<p>menlo, why did your son leave uchicago? what was it about uchicago that he did not like? it is interesting and productive to see the actual experience vs the promise, the hype, the expectation.</p>
<p>The types of students at Rice are similar to those at UChicago ( I know many who turned down UChicago for Rice). There are a lot of the intellectual, “learning for the sake of learning” type students at Rice. However, there are also more pre-professional students and the social atmosphere is more balanced (better balance between studying and having fun that at Chicago). However, while we have distribution requirements, they are not rigid as Chicago’s. You only need to take 3-4 courses in each of three areas: humanities, social sciences, and science/engineering/math.</p>
<p>Swarthmore. Less so, Columbia, Yale, Princeton.</p>
<p>Rice is a great place with a great social system built around the res colleges. But the humanities and social sciences have always felt as though they back seat to pre-professionalism in the sciences, architecture, engineering. The intellectual vibe for intellectualism’s sake seems much less prominent than at Chicago and Swarthmore, for example. Some, admittedly, might see this as a positive. I’m not sure the OP would.</p>
<p>Hope2gretice// You still haven’t convinced me how there’s hype around U of C. If anything, the Ivies IMO have much more hype around them than U of C. U of C has a great undergrad program. Why is that so hard to accept? Derail it as much as you want for its nerd reputation or its atmosphere. But there are plenty of reasons why kids would want to go to U of C.</p>
<p>And the difference between Northwestern kids and UChicago kids… Well, that’s why UChicago kids go to UChicago, and Northwestern kids to Northwestern. It’s a personal chocie. Just because you don’t like them, doesn’t mean they have to be “killjoy.”</p>
<p>Oh, and “proximity to everything”? Seriously? Chicago >>> Baltimore any day.</p>