Chicago's 2007-2008 Essays: a banner year?

Parent Cafe
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<p>Xiggi, my daughter did not like the prompts last year, so she chose option #5. The "prompt" that she created was this: "Option 5: University of Chicago is often jokingly referred to, by its students, as “The Place Where Fun Comes to Die.” Here, now, is the story of how fun died." The essay was 500 words, obviously written by someone who is an avid reader of The Onion.</p>

<p>She got in.</p>

<p>If Chicago's "uncommon" essays are enough to intimidate some students and keep them from applying, so be it.... at least it weeds out some of the competition. My d. didn't take the process (or the school) too seriously, she had fun with the essay and with her short answers. </p>

<p>In any case, my point is that no matter what the essay prompts are, like anywhere else - kids can write about whatever they want to write about.</p>

<p>Marite, obviously my daughter is one of "those who wear their knowledge lightly without trying to be anything but what they are" ... as noted, she got in. Maybe part of the Chicago "test" is to see who has the confidence to write something genuine as opposed to trying to impress. Or maybe my daughter got in just because hers was the only essay that actually made someone laugh. I haven't got a clue.... I just know that Chicago has no shortage of students. (It was a good thing for their housing department that my daughter turned them down this year, as they were over-enrolled).</p>

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<p>This year the acceptance rate was 36% with a yield of about 40%.</p>

43

<p>
[quote]
What's wrong with asking: Describe your ideal dinner scenario: guests, menu, conversation?

[/quote]
That is a prosaic way of asking a simple question... but the "Mad Hatter" question conjures up more in the way of visual imagery. I start to "see" the party in my mind as I read the Chicago question, and fill in the spots at the table, and then I start to have fun with it, and I come up with an entirely different set of guests and conversations than I would with the watered-down version of the question. The simpler phrasing simply leaves me cold. </p>

<p>I think that this may be a battle between the conventional vs. the creative, linear vs. out-of-the-box thinkers, word-thinkers vs. picture thinkers. It doesn't suprise me at all that Xiggi, a young man who put considerable effort into doing well on standardized tests and instructing others in his methods, and chose to attend a college known for its relative political conservatism, would be horrified (unlike the SAT, one has no clue as to the right answer when confronted with such an array) -- whereas my artsy, dancing liberal -minded daughter would have seen it as an open-ended invitation to follow her creative impulses, and come up with something entirely different from anything they suggested. </p>

<p>Obviously, Chicago wants the type of students who relish complexity and the exploration of new and even outlandish ideas, who understand implicitly how it is you play the notes that aren't there or what it means to give an answer that destroys the question. Me, I would have written on a "mind that does not stick" -- and was rather disappointed that the concept didn't appeal to my daughter. The only questions that put me off are the math/science ones... string theory? that's scary.... but I think that must be a way to get all those math/science kids who find it hard to write revalatory essays about themselves an avenue to really express who they are.... I mean, there are people who get excited about that sort of thing, and might as well save an essay prompt for them. </p>

<p>And Marite, no- they don't bring in a prof from the physics department to evaluate the answer -- they don't CARE if the science is sound or if its fanciful, they just want to see what the kid does with the question. A kid who had no idea what "string theory" is and made up his own set of rules would probably fare as well as the kid who understood the science and took off in a more plausible direction. </p>

<p>There isn't going to be an agreement on this because Chicago's app does exactly what it is supposed to do: it attracts the students with the kinds of minds they are looking for. They probably want kids who lean more toward the theoretical than the practical, so naturally the more practically-minded are going to be put off.</p>

44

<p>My son wrote his own prompt and wrote an essay about eating a family pack of White Castle hamburgers with a friend- competitive hamburger-eating.....
It was pretty good.
His "favorite book" essay was quite risky but one of the best essays I have read. It was about Tucker Max, which is an EXTREMELY risky topic for Chicago since the whole administration (along with most of adult America) hates Tucker Max.
WildChild was accepted EA.</p>

45

<p>I'd like to return to the earlier point I made in my OP. Please consider that this come from someone who LIKES the schools enough to consider applying. This means that someone has looked at thousands, them hundreds of school, and decided on 5 to 12 schools. I wrote that the selection and offering of the prompts was a disappointment -used the word shame. </p>

<p>I udnerstand the support and the justifications for Chicago' action, but it does not hide that the admission office is sending a clear message to its applicants. The admission office is, like it or not, a window shedding light onto the rest of the school. In this regard, I do not know how many admission offices have for mission to REDUCE the number of applicants by putting them off! Why do they even produce glossy brochures and participate in recruiting with a substantial budget, if they rather deal with a smaller pool of applicants. </p>

<p>Inasmuch as there are other reasons, a quick look at Chicago's admission number shows a school that is less selective on admissions than its reputation and obsession with academic rigor would dictate. MIT does play the whimsical card but they have microscopic admiit ratio. Columbia, also locate din a major city, does have one the lowest admit rates. Those school, considered a close compatition to Chicago, simply do much better in finding applicants and ... convincing them to apply. For further comparison, Northwestern does attract a lot more applicants in the same metropolois ... hence it cannot be Chicago. And please, do not tell me that Chicago's number are ... very selective for a school that wants to comepte with the BEST Ivies. </p>

<p>So, allow me to advance the theory that Chicago does get a FAITR amount of application, but a far cry of a school with its status SHOULD receive. I also believe that a great number of the 9,500 applicants do submit their UNCOMMON application in SPITE of the admission policies and officers, and not because of it. </p>

<p>Again, I think the school deserves better than this wacky admission's office. A WHOLE lot better.</p>

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<p>"They probably want kids who lean more toward the theoretical than the practical..."</p>

<p>There is some evidence of this as suggested by last year's popular new U of C t–shirt designed by a student group, which read:</p>

<pre><code> That's fine in practice, but how does it work in theory?
</code></pre>

<p>Chicago is quite happy with the students who do attend and concentrates on what happens to them when they show up. It is not so concerned about numbers, selectivity, etc. Chicago had the same reputation for academic rigor when its admit rate was over 60%. The two are not related. It is instructive that a school that places almost no weight on test scores and GPA has a student body with some of the highest scores in the country. </p>

<p>There is a very different academic atmosphere and culture than is found in most other schools. Not better necessarily, but different. It is best described by this quote from faculty member James Chandler:</p>

<p>"We at the University take pride in our ability to explain ourselves, to give the reasons why we are investigating what we are investigating, and for the manner and means we are using to do so. The other side of this coin is a conspicuous emphasis on the question as a form of discourse. The University has developed a celebrated — some would say notorious — brand of academic civility. It is a place where one is always in principle allowed to pose the hardest question possible — of a student, a teacher, or a colleague — and feel entitled to expect gratitude rather than resentment for one’s effort. This trait is frequently noted (not always approvingly) by scholars from other institutions who visit us. We have a reputation as a testing site for new arguments. When Max Weber wrote about the scholar’s obsession with devil’s advocacy, he could have been talking about the University of Chicago."
<a href="http://www-news.uchicago.edu/releases/06/060610.chandler-transcript.shtml%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www-news.uchicago.edu/releases/06/060610.chandler-transcript.shtml&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>This is why strength of high school curriculum and the essays (and their notorious prompts) are emphasized. Chicago is looking for those who fit into its intellectual culture, and who will thrive. It is not looking to amass the most selective or most career driven student body it can. It is quite successful at what it does.</p>

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<p>I wonder what proportion choose option #5, which is akin to the Common App's prompt "Write on a topic of your choice."</p>

<p>If S had not been admitted EA to his top choice, I would have urged him to apply to Chicago. He did look briefly at some of the prompts. But he would have applied in spite of the essay prompts, rather than because of them.</p>

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<p>I actually asked that question of an admissions rep, who said most choose one of the 4 prompts and those who choose the 5th typically come up with some good ones of their own. Usually there is one that is the favorite. In my son's year, I believe it was the one about the giant jar of mustard, though my son choose another.</p>

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<p>Thanks idad. If my S had applied, he probably would have written on the giant jar of mustard.</p>

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<p>idad,</p>

<p>
[quote]
The essays must work since Chicago has, according to a recent admissions statement, the third highest verbal SAT scores in the country

[/quote]
</p>

<p>First of all, I doubt that's even true. Secondly, I find it funny that you claim the admission cares little about test scores yet they seem to care enough to actually sort out the ranking of not the total but the verbal portion of the SAT. I have never heard of ANY admission giving such kind of information!! Maybe they aren't all that different and DO care about rankings and US News after all!</p>

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<p>lol wow people either love or hate uchicago :)
chill out sam lee. that is very possibly true.</p>

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<p>Fact:
D saw the essays of '04-05, because she was originally considering Chicago. I provided no comment to the choices, when I saw them, but silently thought they reflected more about the students who had offered those as essay topics (their self-concepts), than about the program at UChicago that she would be interested in, or in the opportunities there.</p>

<p>D's immediate, gut-level reaction to those essay topics: "pretentious," to quote her -- and now, lderochi -- before either she or I had discovered CC.</p>

<p>Neither she nor I found the essay topics to be appropriate "weeding out" tools for "true" intellectuals. But hey, Who Knew? Poor thing, had she only known that the essays were tests of "true" intellectualism vs. mere attraction to elitism, she wouldn't have ended up at one of those "practical" schools like HYP. Perhaps we should just put the latter in the "vocational" school category -- so non-intellectual are they. </p>

<p>People who argue that Chicago attracts a singularly "different type" of student (always with the implication of intelletual superiority) need to give up their singularly tired, silly argument that keeps recycling on CC every few months or so. I have also seen aspiring Chicago students on CC make this argument with utter, complete conviction, every admissions cycle. And I repeat what I've said before: If I were heading up Chicago's marketing, I would demand Bill Gates' salary -- on those grounds alone. And why should I care if Chicago is "uncommonly" successful at selling how "different," "special," "unique," etc. they are --- or its applicants are? Because, business or no, this is not a commercial realm; it's an educational realm, & such offensive distortions do not further more genuine understandings about student/college fit, nor do they comprehensively describe the student bodies either at Chicago or at those "practical" schools like HYPSM.</p>

<p>[U of Chicago: intellectual academy
HYPSM: practical academies
UMichigan, UVA, UCBerkeley: vocational academies]:rolleyes:</p>

<p>Some UChicago students & aspirants (katwkittens great-sounding children included) are not pretentious or think they're "more" intellectual than students who choose other schools. Some HYPSM applicants & students may be at least as intellectual, if not more so, than the "purest" intellectuals at Chicago, Berkeley, & Oxford. Give it up, folks. </p>

<p>An aside: I have nothing against the Mad Hatter prompt. Being an Alice devotee, I'd have fun with that. That neither proves nor disproves that I'm a "true" intellectual -- or that I'm more creative than applicants who have chosen different schools.</p>

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<p>harvard does not in fact have the highest number. yale has the highest test scores.</p>

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<p>epiph,</p>

<p>Chill out. I don't think the posters mean that chicago has a corner on intellectualism. Come on. Give us more credit than that. What some are sayinjg is that its atmosphere or culture is somewhat unique and a kid who is not comfortable with a certain kind of intellectualism might not enjoy the place. Heck, they might even find it pretentious, like Marite and Xiggi find the prompts. </p>

<p>Just as Duke's greek/jock atmosphere is not for everyone (and keeping in mind that many of Duke's students are neither greek nor jocks) Chicago's atmosphere is not for everyone either.</p>

<p>Frankly, I get tired of posters like you, Epiphany, who go on a tirade everytime someone mentions chicago's intellectualism. Our descriptions are just a tool to help others understand, not a search for truth, and not a comment on other places. </p>

<p>Maybe you think there are no cultural differences among colleges, if so, then that's where we differ.</p>

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<p>epiphany:</p>

<p>I wouldn't suggest that no one has ever made the claims you're attacking, but I sure haven't seen them in this thread. You're demolishing a straw man. It would be silly to suggest that Chicago is the ONLY school with "true intellectuals", or that the atmosphere there is a lot more intellectual than that at HYP, MIT, Columbia, Swarthmore . . . (I'll reserve judgment on Stanford, a great university but not, when I was there, one with a pervasive intellectual atmosphere). It is enough to say that Chicago is one of the limited number of places where a kid can go and be immersed in a spirit of intellectual inquiry that is shared by close to 100% of the students (and that it has a bunch of other great resources, too, comparable to those at other top schools).</p>

<p>Almost by definition, too, it's true that the student body at Chicago is somewhat less careerist than that at some of the other schools, both because it does not have some explicit pre-professional programs they have (no engineering, no architecture), and because I think it's fair to say that the admissions process at HYPSM&C favors kids who have been good at building resumes (not entirely, but it's there). That's not good or bad -- there's nothing wrong with strongly motivated, directed kids -- it just is: I believe fewer kids enter Chicago with a definite career plan compared to Harvard, and that gives it a somewhat different feel. It's also true, by the way, that there are far more kids at Chicago for whom the school was not their first choice than at HYPSM&C, and THAT gives it a somewhat different feel, too. It doesn't have a strong an athletic culture, or preppy culture, or celebrity culture: no recruited athletes, no Skull & Bones or Porcellian or Tiger Club, no Whiffenpoofs, no movie stars or rock stars or President's children (differences it shares with MIT, Swat, and lots of other schools of course).</p>

<p>Chicago clearly makes an institutional choice to be a little nerdy, and its "pretentious" application supports that. It's targeted marketing, a strategy to attract the best, most compatible student body it can, given that it's going to lose kids who would rather go to HYPSM&C, or to a top LAC, or to a less urban school, or one that's more fun. Again, there's nothing wrong with preferring other types of school to Chicago.</p>

<p>Maybe Xiggi and some other posters here are right that Chicago's odd marketing turns off kids who ought to be attracted to it, and would apply and attend but for their reaction. But I think it's a judgment call, and I can't fault them for what they do, because it seems to work for them. I really can't fault them for not pursuing a strategy to boost their application numbers and reduce the percentage of kids they accept. Chicago rejects plenty of kids with great numbers (and accepts kids with imperfect numbers), but it doesn't provoke the kind of desperate anxiety that HYPSM&C do. What's wrong with that?</p>

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<p>i highly recommend trying UChicago's essays, even if you aren't applying there. It helps offer you a new perspective about yourself and your activities that a traditional essay prompt would not, and in a way, even though I was anxious myself over the application process, one of the best things for me that came out of it was that I learned a lot more about myself and what I've done, which I'm sure colleges are looking for as well.</p>

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<p>"Frankly, I get tired of posters like you, Epiphany, who go on a tirade everytime someone mentions chicago's intellectualism."</p>

<p>LOL, not a "tirade." Methinks others protest too much.</p>

<p>"Our descriptions are just a tool to help others understand.....not a comment on other places. "</p>

<p>But the point is, these "descriptions" are usually offered comparatively. Note posts 19, 32, 43, 46. Rank speculation. </p>

<p>.."And the fact is that Chicago must appeal to a different kind of student. It does not offer the snob appeal of its peers and superiors." </p>

<p>Speculation again. None of us has evidence or proof of the "appeal" (snobbery or not) of any particular institutions to any particular student, other than what individual students choose to reveal.</p>

<p>"It is enough to say that Chicago is one of the limited number of places where a kid can go and be immersed in a spirit of intellectual inquiry that is shared by close to 100% of the students." JHS, on what do you base this statement? Have you met "100%" of the students? And is there a point on the number line for this "limited number of places [encouraging intellectual inquiry]"? If so, do you care to share where you found this scientific information I'm sure we'd all like to hear -- particularly those students & parents who die for intellectual inquiry?</p>

<p>Back to the OP's discussion of the essays. I think posts 36, 39, and 28 are insightful. And specifically regarding 39, I think this is an important point. I certainly think it cannot be denied that the "kind" of, or an attribute of, a student Chicago is looking for would be one willing to select a college list with thought & care, to be willing to put a great deal of time into an app & essay, etc. It would be mathematically difficult, if not impossible, to write a genuine or a brilliant essay while additionally taking a massive Machine Gun Kelly approach to college apps. (The more the merrier.) Either your list would have to be small to begin with, and/or your list of non-common apps, non-duplicatable essays would have to be small. I see nothing wrong with that approach on UChicago's part, regardless of the content of those essay prompts. The question remains, though, pointedly asked by marite in Post #28, as I think others, including Xiggi, have alluded to: getting too cute & clever for your own purposes can backfire if in fact you do NOT seek pretension, but quite the opposite. Naturally this relates to the whole issue of college marketing which is by no means limited to UChicago. As my D was turned off by the latter essay prompts, she was more turned off by a # of institutions who, given their brochures, etc., seemed to rank intellectualism as one of their last priorities. I just wish that all colleges would be less "aware" of their competition, more focused on a positive statement of their identity, not "opposed to" or artificially "against" a supposed or imagined competitor (for the same student).</p>

<p>FWIW, D graduated from a very fine h.s. class, lucky her. Several top college acceptances, all well-earned from non-prestige seeking but very fine students. One applied to & was accepted by Chicago (no other apps to C). Same the previous senior class. Both students would not describe themselves as intellectuals but as artists, interestingly enough. (As others would also describe them.) It happened to be this year that the intellectuals in the class went to P'ton, H, C-M, Berkeley, Wesleyan, Stanford. (Although in general I agree with JHS's skeptical opinion of S, this latter student is a true scientist.) I merely caution against stereotyping, that's all.</p>

<p>I also think troublesomejason makes a good point. D had one difficult non-common essay for one of her college choices that did for her what Chicago's essay efforts did for this poster.</p>

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<p>
[quote]
FWIW, D graduated from a very fine h.s. class, lucky her. Several top college acceptances, all well-earned from non-prestige seeking but very fine students.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>ok, epiphany, time to play the word game: if these aren't "stereotypes," what are they? I count six judgments in this sentence, none with supporting data. Opinions? Yes, of course. And that's why CC is an open forum where we can all state our opinions. You too.</p>

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<p>The best essay prompts are reflective of the style of student a school is hoping to attract or the development they hope to stimulate. Examples, Claremont-McKenna's asking students to write about a leader, MIT giving students the chance to 'ask question and answer it.' The prompts do not have to be elaborate, formulaic or even particularly esoteric in order to give a student a chance to be honest, reflective, individualistic and use very long words and lots of punctuation such as would be measured on a group writing evaluation. </p>

<p>The reality is that interesting essays (or topics) are of some degree of desirability, interesting prospective students are moreso. The most interesting kids, regardless of the school to which they are applying, probably can write to virtually any prompt with substance that conveys what is unique about them. Kids who write these UChicago prompts, or write in response to them, should not be overly harshly judged by those who are not of the same ilk, and UChicago is obviously mindful of the effects. The kids are 'playing the game' (is there a book out there yet entitled "how to write a REALLY unique essay prompt that will get you in to UChicago!"??) and the admissions office is doing much the same. So be it.</p>

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<p>Sam Lee: I was quoting an admissions officer who posted on the Chicago CC board.</p>

<p>The issue isn't whether or not Chicago students are this and another school's applicants are that, it is simply that Chicago has a certain culture and atmosphere and it is simply a matter of trying to find those who will thrive in it. I'm sure there are hits, misses, false alarms and correct rejections, but all–in–all they do a pretty good job. </p>

<p>It is often difficult for students who have only attended one school to understand that there are differences. My S has had the opportunity as an undergrad of studying at two, a top Ivy and Chicago. He says the schools are quite different in culture, how courses are conducted, and what students are required to do. It is not so much the amount of work, but the approach one is expected to take toward the work. He sought out and discussed the similarities and differences with friends he made at the Ivy. He did find the students, faculty, and culture to be more, what he called "practically oriented," whereas he finds Chicago to be more theoretical. Of course there is overlap, but he was talking about overall tendencies.</p>