<p>It was my dream of attending UChicago last year and I'm just curious to see how your experiences with things such as academics have been. How is the workload? The rigor? The dorms? The food? The students? The profs? The economic diversity? Is it anything like you imagined it?</p>
<p>Please, do tell!!</p>
<p>I think the workload was made out to be a lot worse than it actually is (although this is just 1st year so I’m not sure what future workloads will be like). Workload is definitely not a walk in the park (you will work), but it’s quite manageable. I still have time to do tons of RSO’s (clubs) or just hang out. If it means anything, I believe I will be getting 3 A’s and 1 A- this quarter on top of working 10 hours a week. The classes are great btw. I haven’t missed a single class and I love going to almost 95% of them. Also going along with classes, there really isn’t a sense of competition or “cutthroat warfare” here. Everyone’s priority is just to make sure that they learn the material as best as possible, not that others do worse.</p>
<p>All that stuff of UChicago being a “hive” of knowledge, “Life of the Mind”, “knowledge for knowledge”, etc. is perhaps not as strong as UChicago suggests, but it’s still very present. There is a serious intellectual vibe and I love it. I can have the most amazing discussions with my friends about nearly everything.</p>
<p>Professors are great. I have 3 professors and a grad student (math). The grad student explains things as if she’s known it her entire life and makes math very simple to understand (that’s a lot considering I have not done proofs before). All 3 of my professors legitimately wanted to teach and loved doing it. You can see their excitement and energy in their eyes. As for writing feedback in Humanities, my professor offered me more advice and criticism on one paper than I’ve received my entire life. That was just for a draft. She was also willing to meet with me outside of class on several occasions to talk about my papers or just to talk about music, food, and life in general. Sometimes, my professors will have such amazing lectures or discussions, we will applaud afterwards. It seems a bit silly, but it was legitimate.</p>
<p>UChicago is pretty much all that I imagined. Some of the parts I expected were greater than others while others were less aggressive than expected. but I would say that image I had of the school was very accurate to what I am experiencing. Oh and the thing about friendly squirrels is quite true. You can get within inches of them and they won’t run away!</p>
<p>That’s awesome! I’m glad you’re having a great experience!! You must be very smart to be pulling mostly A’s. I’m a little bit surprised about the academic competition - it’s the same here. It’s more laid-back than my high school!!</p>
<p>As for conversations outside of class here, at least with my friends, it’s very much academic. We’ve talked about epistemology, truth, gender and sexuality issues, mermaids, religion, prostitution, socioeconomic class, existence, biology, and afterlife. I love being the one facilitating the discussions :P</p>
<p>All of my profs have Ph.d’s and a lot of classroom discussion happens. My biggest class is 25 students, and that’s a lecture class. That prof is really good - she loves the subject (archeology) and she’s a good lecturer. The only thing about her though is that she’s kinda scary/intimidating. I don’t really like my advisor for my First Year Initiatives course, though - she’s sort of pretentious in the sense that her son is a freshman at Swarthmore and she likes to talk about that. She even said once or twice that his school is more rigorous than ours. The problem I have with that is that her son is at a highly-ranked school and yet she tells me NOT to look at rankings. Sorry, I have lots of crude names for her…and she grades crazy-hard. Grr. </p>
<p>My Spanish prof is quirky and intelligent. He’s a polyglot and he knows martial arts - today he jumped off a chair :P</p>
<p>My French prof is good, but nothing stands out about him enough to post here.</p>
<p>I’m kinda scared because next semester I’m going to get a graduate of UChicago as a prof and he likes to make his courses as “rigorous as possible.” 10 books for his class next semester?</p>
<p>i would like to bump this thread because i’m also quite interested in the academic reputation/reality at UChicago.</p>
<p>Yes, I think that’s a good point to point out ^.</p>
<p>My experience so far, both outside and inside the classroom, has quite frankly been amazing. I’m taking four classes and honestly have no complaints about my teachers, including the one grad student that is teaching my math course. In fact, and I seriously was just discussing this with another person in my section recently, she’s devoted A LOT of time to our class (despite having to perform research), always scheduling extra office hours if needed, and has had an amazing amount of patience considering that my math level is actually one of the least math-loving ones. That one is my largest class, with 33 students, but considering that it mostly consists of lectures it doesn’t really matter. The tutorials are split up into groups of 11 students each, so any questions regarding the problem set that is due in the next class are always addressed, along with extra material that the tutor goes over to supplement the lectures. My other three classes are taught by professors, and all have been excellent. One of them is a language class, which aside from helping me improve my actual skills in that language, has also taught me a lot about the culture of the country. That class probably has around 15 students. My other two, my Humanities and Social Science classes, have lived up to the hype. Even when the text itself is not exactly very riveting (which happens rarely), the professor will find a way to foster class discussion. Both are capped at 19 students, and while most are always willing to contribute to the class discussions, the professors always make sure that the more shy students feel comfortable enough to voice their opinions without outright being forced to. In the case of my Humanities class (which is basically a philosophy class), he’s not hesitant to engage you one-on-one and prompt you to defend your stance (again, this is only if the student feels comfortable doing so). I actually made it a habit to stick around after my Humanities class to discuss any lingering thoughts I had about the topic, and the professor was always more than willing to stay. </p>
<p>Outside of the classroom, I’ve gotten involved with a few RSO’s and find it very possible to manage extra curricular activities with my academic duties. Like many things, it’s all about organization. I’ve also gone downtown quite a few times, at least once almost every weekend, and have absolutely fallen in love with this city. Getting downtown takes at most 30 minutes by bus (this is with traffic), and if you’re really in a hurry you can hope on the Metra and get there in less than 20 every time. I don’t really have time to write more now, so I’ll probably post more details later.</p>
<p>Another nice thing was the discussions in class. In high school, I didn’t really say that much in class. But the collaborative and interactive nature of the classes at UChicago facilitates participation and discussion much more easily than a standard high school class where it’s a cycle between teacher asking question, student answering, and teacher asking another question. Ideas are constantly discovered and built upon. The discussions are quite driven by the students and one doesn’t feel judged or labeled for what they say. As they told us during O-week, “it’s collaborative discussion, not debate”. It’s more sharing your opinions, honing your opinions, learning of those of others, and seeing how your and others’ thoughts mingle. Definitely not trying to “prove” a correct stance. </p>
<p>Also, these discussions encourage you to form your own interpretations and facilitate your own discoveries as opposed to trying to establish a known set of opinions from “experts.” On more than one occasion, my professors have said something like, “I’m not sure if I personally agree, but your argument and analysis are unique and convincing. You should delve deeper into that and share what you find.”</p>
<p>I loooooooooooooooooooooooooove it.</p>
<p>That’s great, you guys! It doesn’t sound like the phrase “where fun comes to die” is accurate anymore :)</p>