate it.
After looking through the degree requirements, I have some more questions
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Converting semester credit hours to quarter hours: I took a couple of college classes while in high school, and received college credit. It appears UChicago will accept these courses to fulfill my elective requirement. How do I convert between a standard semester hour to UChicago quarter hours? I have completed two 3 credit-hour classes (total of 6 credits). The college that I took these at used standard semester based calendars. Is there some sort of conversion between semester-based credits and quarter based credits?
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Language classes hours per week: looks like majority of classes meet for 3 hours per week (3x or 2x per week). However some languages (Spanish, French, Chinese) meet 4 hours per week. Why is there an extra hour of instruction for only some of the languages and not the others?
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Core Sequences Confusion: Looking at the Core humanities, it says that only two classes are required to fulfill the requirements for humanities. Among those listed for HUM are several different 3-term sequences. It also states that once a student begins a sequence, they are expected to remain in that sequence. Does this mean if I start off in the HUM 11000-11100-11200 sequence that I have to complete all 3 classes? What if I want to drop the third class (11200) since I only need two HUM classes to fulfill core requirements?
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I looked on ratemyprofessor.com and it seems that many professors don’t have reviews posted. I usually like to look at sources like this before deciding to register for a class or not. Is there another place that UChicago students post ratings for professors?
“3) Core Sequences Confusion: Looking at the Core humanities, it says that only two classes are required to fulfill the requirements for humanities. Among those listed for HUM are several different 3-term sequences. It also states that once a student begins a sequence, they are expected to remain in that sequence. Does this mean if I start off in the HUM 11000-11100-11200 sequence that I have to complete all 3 classes? What if I want to drop the third class (11200) since I only need two HUM classes to fulfill core requirements?”
You need 600 credits (six classes) of Hum, Civ and Art consisting of at least 200 credits each (2 classes) of Hum and Civ. and at least 100 credits (one class) of Art. So you can fulfill this Core requirement with 2 classes of Hum, 2 of Civ, and 2 of Art, or 3 Hum, 2 Civ, and 1 Art, or (what my D17 is likely to do) 2 Hum, 3 Civ and one Art.
Pretty sure that all of the Hums are in 3 quarter sequence and if you take the third but don’t need it for the Core, it probably just becomes an elective. That’s something to clarify with your advisor.
You are expected to complete at least 2 classes of the Hum sequence you began and you need to stick to the sequence order. No flexibility on that. You will find when you pre-register in August that you list something like 9 different choices for Hum and you will most likely end up with one of those. As the Hum sequence is the only course sequence actually required during the first two quarters of first year, and therefore most if not all sections will be filled up, you will likely have very poor luck trying to switch out your current Hum for another choice. Just a heads up on that.
“1) Converting semester credit hours to quarter hours: I took a couple of college classes while in high school, and received college credit. It appears UChicago will accept these courses to fulfill my elective requirement. How do I convert between a standard semester hour to UChicago quarter hours? I have completed two 3 credit-hour classes (total of 6 credits). The college that I took these at used standard semester based calendars. Is there some sort of conversion between semester-based credits and quarter based credits?”
Petitioning the College will probably answer your questions on this one. The current catalog lays out the instructions (after reading the intro, scroll down to the section on courses taken in high school). Also, your applicable catalog will be the 2018-19 year but this will give you the current procedures. No guarantee they won’t change a bit - course credit for some AP classs certainly did this past year. So read your catalog carefully when available just to make sure no changes from current policy.
http://collegecatalog.uchicago.edu/thecollege/transfercredit/
“4) I looked on ratemyprofessor.com and it seems that many professors don’t have reviews posted. I usually like to look at sources like this before deciding to register for a class or not. Is there another place that UChicago students post ratings for professors?”
Others will weigh in here but here’s my 2 cents, having gone through pre-reg. with my daughter this past summer. If you are planning to take any major courses then it might make sense to check out ratemyprof or equivalent, although in all honesty someone like @DunBoyer or @HydeSnark or any of the current students weighing in will give you much better advice and feedback.
When it comes to stuff like Sosc. and Hum (ie the fundamental Core classes) you will be choosing something like nine courses and/or sections of each one so using some professor online rating system might not be helpful or even meaningful. The reasons are several, among them being: 1) many Core instructors may not be assigned till after you register; 2) even if already assigned, that instructor may not be a known quantity ratings-wise; 3) you might turn out to have a COMPLETELY different experience with that instructor so don’t sell yourself short and rely on what others necessarily say; 4) Hum and Sosc. tend to use the same texts and the same format among all the sections for a particular sequence, regardless of instructor, because the goals are to teach you how to write, think and analyze - these goals are far more important than which particular instructor you get for which sequence; 5) your experince at UChicago should be expansive and diverse in all ways - that means getting different instructors with different styles and personalities (again, don’t sell yourself short).
Most of the calc. sequences are taught by grad students so, again, hard to get a rating on those guys. All 130’s sections will use the same book. Same with all 150’s (different book from 130’s but same among all the 150’s sections). Have no clue about 160’s (honors) so someone else will need to weigh in there.
What WILL be helpful will be understanding what to register for, how many classes to register for, and how you want to spread your Core out over the your time at the College vs. how/when to start your major. Get that nailed down first. Then, when you are devising your strategy for preregistration, getting some feedback on certain instructors might help you decide between two otherwise equivalent sections (taught at the same time). It just shouldn’t be a primary determinant of the course-choice.
“2) Language classes hours per week: looks like majority of classes meet for 3 hours per week (3x or 2x per week). However some languages (Spanish, French, Chinese) meet 4 hours per week. Why is there an extra hour of instruction for only some of the languages and not the others?”
A few meet five hours per week! Hebrew, Turkish, Arabic and the South-Asian languages, for instance. Some of the Latin-based languages appear to meet 4 hours per week (French, Spanish), and some only three: (Latin, Portugese, Italian). Guessing these differences have to do more with departmental policy or the way that the major is configured (to the extent that the intro courses are pre-reqs) than anything else. The varied assortment of languages available to the undergrads is pretty impressive! Some interesting options that don’t seem to require too much contact time would be Tibetan, Classical Egyptian, Basque, or Czech. Of course, those just might be difficult languages to learn altogether and one might appreciate having had extra class time for them.
@JBStillFlying - “What WILL be helpful will be understanding what to register for, how many classes to register for, and how you want to spread your Core out over the your time at the College vs. how/when to start your major.”
As a parent with our first heading to U Chicago next fall, I’m wondering what sort of help my son will get in figuring out what classes to register for. He was pretty advanced in math, but understands he will probably want to go back to Calc I or more likely, Calc II his first year. He is expecting the math courses to be much more involved than what he took in HS - and yet hoping some will be review.
Thank you for your posts on the forum - the information is great for parents and students heading off to college for the first time!
@caymusjordan first of all, congrats to your son!! You and he can revel in the glow right now - rest assured there will be plenty of time for Math placement and course registration. They don’t start mailing anything detailed till beginning in May or June and you’ll have excellent directions at that time.
We found the detailed and thorough online advice, as well as the occasional email to summer advising, to be sufficient in answering our inquiries. However, they were also available by phone or even a personal visit if need be. Your son will have the summer to figure out a potential schedule and his hum (and sosc if applicable) choices. Math, chem, and FL are online placement tests taken ideally right after he graduates. He’ll know his placement before he has to do preregistration. Some advanced students are also eligible to take a Math accreditation exam but if your son is planning to remain in the standard sequence and perhaps start with 152 due to AP BC credit he might not need to worry about accreditation. Keep an eye on the AP credits allowed once the new catalog comes out in June. This past year’s catalog saw some changes wrt AP and that could well happen again for next year.
@caymusjordan DD is a first year and was invited to 16100 (honors Calc 1) or start in 15300 (Calc 3) via the accreditation test, she elected Calc 3 and found the course to be straight forward enough but they also expected to have a background in general mathematical proofs (at least for her section and essentially unrelated to calculus). She had to struggle through this coming from a high school without any real background in proofs. Ended up powering through Calc 3 which will let her double major in Molecular Engineering (completes all the math requirements by the end of year 1) and Creative writing. Personally my advice is, if your son wants to start Calc 1 he should consider the 16100 series (honors), otherwise let the College place him via the AP and/or accreditation test.
@f77a9b82 As far as I know, the College doesn’t really do credit hours. With a few exceptions, a course is worth 100 credits (except the humanities writing seminars, which are P/F and worth zero credits).
The College requires that 3800 of the 4200 credits required to graduate come from classes taken at the College, making anything beyond 4 courses’ worth of general elective credit redundant, and most people end up taking more than 42 classes (out of a maximum of 48) anyway.
As @JBStillFlying noted, you don’t need to take a third quarter of HUM, as long as you take a third quarter of Civ or a second quarter of art instead.
You do need to take all your HUM classes in the same sequence (the same is also true of SOSC and CIV). Each quarter builds on ideas and themes from earlier quarters, so mixing and matching your favorite parts of multiple HUM/SOSC/CIV sequences isn’t in the spirit of the Core, and the College doesn’t allow it.
For much the same reason, HUM and your 3 quarters of SOSC both need to be taken in sequence. Sometimes life gets in the way of completing a sequence as a first-year (HUM) or during a single year (SOSC), but barring serious extenuating circumstances (think health/mental health issues, academic suspension, or maybe a job offer from the White House) students are expected to do so.
There are students who, for one reason or another, need to switch HUM or SOSC sections between quarters. This might be due to a schedule conflict, issues with a professor, or even the sudden realization that they don’t do mornings. The College knows this and has a process in place that makes it possible. HUM or SOSC sections require “drop consent,” which can only be requested once you have instructor consent to add a new section (which is only granted for sections with fewer than 19 students).
It might be tough to get the ideal time or professor, because it’s rarer for spots to open up in those sections, but there’s usually an open section out there.
I agree with all of @JBStillFlying 's caveats above with regards to relying on ratings in general. And yes, you will find that many introductory classes are taught by grad students or recent PhDs.
UChicago has its own course evaluation system, and most students use that. As far as I can tell, Ratemyprofessor is all but useless in judging UChicago professors; half the faculty in my major isn’t even listed, and - to take a single example - John Mearsheimer (a giant in his field who’s been teaching here since 1982) has all of 25 ratings. You’ll have access to U of C course evaluations once you get a CNET ID, and until that happens there’s little need to worry about course selection anyway. Fall quarter classes aren’t close to being finalized, and pre-registration takes place in August.
Once you do have evaluations, they’ll still be incomplete or offer a small sample size for many professors. This is partly because HUM, SOSC, and CIV courses tend to be taught by relatively junior professors - many of them hired for a term of 3 or 4 years specifically to teach the Core. You can find many of these professors looking fly here: https://societyoffellows.uchicago.edu
This system means most HUM/SOSC/CIV professors don’t have a long history at the College or a lot of evaluation data for you to rely on.
Evaluations are generally helpful if you’re looking to A. get a sense of the workload a class entails (evaluations include an average number of hours spent on the course) or B. dodge that one professor in a department who loathes grading, and avoids it by basing half your grade on a half-dozen term ID questions. Insane workloads and arbitrary grading usually get a mention. In the absence of these issues, it’s hard to go too wrong simply choosing classes based on scheduling convenience and academic/career interests.
Then there’s the happier side of evaluations; once in a while, you’ll find a class several students single out as the best course, with the best professor, of their college career. When you see a class like that, take it.
@CU123 and @JBStillFlying - thank you! I know I’m early on some of this…my family gives me a hard time about planning too far in advance:)
My son did say they covered proofs last year, but isn’t sure how far ahead he wants to start in college (taking differential equations this year - although more like an audit class). The honors Calc might be the way to go! We’ll keep an eye out for the new catalog in June.
CU - love the double major in Molecular Engineering and Creative Writing!
Merry Christmas/Happy New Year to you all!
How is Law Letters and Society as a major ? It is being reinstated. How is its reputation as a pre law major ? Cheers.
Something else to consider when relying on an eval. system for choosing sections and profs. is that it appears you get auto-enrolled in most of your core sequences for winter quarter (whether that will also happen for spring quarter, when Hum and Math are “technically” fulfilled, remains to be seen :D). D seemed to get sections around the same time of day as in the fall and that worked well for her. She ended up with the same Sosc. and Math instructors but a different Hum guy. So no guarantees that you have the same instructors throughout the sequence.
@Chrchill - was wondering the same thing!
LLS is being reinstated after an extensive redesign of the major, so it’s hard to say how it’ll look by the time the Class of '22 is declaring majors.
Anecdotal evidence is anecdotal, but what I’ve heard about the old major suggests that before the redesign it was too pre-professional for the college, but not rigorous enough to be particularly useful in practice. I know of two people who’ve taken LLS classes, and both had a similar experience. One of them, initially very interested in the major, was unimpressed with the course and his classmates - so he decided to go to law school instead. The other took an LLS class as an elective. Both felt that the right major (Political Science/Philosophy/History) and a smattering of classes taught by law school faculty could replicate LLS with more rigor than the actual major.
The redesign may well have been prompted by these very issues, so the major could look very different now.
Brief note on LLS: LLS as originally constituted was the pet project of a very charismatic polymath, lawyer, and law school professor named Dennis Hutchinson. Hutchinson got a Jurisprudence degree at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, and had a longstanding belief that law was too important to be left to lawyers. For a long time – at least as a matter of folklore – he would not admit anyone to the major who looked like he or she might be planning to go to law school. That was specifically because he did not want it to be anything like a “pre-professional” major. It was designed not to be a good pre-law major. But I think over time he got worn down on that position, essentially because students interested in going to law school were the only ones really interested in the major, and because for a long time law school was such an attractive option for smart non-STEM undergraduates.
Hutchinson still runs the program – and he’s also Master of the “New Collegiate Division,” a small administrative grab-bag of majors that don’t fit naturally into the other Divisions – but he’s over 70 and clearly approaching retirement. Hence, I think, the review and redesign of the major. I imagine it’s still an open question whether and for how long it will survive Hutchinson’s eventual absence.
Anything that involves critical analysis, use of evidence, and writing is a perfectly good pre-law major. And highly analytical majors like math or chemistry that don’t involve a lot of writing are more than fine as pre-law majors. Learning a bunch of stuff about law in advance of law school will neither help you with law school admissions or help you with law school itself once you decide where to go.
“Anything that involves critical analysis, use of evidence, and writing is a perfectly good pre-law major. And highly analytical majors like math or chemistry that don’t involve a lot of writing are more than fine as pre-law majors. Learning a bunch of stuff about law in advance of law school will neither help you with law school admissions or help you with law school itself once you decide where to go.”
Even math and chem majors need to take at least seven writing-intensive courses at UChicago (2 Hum, 2 Civ, 3 Sosc). And STEM majors can always take elective courses (including some of those satisfying the current configuration of LLS) that stress writing and research. Anyone interested in studying the Laws of Hammurabi should be able to do so (and guessing they can). BTW, UChicago’s Oriental Institute and related fields offer a particularly enriching exposure to such topics.
Ok, thanks folks. The answers are wonderful. My interest level has definitely risen. Now that we’ve covered academics, lets move onto social life questions:
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Parties - are they dominated by the greeks? Can non-greeks have a good social life? What are the big party nights (Thu, Fri, Sat)?
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Is alcohol allowed in the dorms (for those under 21)? How much trouble will I get into for having alcohol in my room while underage?
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Are there any bars nearby that students go to? Is there a special mechanism to separate under 21 vs older 21 crowd in these bars? Or do the bars only let in 21+?
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Drug use: how common is it? I really don’t take any drugs, but want to understand how prevalent it is.
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Off campus parties: are these common among seniors/juniors who live off campus?
Most parties at UChicago fall into one of three categories.
House parties are the safe and friendly option - you’ll have RAs and your RH minutes away if there’s trouble. They’re officially sanctioned, which means campus rules on alcohol apply and guests from other halls usually need to sign into the dorm. They can still be lots of fun. I used to live in a country where anyone aged 16+ could buy booze and get into clubs, and I will take a house party over the alternatives nine times out of ten. That said, the party experience can vary considerably by house, so YMMV.
If you aren’t a fan of your house’s parties, those held in off-campus apartments are a nice middle ground. They tend to feature a larger space and looser restrictions on alcohol, but are usually limited to a loosely defined friend group. Good hosts will not hesitate to kick someone out if they’re making a party unsafe or hassling other guests.
The worst of the debauchery happens at fraternity parties. One frat sells cheap, awful beer at Bar Night every Wednesday (Parents, if your S/D isn’t answering their phone on a Wednesday night, rest assured that your tuition dollars are hard at work). Others have parties on Friday/Saturday. These are usually, sometimes disgustingly, full, and the only parties visibly dominated by frats. Officially, they don’t exist, so the nearest University employee is usually a UCPD officer patrolling nearby.
Frats being what they are, if someone staggers into your house lounge with 13 shots in their system, they’re probably back from a frat party. This creates all sorts of issues, so fraternities - hoping to avoid official oversight - have some common safety rules. I believe these were beefed up (at least on paper) after something like 10 first-years were hospitalized during O-Week this fall, prompting a rare crackdown by the university. Some frats have a better safety record than others, and you need to decide how much you trust them to self-police, but everyone’s comfort level is different. Just don’t touch DU with a 10-foot pole.
Non-greeks can have a good social life, to the extent anyone at the U of C is capable of normal human interaction. Only 10-15% of the College rushes, so Greek life lacks the numbers to dominate the social scene. They’re probably outnumbered by those who rarely or never drink, with a majority of normal college students somewhere between the two extremes.
Many moons ago, some bright fellow in the sociology department figured out that college students are going to get their hands on alcohol - drinking age or no drinking age. The College has chosen to accept that fact and deal with it. They want you to use alcohol safely, near people who can help, and if you need to call an ambulance they don’t want you worried about getting in trouble. Your RAs and RH will lay out the ground rules during O-Week, and they’re generally quite simple.
As long as you don’t bring an open container into a hallway/common space or make a visiting prospie chug absinthe, you should be fine.
The main one is Jimmy’s on 55th, which cards. The Point (on 53rd) is another option, though I don’t think it’s as popular among undergrads. But most of the alcohol imbibed around campus is purchased by older students (for themselves or others) at the Kimbark Liquor Shop.
It’s college. Marijuana use is pretty common, and shrooms have their fans. Adderall abuse is a thing in some circles. No doubt there are some students who use hard drugs, though that’s not really my crowd so I have no idea what the numbers are like. The most common drug on campus is caffeine, with alcohol a distant second.
A housemate or two might wander into the lounge looking very relaxed, but otherwise drug use shouldn’t affect you as a non-user unless you have asthma and your neighbor smokes cigarettes or pot. Even then, a polite conversation should resolve such issues unless your neighbor is a jerk. And if that’s the case, the law is on your side; smoking within 15 feet of a university building is illegal in Illinois.