Difficulty of UChicago

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of Chicago ✅
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<p>Everyone talks about the difficulty of UChicago classes. What exactly makes them so hard? Is it amount of reading? Tough professors? Lots of papers? Lots of "busy work"? What is the real difference between high school and college that makes UChicago so darn hard?</p>

<p>And you can't just say, The amount of time you need to put into the work. What does that mean anyway? What kind of work do you do that is different or more difficult than high school or an AP class?</p>

<p>Please give examples of rubrics, reading lists, examples of notes, explanations of tests or papers, etc. </p>

<p>What is a student's study habit at UChicago? What do students do to prepare for classes? </p>

<p>Basically, what the bloody heck can we expect in our first year of classes?</p>

<p>Thank you. Go Maroons!</p>

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<p>Is it amount of reading?</p>

<p>YES</p>

<p>Tough professors?</p>

<p>They expect seriious work and don't give out an A casually.</p>

<p>Lots of papers? </p>

<p>Not the volume, the quality expected in what you write. You will be a MUCH better writer after your second year.</p>

<p>Lots of "busy work"? </p>

<p>To the contrary, none at all. Rather, lots of assignments that call for real work and thought.</p>

<p>What is the real difference between high school and college that makes UChicago so darn hard?</p>

<p>In HS, you learn to repeat the argument you read. At Chicago, you develop your own argument. For most people, memorizing is much easier than original thinking.</p>

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<p>Busy work is almost never the case (the exception is some foreign languages). The quarter system is part of it, as there is no dead time (well, maybe a week at the beginning sometimes) in classes. With only 10 weeks, it's pretty likely that papers/mid-terms/lots of reading will be occuring simultaneously.
A sampling of workload from first year (Gen Chem, Calc, and a foreign language is about the most work/time intensive lineup you can have)</p>

<p>General Chemistry:
3 Mid-Terms (one every 2.5 weeks)
Weekly Problem Sets
Weekly Lab (4 hrs in the lab + the write-up)
Final Exam</p>

<p>Calculus 152-53:
Weekly Problem Sets
2 Mid-Terms
1 Final</p>

<p>Humanities Core (everyone takes this, I took the Philosophy flavor):
Reading for every class (my section pretty manageable, usually, although sometimes it was pretty huge)
3 5-page papers
*The exact specifications vary from section to section and flavor to flavor on this, but the requirements tend to be somewhat similar (reading and papers).</p>

<p>Spanish 201-202-203:
Homework (reading with questions or something like that) about once a week
4 quizzes
3-4 compositions
Weekly Lector Sessions (small-group discussions)</p>

<p>Grading varies a lot. Gen Chem was a distribution-type deal (based on the mean, which earned a B or B-, with statistical things that I don't understand [and I know absolutely no statistics, so it's probably not complicated] used to determined what raw grades got what letter). The average mid-term scores ranged from 44 to 85 (a diffierent professor each quarter, and accordingly, a different difficulty level in the exams). </p>

<p>Grading rubrics are pretty rare. Papers come back with a letter grade and general comments, and often stuff written in the margin. There isn't really a formula. I haven't found paper grading to be super-harsh, but it's also not easy. Just being able to say something coherently, which seemed to be most of the battle in high school, doesn't count for much. Everyone here can write. It's making the writing clear and good that counts. Straight-up "A"s on papers are pretty rare. </p>

<p>I'd say the general thing that makes it hard is that you pretty much always have something that should probably be worked on, and most of it requires effort (not just going through the motions).</p>

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<p>Given what you posted as your typical work load, it would seem rather easy in terms of quantity. The papers, were they all full-blown research papers (notecards, footnotes, lots of time, the whole nine yards?) or just "opinion" papers based on prose or poetry?</p>

<p>My AP English Lit. class never has take-home writing assignments. We do all our writing in class for the whole hour, or we're timed for 45 or 40 minutes. The papers are always based on poetry or prose with a prompt. We write and then she grades and then we groan. Normally everyone gets the wrong interp of poetry, or everyone doesn't express their ideas well enough with prose. I have problems with the former. Poetry kills me. Point is, our papers aren't "research papers." When a teacher says research paper, everyone interprets that to mean we will be spending two months gathering information, writing our info on notecards, formulation our thesis, writing a rough draft, building our bibliography, typing the final draft, ya-da ya-da ya-da. Is that what those 3 five-page papers are?</p>

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<p>The five-page papers are usually given about 10 days to be done. They are a response to a prompt/topic. Something like "Explain the significance of the bath in Homer's Iliad." In the hum classes, research is actually explicitly forbidden. You must use only the text read for class. I wouldn't say "opinion" papers is quite the write term for them though. You have to have a lot of evidence from the text.</p>