If anyone on here is attending either this weekend’s or next weekend’s Admitted Student Open houses, it would be great to get a synopsis of what you experienced. My son has a track meet both weekends and since he went to one of the recruiting weekends over the summer and more importantly has already decided he’s going to UChicago felt he’d pass. But, if you see anything really extraordinary we’d appreciate to hear about it. Thanks in advance.
This is my post from our visit last year.
http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/university-chicago/1985790-why-we-chose-uchicago.html#latest
@“Cariño” thank you. So after a year, is it still great?
Yes! She loves everything! She works a lot, but she has enjoyed every class so far. She cannot imagine being happier in any other place.
Any admitted students and/or parents completely turned off by the student protest at Rosenwald? Just curious.
What were they protesting?
Son thought the admitted student overnight was fantastic. In no particular order, here were some of his comments:
The students felt like his people. Incredibly bright, curious, discussing interesting issues at meals or random times, no obvious cliques. The food was reasonable, the house tables welcoming and working exactly as designed - making people feel comfortable to mingle. Mealtime discussions were wide ranging (including politics), interesting, respectful and diverse. He sounded excited to interact with the UChicago crowd, which is saying something because he’s generally an introvert.
He did notice that they passed a protest, but it must have been fairly tame because he didn’t even note what was being protested.
One surprise - many of the current students he spoke to expressed discontent with the Core. His impression was that it was something they rolled their eyes and suffered through to get to what they really wanted to study rather than a main reason for choosing UChicago.
Second surprise - two students (including his host for the overnight) described the career services and placement as unimpressive given the quality of the school. His host felt that the college assumed that most of the students would go on to graduate school and “getting a job” was secondary and maybe even a bit distasteful.
Typical of him, he only attended some classes, the Levitt and Axelrod events and no other organized talks so he didn’t know if any of the presentations specifically addressed safety or the recent shootings. The classes, Levitt and Axelrod events were all impressive. The UCPD shooting of the student was talked about at the house table dinner, with most of the students feeling that the UCPD officer acted reasonably. Most of the students he asked indicated that they felt completely safe on campus and immediate surrounding areas during the day but that at night awareness was necessary.
Not on or near campus, but on the return ride to Midway in an industrial area close to the airport he did see a man running with a gun. Not as dramatic as it sounds, just a guy running between some buildings - no shooting, nobody obviously chasing him, but definitely holding a gun. Son said it was a Glock, which is a pretty common gun for police around here to carry, so I wonder if there’s a possibility it might have even been an undercover officer (OK, that’s a stretch, but that’s what I’m going to choose to believe.) Although that sounds bad to me, he must not have been too freaked out by this since he only brought it up when he’d been home for an hour describing how great the place was and I joked that maybe he should just get over any worries about gunfire.
It’s late, so I’m sure he’ll have more to talk about tomorrow. Tonight, his main impression was that this is going to be a really interesting experience and that this is the best possible place for him.
They were protesting the militarization of UCPD in light of the recent shooting, I’m pretty sure. I saw it outside the admissions office as I was walking to SSR.
I don’t think those “surprises” are particularly representative opinions. Admittedly, this is definitely one of the best (if not the best) school in the world to attend for undergrad if you want to get a PhD, but most people I know are generally pretty happy about career services (though maybe not so happy about the job market in general) - esp. 3rd/4th years that are seriously looking for a post-graduation job. UChicago has been dumping a lot of effort and money into them to make up for UChicago’s reputation as an exclusively academic school. Similarly, I think the core is pretty popular, especially Sosc.
But most prospies are almost exclusively talking to first years. It takes a while for appreciation for the core to sink in and internship prospects for first years anywhere are pretty bleak which they might blame on career services. So they get a pretty good view of the outlook of a typical first year but maybe not the most accurate view of the school in general. Ah, well, no avoiding that - alas, upperclassmen don’t want to host prospies.
My daughter is a first year and just hosted two prospects. As expected there was a disproportionate amount of chatter about the shooting and she hoped it didn’t take away from the prospect’s experience. She agreed that the general consensus was the police action was appropriate.
My daughter was probably one of the students that rolled her eyes when asked about the core. I suspect she’d liked to have had the latitude to do more academic exploration in her first year but instead was pretty tied to starting her major and getting core classes under her belt. She is, for instance, very interested in politics, though not intending on majoring in polisci. Try as she might she just couldn’t make a polisci or policy course work, though she did take a SOSC sequence with a policy bent. Placing out of the language requirement will also give her some of the desired latitude.
She does have a super internship lined up for this summer. She felt like she received some good advice from career services regarding reworking her resume to highlight the right achievements for this internship.
@RelocatedYankee - please thank your daughter for hosting. It was very generous of her to do that. The experience of staying on campus is so valuable for prospective students.
My son also had an enjoyable visit, he found the overnight experience and the actual class attendance the high points. Got a better feel for housing options and signed up for some clubs…and really appreciated the advice he got on what Biology sequence to take. Also appreciated the free icecream/sundaes on Thursday nights… On the actual class he attended, he found it far superior to the model classes and far more representative of the actual give-and-take between students and professor. The Bio lab tours were also exciting. He found Prof Levitt underwhelming because the material (the difference between correlation and causation) was “too elementary for college”.
He loves the rationale and actual subjects behind the core, so don’t know if it was discussed but he would have ignored any non-positivity around it.
On the way back we stopped at Powell’s (based on a casual comment made by @HydeSnark in a previous post) and was in hog heaven. I almost broke my back schlepping all the books he bought back on our carry-on luggage only.
In all the years I lived on the SS I never saw anyone with a real gun - water guns, for sure. Big ones. But no real guns. That was unusual, even near Midway Airport. Sounds like something out of Dirty Harry or Baretta. Hearing that groovy 70’s “chase scene” music in my head right now.
Yeah, I can’t imagine that’s a common thing at all. Our family often laments how much “instant Karma” we experience, so we’re just chalking the off-campus gun sighting up to the universe being cheeky since we’ve been discussing the recent shootings. When he makes an appearance today I’ll see if he has any more details on that one.
If anything, he seemed less concerned about campus safety after the visit. We live in a very safe area so maybe he just assumes that random gun sightings are part of what to expect in a setting like the SS or maybe he was just too tired to care at that point. Bottom line, he wasn’t hurt, wasn’t threatened, wasn’t worked up about it and seems enthralled with UChicago itself so it was a good visit.
It was a great 2 days spent on campus. Some cool things:
Really enjoyed the Steven Levitt and David Axelrod talks (he went to Stuyvesant hs!) Both really impressive lecturers/speakers and topics were interesting. Steven’s class was about data and econ, good story teller and speaker, the material was intro, but the topic was great. I can sort of see his philosophy on econ, he discussed the fact that econ doesn’t necessarily have to be so math-heavy, ie: do we really need to study the algorithm on how correlation is determined, etc. (there was a slide displaying the correlation equation.) I see his point. Also said econ could be more outward-facing, I guess meaning, how can we take the theory and actually use it. Many interesting topics discussed, including Uber, and he even managed to make the college’s attempt while recruiting him into an economics topic.
Axelrod is also an interesting and good storyteller too. Enjoyed his vignettes on his life and how parts of it tied in to the Affordable Cares Act, and that he cried after it was put forward, and Obama put his hands on his shoulders and said “that’s why we do the work” and he talked about politics in general. He set up the Institute of Politics and he said any student can volunteer there, regardless of major. I’m guessing maybe they want students engaged in politics from all walks of life? He said it doesn’t matter what your major is, hence, IOP is an extracurricular and open to all. David also took questions after the speech, and said he prefer to take questions from the students first. Can’t remember who said it or both, but he also said that that we need to be outward-facing, and engaging with the world, in order to affect it.
Anyway, not to hijack the post with the 2 speakers, so, randomly…
We didn’t see any protests going on, and even if there were, we wouldn’t have made any judgments about the school based on that. Don’t think the group my son was in talked about the shooting.
My son enjoyed that the keynote speaker, trustee Mary Lou Gorno, during her speech, quoted from the play Hamilton: “I wanna to be in the room where it happens.”
I asked our tour guide whether econ majors can take Steven Levitt classes, and he said he’d prefer to take classes from nobel laureates, and he said ‘not that they teach like nobel laureates.’ (so lots of great professors to choose from, people!) And he said (to the students) ‘you’ll also learn how to write at UofC.’ He said, ‘you think you know how to write, but you don’t know how to write.’ He was funny.
After drop-off of the students at 4:15 for their students-only panel with adcoms, we went to a parents’ reception. Nondorf and Zimmer both talked, and Zimmer talked about the great things about a liberal arts education, and how UChicago does it differently from other lacs. I wish I could hear and remember the rest of it verbatim, but I got the idea of it though. While mingling, we jokingly asked an admissions officer whether it’s called UofC or UChicago, and she said, jokingly, anyone older than 40 calls it UofC and under 40, UChicago.
Son ate at the cafeteria with the other ‘prospies’ (he learned this word while there) and said the food was really good. Afterward, they hung out at the dorm, and was among student life.
One surprise for my son is that he didn’t expect the students to party/go out and socialize so much, and also get lots of sleep, since he thought people just studied all the time, so that was actually a pleasant surprise for him, so, it seems like there’s a lot going on there.
Son said the students told him to order books through Amazon.
Also funny is I noticed slipped inside the prospies’ lanyard bundle a list of activities, one of them being a ‘mixer,’ so I made fun of him saying that the ‘mixer’ was hidden inside of their bundle for their eyes only.
Also, the kids there seem very diverse, not just race, but different from each other, with different outlooks, interests, backgrounds, geographic locations, etc. I also met a couple of kids separately who were there by themselves, and both said they arrived the night before, so maybe they were on the destinations program.
Son’s group didn’t talk about the core, but the core seems pretty flexible and anyway, my son enjoys breadth of topics, not just econ (his intended major) so that really suits him.
We wanted to go to Powell’s but didn’t because we were trying to stay on campus as much as possible, walking around, but will definitely be back to check it out.
The events mainly happened in Ida Noyes Hall and the Rockefeller Chapel. Jim Nondorf was always standing at the entrance in the morning greeting everyone and he was at the events in general, and had to take trustees out to dinner. That is one hardworking dude.
We stayed at the Hilton Chicago because of the UChicago affiliation, the discount, and the shuttles running from campus to the hotel and back for this event, which was super convenient because we didn’t drive. Sort of indifferent to the hotel, however.
My son was already so happy to attend UChicago, so this event didn’t sway him one way or another.
Initial reaction after visiting the school is: powerhouse, heavyweight and wealth.
Anyway, those are our initial impressions, kind of lots to process.
My S said he’s going to enjoy UChicago, right now, he’s concentrating on relaxing before starting school.
The program was well-runned, and we really enjoyed our time there.
^^ Cool observations, @uofcparent! My first year wasn’t able to host but told me she met and talked with some prospies and they were “chill”. Good class of kids!
One piece of advice and others might have a different take or more experience so hopefully they’ll chime in too: for book ordering, D grabbed her calc. book off Amazon and it was a lot cheaper than the bookstores so that’s excellent advice you were given. However, for Hum and Sosc. the students might be required to purchase the exact edition/publisher that the instructor has specified, just to make things easy when the students present or quote from the source in their paper, etc. Amazon is hit or miss for those particular versions so she places those orders with Seminary Co-op - they just seem to have the stuff on the website before the UChicago Bookstore for some reason. She purchases while on break and picks them up when returning to school. If you show up a day or two before Move-In, you’ll have plenty of time to visit the bookstores and pick up what you need before the massive crowd of College Families shows up 
Parking will be easier too.
Quick question: how were people dressed for the parent reception? We’re going next week and am beginning to think about packing list as I am working about a thousand hours on Monday and Tuesday so I should probably get my act together…
Nothing fancy. As a guy I went in with a plaid-ish shirt, trousers and a sweater + overcoat (t was cold and wet outside). Deans Boyer, Nondorf and the admissions staff were were wearing suits/more business formal clothing but they were the only ones. No name tags, so no way to tag any sartorial faux pas to any indiividual:)
They also hand out a big UChicago coffee table book at the reception, so leave space in your bag to bring that back.
More importantly I took my iphone charger in my overcoat pocket because if you have an iphone,you will runout of battery mid-day. Outlets are hard to find in ye olde buildings (Ida Noyes/Rockefeller chapel) but found one in Ida Noyes where they served box lunches (2nd floor)
If you’re committed to UChicago and can’t attend the admitted student days, no worries at all, it’s not as if the student will get a leg up or anything. For us, it was just a nice way to be with our son, integrate him in to the college, and imagine what his years there would be like.
And if you are attending the admitted student days, no worries at all too. All will become clear once you get to Ida Noyes Hall, you don’t have to plan anything prior to the visit, really just show up.
All the events listed on the official brochure/schedule, including model classes, speakers, etc. are opened to all, no sign up required. The only events that are student-only where parents are not allowed are the ‘real’ class visits and facilities tours, for which prospies have to register, and those are not listed on the official brochure. The kids can also register while there, but probably for whatever class is available. But if you’re already committed to the school, maybe don’t even need to sign up for the ‘real’ classes. Also, campus tours are given throughout the day every ½ hour with no sign up required, just show up in the back of Ida Noyes Hall, so if you have time to kill, you can do that.
If you look at the brochure, for every time slot, there are usually 2 or more events going on, so feel free to attend any or none.
If you’re not doing anything, or not interested in the events, in Ida Noyes Hall, there’s a little room with folding chairs to sit on, by back of the snacks (fruits and small bags chips, health bars) water and coffee, tea bags, if you just want to sit, or you can also just sit in the chapel, or really anywhere on campus. At one point, we ended up sitting on a little bench inside of Saieh Hall in the small reception area. Or you can also go to Barnes and Nobles bookstore right on campus, and inside B&N is the usual Starbucks cafe, and UChicago merchandise. (there’s a 20% off one item coupon you can use at B&N inside the folder of the promotional materials that you can pick once you get to Ida Noyes Hall.) @HydeSnark mentioned Powell’s bookstore, but that was too far for us to walk this time around.
The parents’ reception was not formal at all. I wore sneakers and jeans, and didn’t feel weird. Also, there’s some finger food, so, just saying, in case you have plans for dinner right after. I tried not to eat all the macarons.
Yeah, the coffee table book of University of Chicago weights like 5 pounds, but we took one, heh.
…and beer for those of us who drink.