<ol>
<li><p>What is a department advisor? As far as I can tell, there is no such thing at the University of Chicago. Maybe in the math department (about which I would have no information) there is. There certainly isn't in the English Department. A student who writes a BA thesis (which is not mandatory there) gets a BA thesis advisor, but there is never any departmental advisor. The separate advising staff is what there is. (Not a good thing, IMO.)</p></li>
<li><p>There is, however, a separate medical professions advisor, who talks to students about meeting medical school admissions requirements and the like. I think there are some other specialized advisors, too.</p></li>
<li><p>Yes, the advisors have placement exam results when they meet with the students individually.</p></li>
<li><p>Others have clearly had a better experience, but my kids haven't gotten a lot of value out of their advisors (and it's been a revolving door for my older child's advisors). Mainly, they make certain a student has a plan for completing the core, for choosing a major, and for meeting major requirements. My son's advisor helped him thing through honors vs. non-honors math and science. A bit. Not a lot of depth in the advising, that I've seen.</p></li>
<li><p>I have no idea how departmental approval works first quarter of first year. If I were the student, I would take responsibility for getting it before meeting with the advisor. Students other than first years are already registered for courses by the time the first years register.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>My guess is that your son's advisor will look at his plan and push back some. They have been recommending that students take both Hum and Sosc first year (they used to tell them to wait until second year for Sosc). The advisor may tell him he's nuts to take both Honors Analysis and an upper-level math course. But I doubt the advisor will make a serious attempt to stop him if he's thought things through and has departmental approval. (The department could push back, too.)</p>
<ol>
<li> Departmental advisors at Chicago are called directors of undergraduate studies. You can learn more about the process here: The</a> University of Chicago College</li>
</ol>
<p>Maybe you want to change your bold statement "there is never any departmental advisor. "?</p>
<ol>
<li><p>There are specialty advisors for law, health professions, business, study abroad, arts and sciences and fellowships/scholarships. See this page: The</a> University of Chicago College</p></li>
<li><p>Sorry about your kid's advising experiences. I think the experience is what the kid makes of it. For mine, her adviser was absolutely crucial to her success in many ways. </p></li>
</ol>
<p>The key to satisfactory advice and protecting the kids from themselves if necessary is that these professionals have experience with lots of different kids and access to a lot of information about the kid, whether from the admissions materials or from o-week testing. Not much is new to them.</p>
<p>The most helpful "advisors" will be the people around during O-Week and the professors. Some of the full-time advisors are excellent and others are in quick rotation, but there are a lot of people around to help out with advice, in the form of professors, directors of undergraduate studies, resident heads, house O-Aides, etc.</p>
<p>There has been a general trend towards encouraging hum and sosc in the first year and getting core complete in the first two years, but that plan doesn't work for everybody, and that's perfectly okay.</p>
<p>There are a lot of big choices that most incoming first-years have to make: honors calc or not? which hum sequence? which electives? do I want to start pre-med? what about econ? what about Kirkegaard? There is no right answer to these questions... some of my friends will say honors calc is the best thing that ever happened to them, others will say it's a class from hell.</p>
<p>If you or your child takes initiative to ask around for advice and hop into a section realizing that it might not be the right one, I think he or she will do just fine.</p>
<p>Yes, S has spoken with the directors of undergraduate studies in two departments, as well with some of the profs. Without getting into too much detail here, he was told by one of the specialty advisors that he should be able to get placement out of an intro sequence based on his background and experience and directly into 20000 level coursework. The prof who actually teaches the sequence was not available when S visited in April, but has been kept in the loop.</p>
<p>S plans to touch base with the prof and advisor over the summer and meet with them before O-Week begins. (S and DH are going out a couple of days early, in part so S can deal with this.) I expect S will get some pushback fom advisors on what he'd like to take, which is why I have encouraged him to read the catalog and have a variety of options for when he sees the advisor, who I assume at O-Week, will know little about each student. </p>
<p>Sosc and Hum both in first year! Agh! How can anyone breathe long enough to appreciate either?</p>
<p>newmassdad: You can save the sarcasm. I know what a director of undergraduate studies is, and it's not what I think of as a "departmental advisor". My daughter has met with the English Department DUS a couple of times, and received no advice whatsoever beyond an explanation of the BA thesis process. The advisor she had first year steered her into a couple of courses that were terrible fits for her, the advisor she had the second year had her plan around a program for which she was rejected (he had told her she would have no problem getting into it). I understand that there are good advisors; my kids haven't met them. (My son likes the health professions advisor.)</p>
<p>When I was in college, at all times I had a faculty advisor (actually, the first was a chaplain, not a professor, assigned not-quite-at-random to me based on my interests). After my first year, I chose my own advisor, a professor I admired. When I declared a major not in that professor's department, I was assigned a full professor in the major as my advisor. Each of these people had one to seven advisees, no more; each of them was extremely familiar with and sophisticated about the things in which I was interested; each was someone whom I saw frequently not in his advisor capacity. All course selections had to be signed off on by both the advisor and by a dean who was responsible for about 400 students (and who remained the same all four years for me, and who has been a university president for the past 15 years).</p>
<p>That was a good advising system. </p>
<p>I'm glad Chicago's system has worked out well for your daughter -- and I've heard other good stories, too -- but I think you would have to admit that, at best, it's spotty.</p>
<p>I've heard others that have had so-so experiences with advisors at Chicago. After all, some turnover is unavoidable. Sorry your kid ended up on the short end.</p>
<p>My kids have had mixed advising experiences at Chicago, but your kids should know that they can request a change in adviser if they feel they are not getting what they need. My eldest had an all but useless first adviser, but her replacement was terrific. She was right on top of making sure that he'd met all Core, PE and concentration requirements. He was assigned to her after returning from abroad 3rd year, so I don't think she was much help in the "directing his class choices" part of the task, but she did make sure that he finished his PE requirement (sometimes easy to forget if not done 1st year) and that he got the waiver he needed for a required class for his major. My D (currently finishing her first year) says that her adviser is a terrific person, but not all that helpful with anything but making sure that the Core is being met in a "timely" fashion. FWIW, she will have finished Sosc, Hum, Math, Bio Core (needs topics class), Art and all but one quarter of language by the end of her first year. She is one of those kids who would like to finish the Core sooner rather than later and move on to more directed interests. She only took one elective (or maybe major requirement if she goes with Sociology) this year, but is already excited about a more varied course load next year.</p>
<p>^That's what my kids' experience tells them advisors do: Check how they're doing on the core, what are they thinking of majoring in, how are they going to meet those requirements? Certainly, neither one's advisor has fallen short in any way on that function; I don't want to suggest they have.</p>
<p>Beyond that, my first kid got unfortunate guidance her first year, but there was nothing much to do about it. Her reaction was to take more responsibility for her own choices going forward. In any event, her option to change advisors was irrelevant -- they changed whether she wanted it or not. And she doesn't need an advisor to tell her how to meet core and major requirements.</p>
<p>I hardly think the Chicago advisory system is inherently bad, and certainly it seems to have done very well by the newmassdad family. It just hasn't done anything valuable for the JHS family yet. If I were King of the College, I would want it to be a lot better.</p>
<p>The people who have been most valuable to me have been my parents, my resident heads, some alumni friends, and my peers. My advisor is great, but doesn't really know me.</p>
<p>quote taken from 2009 princeton review:
" However, There arent as many extremely strange and nerdy students as there have been in the past. A portion of the student body at the U of C [are] actually talented, cool, and (gasp!) attractive. "</p>
<p>There will always be a quirky and overtly intellectual bent to Chicago as long as the grad student/undergrad ratio stays heavily tilted towards grad students. The college will remain simply a component, important as it may be, of the University as a whole. Chicago's undergrad culture simply reflects the very serious and purposeful world of the larger graduate departments that surround it.</p>
<p>In the 1930's there was a movement to merge Northwestern and the U of C into the "Universities" of Chicago with the all the undergrads in Evanston and the grads in Hyde Park. I'm glad this did not happen.</p>