<p>Northwestern Univ.'s honors seminar is probably modeled on St. Paul's School's humanities courses, which have been studied by most of the Ivies due to SPS students' remarkable transition to Ivy courses. Northwestern is emulating Chicago's and Columbia's core curriculum requirements in an effort to equal and excel in the humanities. My phrase was "to emulate humanities studies at Chicago and St. Paul's". Although "emulate" can be defined as "to imitate", I used it as "to equal or approach quality with" and "to strive to equal or excel".</p>
<p>St. Paul's...arrrrrrrrrr...</p>
<p>I have to agree with the previous posters. I feel like I get a much better sense of the school than in some of the other school forums.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>I agree: for whatever reason, this forum seems to give a pretty good idea of what the University of Chicago feels like. And it's a pretty attractive idea, too. As a parent, I can't tell you how much I appreciate the current students who participate on a regular basis in this forum -- their generosity with their time and information, their honesty, their humor, their willingness to explain themselves. I am really glad that my kids get to hang out / learn with people like that. Even the really arrogant ones (who at least have some obviously impressive smarts to back up their mouths). And, even though I don't know any of them personally, the way they write here is pretty much exactly how the students I have met personally talk and think. </p></li>
<li><p>Neither of my kids spent much time reading this forum, or any other CC forum, when they were thinking about colleges. In general, they considered CC, with its emphasis on "stats" and its plethora of superperformers, real and imaginary, to be somewhat toxic. But my older child spent a lot of time reading the UChicago livejournal groups when she was a high school senior, as well as similar groups for the other colleges in which she was interested. One of the big factors that ultimately sent her to Chicago was the high level of discourse there.</p></li>
<li><p>Although I am basically a University of Chicago booster, I am not convinced that it is the Best College In The World. However, if I were to assemble evidence that is IS the Best College In The World, one of the places I would start is the comparison between the discussions here and those on other colleges' forums.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Was the above post intended to be ironic?</p>
<p>No. If it's ironic, it's unintentionally so. Naive or stupid: same answer.</p>
<p>Unalove, I hope the U of C appreciates you. You are a terrific ambassador for the university. </p>
<p>In addition to the service you provide for prospective students, I expect there are many Chicago parents who learn more about the school from your posts than they do from their own kids.</p>
<p>Aw, that's nice.</p>
<p>But honestly, CC is just my alternative to facebook or YouTube or what have you. It's easy for me to give answers about my own school.</p>
<p>The UChicago livejournal is fun, but the comment sections are dominated by 5-6 people, all of whom I know or know of. There are some pretty epic discussions on there regarding Chicago as a university, intellectualism, divestment from Darfur, etc., I suggest you check it out for yourself.</p>
<p>And as for JHS's comment about our not being the best university ever, I completely agree. I think we're a great school for what we do and the manner in which we do it, but we're neither perfect nor a one-size-fits-all school. I hope prospective students keep that in mind when considering Chicago.</p>
<p>Thanks for the livejournal connection. One more thing to bookmark, along with the UChiBLOGo webcam of Regenstein/Bartlett quad, which gives a little bird's eye view of stick figures in the Chicago weather du jour.</p>
<p>There's also Steve Levitt's blog right?</p>