Indeed. The liberal arts types who are applying and attending (full disclosure: I am one) bring a lot to the U of C, but let’s not forget that the students who built a working nuclear reactor during Scav were techies/engineers.
There’s a case to be made for a dose of anhedonia during a kid’s college years, especially if the kid comes out of a comfortable middle-class background and will go on to live a comfortable middle-class life. It’s a unique time for that privileged kid to experience some other realities, those that come with the pains of study, a fraying wardrobe, lots of surrounding poverty and not much cash in the bank. I don’t suggest that many students at elite institutions are suffering or should suffer anything like true deprivation, but I do think they ought briefly to become honorary members of the tribe of the wretched of the earth. Living near lots of very poor people and being poor yourself (even with every prospect of not being so in the near future) is a sobering experience. Ditto for trying to crack the philosophy of Immanuel Kant: learning hard things is not inherently enjoyable (vide “The Anatomy of Melancholy”).
We are all going to suffer in our lives, no one gets out of here without it. Isn’t it better to start the sobering up at just this momentous age - when one is first living away from home, first starting on the search for an identity or a spouse or both, first pondering what kind of a life to make for oneself and, more broadly, what constitutes the good life?
I speak as an older alumnus, who remembers very well the boot camp era. I and my friends all had our Raskolnikov moments, we were callow and pretentious, we were not obviously living pleasure-filled lives. But today we would all say that the somewhat rebarbative style of the university and the neighborhood as we knew them - the dose of suffering imposed and embraced - did us a world of good. It was hardly a season in hell, but its sombre intensity enabled us to imagine such a thing without, however, coming out of it as unhappy human beings. What we learned, and not simply from Aristotle, was that happiness can’t be easily summoned. A valuable lesson.
As to whether the many “improvements” to the quality of student life being made by the University further the true goal of a serious education I remain agnostic, if not skeptical.
I find the whole “honorary members of the tribe of the wretched of the earth” thing really off-putting and delusional. I had little money in the bank throughout my undergrad and grad school years. But I felt incredibly privileged/lucky/grateful to be living a life where I got to spend most days just reading, writing, thinking, and talking in a community of very smart people who shared and broadened my interests.
@marlowe1 captures wonderfully the sentiments of many “older era” Chicago grads. (I myself came right when the U was transitioning, which may influence my general ambivalence for the changes.)
@exacademic Yeah, “highly academic” didn’t really describe the old Chicago aptly at all. “Intellectual boot camp,” or the “suffering” that marlowe1 describes is a much better assertion.
Case in point, Chicago Magazine wrote a (somewhat tepid) piece on the changes at U of C, and this was their description of the “old” Chicago:
"For decades, pain seemed an essential element of the U. of C. undergraduate experience—or, in the words of David Nirenberg, a professor of medieval history and social thought, the school was “a locus of the Greek idea that you have to suffer into learning.”
Full article: http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/March-2011/College-Comeback-The-University-of-Chicago-Finds-Its-Groove/
If you told an older era grad that Chicago was “highly academic,” they’d likely smirk or laugh in your face. That didn’t capture the college’s feel adequately.
The monasticism and intensity made Chicago entirely different from most other top schools. Now, I agree it is “highly academic,” but that merely places it on the spectrum. Before, it was in another place entirely. This, then is a big change. There are plenty of other schools that offer academic, serious experiences. Yale, Columbia, Rice, Swarthmore, Amherst, MIT and on and on…
Chicago is still a serious place, but the college experience has been revamped. Probably for the better, but some of the changes (like the incessant marketing of the admissions/pr office) seem bizarre. It’s all too much too quickly.
Separate note: why is everyone just talking about the nerd applicant pool diversifying at Chicago? From what I can tell, ALL POOLS of applicants are diversifying/increasing at Chicago. With a high US News ranking and a crazy admissions/pr office, more jocks, more old money, more new money, more students of virtually any type are applying. And, for the above reasons, more students of all types are probably matriculating. The school has probably never been as diverse - in all ways - as it is now. It’s much less of a pure nerd/quirky school now. The concentration is still there, but it’s not as wide.
A case in point - as an alumni interviewer, I’m now asked to evaluate how well an applicant would “contribute to the social community,” and assess how an applicant would “interact with others socially.” I’m guessing low scores here would not be a good thing. (These are direct quotes from the alumni interview report form.) The admissions office is clearly taking sociability into account, trying to shed some of the old image, and undeniably creating a student body that is more diverse - and less nerdy - than what came before.
Want to know what the alumni interview report form looked like 15 years ago? It was a blank space, where I could write anything I wanted.
I guess smirking masochists just don’t signify life of the mind for me. I wonder if that era was typical of the College or a mark of its decline.
At the end of the day, there’s a reason Disney World has never added Fanonland to its roster of attractions, even though there may be some market for it. The Rent/La Boheme version of Chicago, where you burned your thesis drafts for warmth and moral uplift, was not a successful strategy for a sustainable university.
Anecdotally, I know a total of two current undergraduates. They are both nerdy, fiercely intellectual, very much into what Chicago offers, thrilled to be there. They also both happen to be from non-Midwestern families that are very wealthy to super wealthy – a type of student that Chicago has rarely attracted until now. Successful private universities have students like that, who do not feel as ambivalent about it as many Chicago alumni of my generation. Healthy universities, especially liberal arts universities, need a strong corps of undergraduate alumni supporters, and Chicago has lagged in that respect for decades. It doesn’t seem like an accident that Chicago’s Board of Trustees has a lower percentage of undergraduate alumni than the equivalent bodies at peer universities. That’s not a situation that anyone can turn around overnight, but I think the past few administrations have done a very good job of changing the future.
“Life of the mind,” used to imply singular, somewhat monastic focus toward academics. That’s at least what it was at Chicago, and yes, it often came with students who were masochistic about academics, and more often than not, snarky.
What you describe now, and what your DC will probably receive, is a good academic experience that will closely resemble what could be had at a range of other Us (Harvard probably included).
What your posts fail to illustrate, however, are the profound changes that have led to today’s Chicago, and the ways that it now resembles the experience you can find elsewhere. Also, it’s a little myopic to think that the school is only focusing its outreach on nerds. The schools seems now, like so many others, to be focused on a wide array of factors and students to build a class.
A quick note - the “old” Chicago was probably untenable, especially as other top schools started to build up amenities and treat students more like customers. That’s why the school changed - but, as I’ve now said many times before, something was lost in that process.
I am enjoying this debate among the alums (Cue7, Marlowe) and knowledgeable parents (JHS). Very interesting stuff for anyone who is interested in UChicago, where it has been and where it is going.
I think our main disagreement is over what’s the essential attribute and what’s the modifier. You see monasticism as the essential attribute with intellectual as the modifier. I see intellectualism as the attribute and monastic as the modifier. That’s why you think something is lost and (part of why) I think same niche, different position
Alternatively, it’s possible that you conflate intellectualism/nerdiness with a certain kind of monasticism and fail to acknowledge that nerdiness comes in different flavors. This might answer your question re why people are focussed on outreach to nerds. From my POV, UofC is attracting/accepting a wider variety of nerds – e.g. sporty nerds, rich nerds, poor nerds, nerds who want to be engineers, nerds who have never been in the Midwest – not a bunch of non-nerds. And that perception comes both from the direct mail campaigns I’ve seen (the stuff we got was clearly and consistently nerd-casting) and the kids whom I see applying. Even in its “diluted” state, UofC is just not an appealing prospect to kids who aren’t interested in a rigorous, challenging, and broad-based education. (Harvard actually is – as is Stanford and probably most, if not all, of the other Ivies.)
As a graduate of the College in the mid-1980s, I welcome the changes that have occurred at the U of C over the past few years. It was a pretty miserable experience back then, and it looks much better now.
Thanks for the follow-up. As you can see from my posts, marlowe’s, and now @ThankYouforHelp Chicago in the past was a fairly polarizing place. It’s hard to experience “old” Chicago and not have a strong opinion about it (one way or another). Most older alums, as seen here, at least identify unpleasantness or “suffering” as part of the Chicago experience.
You argue that “UofC is just not an appealing prospect to kids who aren’t interested in a rigorous, challenging, and broad-based education.” My contention is that NOW, more than ever, this statement is as weak as ever. In the past, this statement was almost universally true - unless you wanted a rigorous, broad education, you wouldn’t go to Chicago.
Nowadays, as the school has broader pull and so many more attractive qualities, it’s almost certainly drawing in students who go simply because it’s the “best” school they got into for college. Don’t get me wrong, LOTS of students still go for the education and the broad-based academic experience. A larger subset, though, go because of a range of other factors. Case in point, I’m an active alumni interviewer. Over the past five years, I’ve interviewed probably about 70-80 applicants. About a dozen of my interviewees have been accepted. I’ve also gone to the admit parties in my region for students, and the region where my wife grew up. Combined, these regions send lots of students to Chicago (about 100-200 a year). I can assure you, there’s a healthy number of “I want the academics” admits, but there are ALSO a lot of “I just got into the #4 school in the country!!” admits.
That’s exactly what the admissions office is trying to sell and what administrators have created. It’s much easier to “float” through Chicago now, and to go because it now does so well in so many beauty pageants (e.g. rankings). Moreover. when 50% of the student body get Honors and the overall GPA is probably around a 3.4-3.5, and there’s administrative pressure to ease harsh grading, the climate changes.
For example, a Classics Professor, Jonathan Hall, had this to say when asked about grading at Chicago:
“When I started, I was discouraged from giving lower grades on the grounds that it would severely damage undergraduates who were not concentrating in Classics or history and were intending to apply to professional schools,” he said."
Full article: http://chicagomaroon.com/2005/01/18/gpas-get-a-76-boost-from-grade-inflation/
(That article, btw, was written TEN years ago. You think pressure to ease grading has lessened at all in that time?)
So, my response to you would be this:
Chicago has never been MORE appealing to students who aren’t interested in a rigorous, challenging, and broad-based education.
Finally, re your point about nerds:
As this is a Chicago thread, let’s define our terms. Nerd, per Merriam Webster, means:
: a person who behaves awkwardly around other people and usually has unstylish clothes, hair, etc.
: a person who is very interested in technical subjects, computers, etc.
Given the questions Chicago asks its alumni interviewers (“How would the applicant interact with others socially?”) I very much think that Chicago is seeking more balance in their class.
My response here, then, would be this: Chicago has never been MORE appealing to non-nerds.
Finally, @JHS
You said: " Healthy universities, especially liberal arts universities, need a strong corps of undergraduate alumni supporters, and Chicago has lagged in that respect for decades." You also asserted that Chicago’s old model was unsustainable.
I’ve said this often in the past - Chicago’s old model was unsustainable. The alumni base was disgruntled, current students were unhappy, the transfer out rate was high. None of this is debatable.
My contention, and what informs my ambivalence, has been the pace of change, its execution, and the principles behind the changes. Did we really have to go from virtually no marketing to becoming the most rapacious admissions office/college in the country? Did we really have to give out bonuses - in the hundreds of thousands of dollars - because we got 30,000 applications and have a sub-10% accept rate, as opposed to 20k apps and a 15% accept rate? Did we really need to conduct outreach to high school counselors and adjust class sizes (some classes are capped at 19 - not 20) to maximize US News performance? We went from being above the fray to leading the admissions craze that is burning out young kids.
But hey, we’re #4 in the rankings. All’s well that ends well, right?
I don’t know the answer to this question, but I have often wondered, if the degree from UChicago is worth more in the job/corporate market (not grad school market) today because of these actions than a UChicago degree from 20 years ago?If so, is it acceptable or even the duty of the University to give that kind of advantage to its graduates on the backs of poor hapless applicants who are sucked in, ground up and tossed out unceremoniously at the other end of the application process? When somebody is paying close to $300K as a full pay student for that piece of paper, should the University’s responsibility towards the parents and student in terms of helping them secure their future trump all other considerations? It is an ethical dilemma that I am not sure I have been able to resolve satisfactorily yet.
The pushback against Chicago’s singularity has been with us for a very long time. Likewise the monastic trope. In the early 60’s Alan Simpson, then Dean of the College, famously berated the student body of the day as being overly represented by “maggoty-minded monks”. Simpson went on shortly thereafter to a more appropriate destination - President of Vassar College.
In the Darwinian admit wars the older Chicago was always going to lose to the prestige schools. Its singularity made it broadly unacceptable to even highly intelligent high school kids, who inevitably had an ivy paradigm in mind. To be perfectly frank, many who came to Chicago pined for the Harvard or Yale that had rejected them and thus were never happy with their experience at a place that was by intention and history nothing like those places. Some others stumbled into Chicago without really knowing much about it, and they too were often unhappy (and not in any fruitful sense).
So we are dealing here with a beautiful lost cause. The ivy of that famous league has proved to be the hardy invasive species that engulfs us all. We old alums never made enough money - or did not start out with enough - and were not generally the sort of clubbable fellows who run shows. It was inevitable that the old College, resting on such frail reeds, would fall. It was, like many unique things, a little too good for the world. Nevertheless, I like to try here to keep alive the memory of a time when the old spirit of the place meant something to those of us who loved it.
We could both be right. It’s a “compared to what?” issue. You are saying that Chicago has never been more X. I’m saying that, compared to other schools, Chicago still isn’t very X at all. (Or, more precisely that kids who place a high value on X typically aren’t likely to be attracted to Chicago.) A high school senior has to be pretty seriously into academics (i.e. a type 2 nerd) to want to go to U of C. Kids who aren’t just don’t apply. So, as an interviewer, you don’t see them. (And given that interviews are optional, you probably see a sample of applicants that significantly underrepresents the type 1 (awkward) nerds in the pool.)
FWIW, I can imagine a kid who is going to Chicago for the academics being excited about getting into a top-rated school. You don’t have to be fixated on prestige to have that reaction – it could be more like, wow, I wasn’t delusional – they think I belong there too! A kid like that takes an academic focus for granted but may not have known how s/he would stack up via a vis other kids. Do you really think there are a significant number of prestige-seeking undergrads going to Chicago despite (rather than for) the academics? Given the school’s lack of name recognition among the general public, I find that somewhat hard to believe.
I do agree that the current admissions process is insane. And I think that our model of higher education has become increasingly unsustainable (regardless of how U of C tweaks its undergrad body).
You may be selling Chicago’s peer schools short, thereby exaggerating the difference between Chicago and other top schools. The majority (maybe 60-70%?) of students at Yale or Columbia or Stanford are serious, high-achieving, academically curious, exceedingly bright, and gifted students. If you look at how other top schools select a class, and presume that those with hooks are “less” academically inclined (a big presumption, but one we’ll use here), the incoming class will look like this:
- 10-15% athletes
- 10-15% legacies -5-10% developmental cases (students that might not be legacies, but are from powerful/wealthy families and have been vying to get in)
- 5-10% straight diversity admits (e.g. making sure, even if stats are lower, to have students from Utah and Idaho and the Republic of Congo)
(Note, hooks can be mixed - the student from the Republic of Congo might also be a legacy or a good athlete, which would be a win-win for an admissions office.)
The rest:
- 60% high-powered students (students without any particular hook who just wow the admissions office with their talents)
Put another way, the majority of students go to other top schools because sure, while they’re prestigious, they want the academics, and are intellectually curious. This isn’t the same across the board, of course. Anecdotally, I’ve found Yale and Columbia students to be more similar to Chicago students that those at Penn or Duke. Nevertheless, there’s still curiosity present there.
At Chicago, with its high ranking and broader outreach (which must be causing some “non-nerds” to matriculate), I’d guess that the percentages are different, but Chicago is probably milking developmental cases and legacies and diversity athletes more than ever before. Maybe at Chicago the split is 80/20 rather than 65/35, but there’s probably a good chunk of students who came for the ranking. In fact, a Chicago Magazine article about U of C’s ranking has a student that states as such:
“Kids who came here for the rankings, they’re the ones who are walking around miserable,” says David Federman, a 2013 graduate."
Full article: http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/November-2013/Does-University-of-Chicagos-Slip-in-College-Ranking-Matter/
As Chicago’s ranking gets higher and higher (or stays on a lofty plane), and as admission at the tippy top schools gets harder and harder, we’re only going to see more rankings-influenced students choosing to go to Hyde Park.
Relatedly,
For a great discussion of how the Chicago experience used to be different, see a Columbia blogpost, quoting a Chicago grad (and Rhodes Scholar), on the differences between similar schools:
http://bwog.com/2012/04/29/east-coast-or-no-coast-uchicago-vs-columbia/
My sense is that now, Chicago’s experience more closely resembles the Columbia experience described in the above blog post.
Either way, yes, I think that a decent number of students choose Chicago for the ranking, and because they don’t have any “better” options. It’s the best school they got into, so they go. This was true in my day, and, as marlowe1 alludes, there were plenty of Harvard and Yale rejects at Chicago. The only difference now is that the Chicago atmosphere is probably more palatable, and many of those kids didn’t even apply to Harvard or Yale, because they cashed all their chips on Chicago and applied EA.
In the past, the people who came to Chicago came largely because they were intellectually inclined and at least open to the Core, maybe even enthusiastic about it. I doubt anyone ever said “I want to be a moldy monk.” They said, “I want to be challenged, I want to be around people like me.” For some of the people, it was just where you went if you were too smart for your own good and lived where you lived. Now, I think the people who come to Chicago apply there (among other places, maybe) because they are intellectually inclined and at least open to the Core, maybe even enthusiastic about it. The main difference is no one is coming anymore because it’s a default choice or a safety. That’s hardly a bad thing. And it’s a mainstream option for many more people than was the case 10 or 20 years ago. That’s not a bad thing, either, because there are plenty of intellectually inclined kids who apply to mainstream options. The mainstream options, after all, are pretty darn good.
The culture of the University and the College, transmitted largely by peer pressure, is far more powerful than @Cue7 is admitting. Those intellectual kids are still stepping into that culture and embracing it, even if they are un-nerdy. That’s what the Columbia article describes (and what I think has not been present at Columbia for at least a couple of decades).
I understand that Jim Nondorf is practically an affront to old-school Chicago. He’s such a Yalie: athlete, Whiff, Bonesman, desire (and capacity) for world conquest, greed. But for all that, what I think he’s marketing is the University of Chicago, in all its glory and reasonable idiosyncrasy. I won’t pretend to have read every marketing piece, but the ones I have seen have been pitched to the kind of student who should want to come to Chicago, and whom Chicago should want.
Chicago vs. Columbia. At my kid’s school, the same kids often look at both schools (such kids are typically the science kids who also love/don’t want to sacrifice humanities) but typically end up really liking one and not being interested in the other at all. It’s a culture thing. Mostly pre-professional vs academic, with a bit of an NYC vs Midwestern values thrown in the mix as well.
To me, Chicago’s appeal seems most similar to MIT’s – kids who love their work, who are used to being seen as weird for that reason, who are intellectually ambitious, and who really want to find the other kids like them.
@JHS,
A key point of the Chicago v. Columbia article, especially toward the end, are about the winds of change at Chicago. One of the Chicago alums mentions that the admins are trying to “Mckinsey-fy” the U of C. Others had wary thoughts about Zimmer presenting as a “businessman.”
At the end of the day, I don’t doubt that Chicago has an academic culture, and even if it’s a little diluted today, it’s still strong. I imagine, though, that the Chicago experience has begun to resemble Columbia’s a little more - with upper level students concerned more about jobs/internships/the future then prior cohorts, who treated the college like a four-year book club.
@exacademic and @JHS :
I’m actually not that concerned about the actual state and composition of the College. Kids seem to be enjoying the experience more, and the education is still compelling. I have no issues with that. Further, I don’t really have any issues with Nondorf - he’s doing exactly as he’s been told, to make the college as aesthetically selective and attractive as possible.
My big problem is with Zimmer and the about-face the university has done in the past 8-9 years. It went from being a place of academic principle and a singularly different place. It was ok marching to the beat of a different drummer, and it looked different than its peers. So quickly, though, the U seems unabashed in its pursuit of status, standing, rank, and selectivity. It’s willing to pay big bonuses for those who can help it attain its capricious goals. It’s looking to expand its brand and its footprint, whether that means pouring millions into its admissions/pr effort, tripling the size of its alumni relations staff, emailing alums 4 times a week for money, or whatever else.
All of a sudden, it looks like nothing matters beyond standing - and the U of C is doing whatever it can to chase down dollars, status, and prestige.
Maybe the “old” college was unsustainable and maybe the past model was lacking. The complete 180, however, is dispiriting and flies in the face of the principles the university espoused just a little while back.
The University is in an arms race to get a certain kind of student into its undergraduate program. These are the kids that will go off to successful careers, launch companies and then contribute to the endowment and make generous million dollar donations to the school. If these kids go to other schools, then those schools are going to get that money. It is not possible to sustain a multi billion dollar endowment on the backs of kids who become professors. No offense to them. They contribute in other ways by doing important and well cited research and enhance the research reputation of the University. You need both to be a top tier university, but you can’t have the latter without the former. If a University’s endowment weakens, then it will no longer be able to pay top dollar, have cutting edge research facilities and attract top flight faculty to its campus.
Since UChicago wants to be in the running to be an super elite university, it needs to attract both “academically oriented kids” as well as “career oriented kids”. The latter category of kids are generally prestige oriented, want a good social life, great career services, nice dorms, facilities etc and want to brag about going to a highly selective school. The University was not getting these kids 20 years ago. They are starting to get more of these kids now. These kids serve a purpose for the University. If the University had paid attention and attracted a good mix of these kids 30 years ago, the endowment situation would have been much stronger and the University would not have been forced to take on over Billions in debt to play catch up now.
Yes, UChicago is in an arms race. It was in an arms race in 2004 or 2006 or 2008. How come, NOW, as opposed to any of those times in the past, has the school chosen to be the frontrunner in this ugly frenzy? Why have the changes made been so drastic so as to undercut past positions held by the school? What’s lit a fire under the school to merit such, frankly, unproductive and unfortunate behavior?