<p>Having been pestered about why I am so eager to attend UChicago above all other universities, I often find myself trying to describe an undescribable emotion. Its aura almost melts into my personality (at least from my point of view), not to mention that its philosophy of liberal education is what my Jesuit high school has taught me to embrace for four years--and indeed I have embraced it on account of the satisfaction with the person which this education has made of me.</p>
<p>But these are not suitable answers for most of the dolts that come to me seeking reasons for my Chicago fervor. They wouldn't understand that explanation either because they (a) haven't begun seriously pondering college themselves or (b) are too attached to the Ivy prestige to entertain the thought of a non-Ivy uni.</p>
<p>So I come to you, acceptees and applicants, for less profound, more curt responses to rattle off to people who pose the ignorant question, "Why in the world Chicago?"</p>
<p>And oh yes, one more thing: spouting out random Nobel laureates is not an option.</p>
<p>I know what you mean. I'm from New England and no one at my school knows about UChicago. They all are like, "You'll get in easily" when in actuality, they don't know that Chicago is indeed a very selective and competitive college (which I have gotten deferred from, by the way). They all think that it's a state school. I can't describe exactly what makes Chicago seem like the perfect school for me either. I just knew when I walked the campus this past summer. In lame attempts to answer the "why Chicago" question, I've said the city, small classes, beautiful campus, life of the mind.</p>
<p>There is an interesting thread on this topic under college search and selection.</p>
<p>Princeton Review last year rated chicago as top academic environment.</p>
<p>Think of it this way: The kids that had to have the right clothes, the right jacket, the right friends, will be quite happy at a high prestige school. After all, their goal in life is image and bragging rights.</p>
<p>The kids that want an exciting social life (=lots of alcohol) can go to just about any state U and be happy.</p>
<p>The kids that want to really learn...
...and do so in a nice environment, with good faculty that can be approached, TAs that speak english...
...go Chicago and a few of its brethren.</p>
<p>There was an interesting thread elsewhere about a Stanford early admittees party . Evidently, the staff and the attendees just sat around telling each other how wonderful they were for being at/getting into Stanford. Chicago kids don't think that way.</p>
<p>Brethren? To start, any school that does not emphasize sports. That knocks out all the ivies and a number of LACs. In different ways, Hopkins comes to mind. Reed in Oregon? U. Rochester, for one a bit less competitive? MIT and CMU both have a similar intensity, but are lacking a bit in the humanities.</p>
<p>The Seminary Co-Op is the largest and most complete bookstore I have ever been in. It boggles the mind. Everytime I go visit U of C I walk in and try to absorb all the literary ether coming from the shelves. You can find a book on anything and anyone. Just spectacular. That's one of my many little reasons.</p>
<p>NMD...hey, weren't we searching for NMD for months?...I would consider Reed and Swat to be bretheren, and Smith/Wellesley/Bryn Mawr to be semi-brethren...not quite as single-mindedly intense but well along the scale...maybe we call the "cistern"...as in "brethren and cistern."</p>
<p>St. Johns has a whiff of it in another direction. </p>
<p>I think Chicago is unique among schools its size or larger.</p>
<p>fortune4260--join my club! I already loved the school when I visited, but everyone told me that I had to go to the Sem Co-op, that it would be the best bookstore I'd ever been to. I thought to myself, how good can a bookstore be? True to what everyone predicted, the first time I walked on campus and walked into that bookstore, I turned to my dad and said, "I could call this place home."</p>
<p>i have a question, before i forget: is the sem bookstore the one off on the east side of the street lining the east side of the main quad? does it have kind of a pointed arch and small entrance area with dark colored stone? i think ive been to it, but only to use the bathroom and thus i didnt really get to see all of the glory since the bathroom is back behind the coat room.</p>
<p>chicago is great because you have an intrepid student body, as the website advertises. the students are willing to brave the weather, risk working as hard as or harder than any of their counterparts at other top unis, forgo the prestige, live in an orange house, and imo really enjoy their college years in an essentially unique environment. trite and hackneyed as it may sound (but i swear i made it up on the spot), chicago cant be understood by comparison with other schools. if you say that it's columbia in education style, MIT in intensity, caltech in social life, BU in urban setting, and go on rattling off qualifiers, you wont have come to the essence of the college since its more than the sum of its parts (cliched).</p>