Be aware you might need your vaccine card. Especially at The Second City since they serve food. Have fun.
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I just checked. Yes you need proof of vaccination to all the places you just mentioned FYI.
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There will be. If it bothers you, then you should pick another school.
No one will make your daughter attend mass or participate in any religious activities (Catholic, Jewish, or otherwise) but they will be there on the campus. Letters from the administration may have religious symbols or quotations on them (like a cross or be signed âYours in Christâ). There most likely will be a âGraduation Massâ that a graduate doesnât have to attend but other students may talk about it. Will your daughter feel left out if she doesnât want to attend?
It is Vincentian (St. Vincent de Paul). The Vincentians are known for their work with the poor, and you may be familiar with the St. Vincent de Paul Society in your town (thrift stores, programs for unwed mothers, etc).
Not Jesuit. Vincentian.
I think Catholic universities provide a wonderful education, but they ARE catholic institutions and there will be symbols, churches/chapels (or even a cathedral), religious (priests, nuns, brothers) teaching or studying at the school (and usually the administration has several religious in the top positions). They are known for being good midsized universities (usually 5000-8000), being urban, and good basketball teams. Many give good merit aid.
I have a friend who attended Fordham (Lincoln center) and swears there were no religious symbols or religious requirements. None. I think she didnât notice them because she was so used to seeing them all the time (catholic school 1-12), but you can look at the photos on the website and see them in the classrooms, hallways, many photos of religious teaching and interacting with the students.
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Thanks for correction. I was thinking Augustinian, but it is Vincentian.
We are vaccinated and boosted.
Interesting discussion. I guess itâs sort of how non-Jewish kids might feel left out at Tulane. I know itâs not Jewish but so many kids are Jewish.
I am from the area and never got the Catholic vibe as much as I did from Loyola. (Sister Mary? at the basketball games)
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Sister Jean.
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Fordham is kind of hilarious, especially with the law school. Seems like half the buildings and rooms have Jewish names because those were the benefactors. It IS New York after all.
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Interesting comment about Tulane. All the people I know who went there are Jewish. Sounds like it was a good time down there, too.
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I think there are less Catholics at DePaul being a catholic university.
I canât find exact comparators but the % Catholic at DePaul and % Jewish at Tulane look to be similar:
Hillel reports undergrad population is 42% Jewish at Tulane: Tulane University - Hillel International
DePaul reports % Catholic of the freshman class in the enrollment report each year. 2020 was
41%, 37% in 2019 (early reports are also available). They also report transfers who identify as Catholic as well (numbers are typically lower than incoming freshman).
These enrollment reports are a wealth of info for OP, and anyone else looking at possibly attending DePaul. Lots of data/reports on this page: IRMA - Fact File Plus
IMO DePaul would be a wonderful place to attend college, in a thriving area of Chicago (both campuses). Students across a wide variety of majors are getting good jobs coming out of undergrad.
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I agree with @Mwfan1921. I think DePaul would be a great choice. I am sure off campus, there are many opportunities for social/religious Jewish life as well.
If you have to take a class that is religious- I am sure there are plenty of classes that are not so catholic focused. My parents sent me to a catholic high school (public school had huge drug problem). I struggled freshman year because the coursework was the New Testament. I was lost. But the rest of the four years- it was more ethics, etc that applies to any religion.
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Great stuff.
Hi @crawljumper11 , how was the DePaul visit? Hoping it went well. Please share anything about the school youâve learned.
Good morning,
It was not the best of circumstances - the weather was frigid and most students were not on campus due to Covid delayed opening.
The tours were organized and presented well. However, there was some disinformation that from the tour guides and, surprisingly, from the recruiter who presented the information session. I know that parents who frequent these forums tend to be overly obsessive about information. I am certainly no exception. However, it surprised me that I had more accurate information than them. For instance, we were shown a room in Ozanam Hall, which is one of the nicest dorms at DePaul. We were told that all the dorms were like that and âall are air conditionedâ. That is not correct. The admissions counselor did not realize that the required gpa for maintaining scholarships was 2.0. (she said 3.0).
There were some religious symbols around but the people there did not emphasis religion at all. It was presented as being there if you wanted it. They also were proud of their soup kitchen and charity work, which my son and I considered a major positive. It seems like they practice more than they preach.
The student center was kind of bland, thought the Ray (the athletic complex for the students) was really nice.
The campus is rather small and has a somewhat homogenous style. It was to be to fit into the surrounding neighborhood. Frankly the neighborhood is the strength of the campus. Lincoln Park is beautiful.
We got on the L and went down to the Loop campus for a tour. It took about 20 minutes, door to door. Totally different vibe down there. The buildings in the Loop campus are in the heart of the loop, about 2 blocks from the Art Institute (one of the best museums in the US, if not the world). They have created a micro campus down there. Everything has been duplicated in miniature. Again, difficult to get a good feel because most students were gone and the buildings we were allowed to enter was limited. Everything was clean and organized, though it was odd to get off an elevator on different floors and see different parts of campus.
We also visited the Art Institute, Second City, Shedd, and The Field Museum. All are outstanding. Even though it was really cold we walked around in Chicago quite a bit.
All in all, DePaul has much to offer. Chicago is the best asset and DePaul knows this. The split campus is not ideal. They try to sell it as a positive but my son did not think it was and I agree. Since so many kids live off campus after freshman year it is important that they live near the school to give it the feel of a college campus. That is really not the case. The Lincoln Park area is very expensive and most students leave further away. Our tour guide lived 13 minutes from the Lincoln Park campus and over 30 minutes from the loop campus. That feels more like a commuter school than a real college campus experience. That is the weakness of DePaul and it is a rather large one.
Feel free to ask me any questions you may have and I will do my best to answer.
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Thanks for this great information. Much appreciated
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My pleasure.
A couple of more notes:
The most interesting building on campus is the theater school. It is off by itself to an extent. Very cool structure that looks nothing like any other building.
The L stop is right next to/on campus. It does make travel fairly worry free. I found the L to be clean and simple. It is a good system. DePaul giving a âfreeâ pass to all students is a great idea and a major plus. We used the Red Line to get to the Loop campus and the stop was about a block away from the Barnes and Noble that serves as the DePaulâs downtown bookstore. Could not be easier.
Since a vast majority of studentâs live off campus after freshman year, we have spent quite a bit of time comparing apartment locations and pricing to a couple of other colleges. Apartments in Chicago near the Lincoln Park campus - which is the center of activity so even if you take most classes on the Loop campus you probably want to live near the main campus - are pricey. Not New York expensive or Boston expensive but not a bargain like Philly. Philly is so cheap that we had to consider the money saved from living off campus as part of the cost savings - and when extrapolated over four years it was substantial. It equated to a summer and a half of fulltime work.
Truthfully, living off campus of a large state university can also chew up a lot of travel time. Some of these universities are massive and you can spend 20-30 minutes traveling between classrooms. That will not happen at DePaul if you are on either campus.
We ate at a little restaurant right across from DePaul called Jam Nâ Honey. It was quite tasty. That is when we noticed the taxes: 10.25%. They also have a 3% soda tax. That is stiff. I believe the taxes in Chicago are some of the highest in the country. That, too, has to be included in cost calculations.
There cannot be many colleges that have a Whole Foods on campus. In fact, the top of the building has a DePaul dormitory.
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It shows how prices are relative, we found Lincoln Park charming and so cheap compared to our west coast city. Our tour guide lived less than a ten-minute walk away, after her first year. But the housing pricing is interesting, since we kept remarking on how darn inexpensive it was and how much nice, plentiful housing there was close to campus. The soda tax is something our city has had for years too, and think higher than Chicago so we had a different perspective. I do think some scholarships have a 3.0 threshold. He got a large merit award and I thought it was 3.0 to keep it. He is going someplace else but we enjoyed DePaul, in the opposite season - a sweltering summer day. Good luck! (We were in Philadelphia this fall and though it grew on us, seemed much less vibrant than Chicago and less hip and cool than the Lincoln Park neighborhood. Lincoln Park is definitely not an inexpensive neighborhood by Chicago standards, donât mean to imply that, but all of Chicagoâs âniceâ areas were shockingly low compared to our insane housing market.)
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