<p>I know they have three supplementary essays, but do they require the common app essay as well? And are their first two essays on "Why Chicago" and "Favorite books, ect" always teh same every year?</p>
<p>Also, is the University of Chicago a school where a super great essay can save you (assuming your not a retard who only took standard or honors classes and have less than a 3.5 GPA)</p>
<p>though, the increase in application has made me sadface</p>
<p>Yes you have to write the Common App essay as well. I’m pretty sure “Why Chicago” exists every year, don’t know about the “Favorite things (not just books)” We’ll never know for sure, but I suspect my son was greatly helped by his essays. They were funny and quirky, not profound. He’s a B+/A- student at a large suburban high school. He had 5’s on the three APs he’d already taken and was taking three AP courses this year. He applied EA which I think also helped him.</p>
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<p>There are so many things wrong with this that I’m not even going to bother.</p>
<p>To answer your questions, yes and yes. Which is not to say that Chicago couldn’t change the essay setup to something different next year, but it’s been this way for a whie, I believe.</p>
<p>To the rest of your post I will only say that UChicago seems to put a higher weight on the essay than other schools of its caliber, and that a great essay can make one stand out in a crowd or help prop up an application that has weaknesses elsewhere.</p>
<p>Haavain, I assume you take offense in two things:
<p>well, ill reply to number 2 first. The fact of the matter is, yes you may be some form of a genius with a 3.5 GPA, but as far as colleges care, your not. I dare you to find a 3.5 GPA student in Harvard. Basically, I think what colleges want are students with no life. I could go to an interview and say “Hi, I’m Bob. I do extracurricular everyday, I have all AP classes, I do all sorts of community service, and I have no personal life whatsoever.” Thats is a shoe in for any college, except hopefully U Chicago. Thats why I’m interested in them. From what I know, they care more about who you are, not stats and credentials that you can build up by bs-ing you high school career. One thing you learn in highschool is all those AP geniuses are just master of bs. they dont actually care about what they learn. they dont go the extra mile to learn something relevant to their most hated subject. I hate that enviroment. I really do. I love the people, but I hate that attitude. </p>
<p>As for the ■■■■■■ statement. Never say “lame,” meaning crippled, “hooligan,” first used by a British newspaper to refer to the Irish as drunkards, or “hip hip hooray,” first used by 19th century German jew hunters during hep hep pogroms, then I will say I am wrong for using the changing definition of a word. </p>
<p>If those reasons werent waht you meant by saying my sentence was wrong, then sorry. Also, you info was good thanks.</p>
<p>ps. dont turn this thread into a political argument. I still want answers. kthxlol</p>
<p>@shadowzoid</p>
<p>The time in which Chicago “care more about who you are, no stats and credentials” is gone, and is never coming back again. Those were the times when Chicago had more than 30% acceptance rate, where they could carefully select inidividuals who showed great potential. </p>
<p>Now, with 42% applicant increase, and with an acceptance rate lower than 20%, that will never happen.</p>
<p>@Sensation
I’m not going to presume I know what you’re talking about, so would you mind clarifying? What evidence do you have for that, or what reasoning makes you say that? And are you suggesting that Chicago has never cared about “stats and credentials” and now currently doesn’t care about “who you are”?</p>
<p>@shadowzoid
Personally, I find the ‘your’ offensive, the ‘■■■■■■’ comment slightly tasteless and the GPA remark kind of insensitive.</p>
<p>But to your question, yes they require the common essay (and I actually think that was my best essay), and I definitely think a really good essay is something you should aim for (though no-one who hasn’t sat in on one of the admissions committee’s meetings can tell you how much weight they really put on it).</p>
<p>Any of you who think the essays don’t matter, and matter a lot, are nuts. First of all, Chicago is clearly not picking its classes based on stats, as anyone who looks at the results thread here can tell immediately. I’m sure stats enter into things, but they are still taking plenty of people with relatively low stats and rejecting plenty with relatively high stats. Legacy doesn’t enter into things, race/SES/location may to some extent, but also don’t explain the differences, ditto ECs (which Chicago has always seemed to care a little less about than its peers). That leaves recommendations and essays. Most recommendations are going to be somewhat generic – there’s no way around that. But the essays are a student’s actual, considered work. That’s really powerful, especially when they are dealing with very limited other information. Plus students at Chicago (including math/science types) probably do more writing than students anywhere else. It’s a huge feature of education there. So of course the essays are crucial.</p>
<p>Speaking as the parent of a current senior EA admit with a 3.49 UW, we are all convinced to a moral certainty that “it’s the essays, stupid.” He made those puppies sing. He also was not afraid of Bs in a competitive admit full IB program plus 11 APs.</p>
<p>S2 wrote two main Chicago essays – one for the Common App, and one for the main Chicago Uncommon Supp essay.</p>
<p>Ok, so how about what Sensation said? Anybody think that UChicago’s joining of the Common App will diminish their goal to find the quirky and unique?</p>
<p>Furthermore, does anybody know where I can get sample UChicago essays written by people who got admitted? I went to the bookstore and looked at their college essay example books, but most of them were to colleges like Duke or Harvard of Yale. Hardly any to UChicago. So any books or weblinks or maybe a thread. thanks</p>
<p>This has been discussed and discussed over the past couple of years. Going to the Common App in and of itself is irrelevant – taking into account the “Uncommon Supplement”, the only difference vs. the old “Uncommon App” is that there is an extra essay (the Common App one), and you can’t use your UChicago essay as your Common App essay anymore (what one of my kids did after failing to write a better one with multiple tries). The message communicated by going to the Common App, though, was “We are open for business. We’re not quirky and hard to apply to anymore.” And there’s no question that going to the Common App has gotten more kids to look at Chicago, to apply, and in some cases even to get accepted and to enroll.</p>
<p>There’s also no question that with a (relatively) new president and new admissions dean, there is a shift in attitude. I think President Zimmer’s attitude is something like this: “There is no university in the world that is better than the University of Chicago at what we do well. At the graduate and professional levels, it is regarded as absolutely first-rank, absolutely a peer not only of Harvard and Yale but of Cambridge or ENS. Why, for the College, should we content ourselves with being a niche player, even if that niche is attractive? We do a better job of teaching undergraduates than Harvard or Yale, we should be competing with them straight up for the best undergraduate students, wherever they are. We have our own idea of what a ‘best student’ looks like, and it isn’t exactly the same as Harvard’s, but we shouldn’t be content to let students with quirky intelligence find their way to us. We should be out there competing like hell for the students we would most like to teach.”</p>
<p>That IS a change from the attitudes of the past. At one point, not that long ago, the College was so broken that the University seriously considered getting out of the undergraduate-education business. There was no way it could compete straight-up with HYPS, or lots of other colleges, either. The attitude was basically that we’ll take the really smart kids who aren’t smooth enough for the Ivies, and there are enough of them that we’ll be OK. And that was true. But the current generation of leadership has spent 20 years painstakingly fixing the College’s problems one by one, and now they ARE ready to compete straight-up. In a sense, they NEED to compete straight-up, because that’s the only way to keep getting better once the obvious problems have been dealt with.</p>
<p>The result, though, is that everyone thinks that Chicago’s admissions are a lot more like Yale’s the last couple of years than they were in the past. And that change means that there are fewer places for quirky, brilliant, somewhat damaged kids, and more places for “leaders” with 2300+ SATs.</p>
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<p>Yes. There is a thread. It’s right here on this forum–in fact, on the front page. Some of the posters on it were rejected/WLed/don’t state their admissions outcome, but there are many accepted students’ essays as well.</p>
<p>@JHS</p>
<p>I don’t know if your sarcastic or not, but you last paragraph implies that the old quirky kids were “damaged,” while those with high SATs are “leaders.” </p>
<p>I laugh at that. Anyone who thinks that doesn’t know the US high school culture. I’ve always said this, and I will say it now: The students who have 2400 SATs, 4.0 GPAs, and all APs are master BS-ers. They are not intelligent. Yes, there are a few that are exempt from the rule, but most don’t. They don’t learn anything. They’ve basically learned to beat the system. They’ve learned how their teachers think because they are adept that way. They know how to play the education system. I have a friend with all As, but doesn’t really know anything. I asked for help, and he didn’t know anything. He just gets As. Thats our school system. Students don’t care about why this happened in US History, or the purpose of taking a tech ed class. They don’t. They do what is required. They don’t sit at home, looking up extra things just for the sake of knowing it. They don’t sit around debating impractical philosophical ideas just for the sake of it. They do not do any of these things. And that is what angers me. I wish that we would care for our education system. That we would care for our teachers. That we would respect it all. That we would stop BS-ing. I need an environment that loves to learn anything at all, or else I’m gonna go crazy. I would even go so far as to say that the geniuses are those with B level grades. Thats because intellectuals will go the extra mile. There are not enough hours in a day to do the school work and learn extra things, and so they sacrifice their grades to learn. But hell, maybe I’m wrong and I’m just an idiot. I’m just really stressed. haha</p>
<p>Mark Twain once said: “I have not let my schooling get in the way of my education”</p>
<p>@Havaain. Where is taht thread? I looked for it but I couldnt find it. link plz. kthxlo</p>
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<li>That’s not what you said. You said, or at least implied, that people who have 3.5 GPAs are stupid. Own up to what you said.</li>
<li>I’m sure there are 3.5 GPA students at Harvard. They’re probably people with exceptional extenuating circumstances, or foreign students where the grading standards are different, or double-legacy major donor champion squash players, etc., etc., but I doubt that they are nonexistent.</li>
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<p>No, it’s not. That’s a recipe for four years of state school. Your idea of what it takes to get into top schools is ridiculously simplistic.</p>
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<p>I guarantee you that in life, you will have to learn things you don’t care about or don’t like, and devote time and energy to them. And why should you devote time to studying something you don’t enjoy if you don’t have to?</p>
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<li>I will concede your point on “lame.” I use it. It’s a bad habit, one I’ve been trying to kick for a while now, but then it took me several months to excise “■■■■■■■■” from my lexicon.</li>
<li>I don’t think I’ve ever used “hooligan” or “hip hip hooray.” I was not aware of their etymology, actually, so thank you for informing me.</li>
<li>In my opinion, there is a difference between hooligan/hip hip hooray and ■■■■■■■■/lame, which is that the former have been effectively distanced from their original meanings. Most people, if you asked, would be able to tell you that “lame” refers to people who are physically handicapped and “■■■■■■■■” to people with developmental disabilities. I doubt that that would be the case for hooligan/hip hip hooray. So pejorative usage of “■■■■■■■■” and “lame” reinforces negative stereotypes and ugly assumptions in a way that usage of, say, “hooligan” does not.</li>
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<p>I think JHS has answered your questions thoroughly, and I can’t think of anything that I or anyone else could possibly add to that.</p>
<p>PS: “A great essay can heal the sick, but it can’t raise the dead.”
PPS: The thread is the one titled “Post Your essay.”
PPPS: I don’t have the time or energy to argue with you further, so I won’t, but suffice it to say that I disagree with your post #12 completely, and that has not been my experience at all. The Ivy aspirants’ obsession with status and numerical indicators of success is frightening at times, but that doesn’t make them soulless, or not intellectual, or mean that they have nothing interesting to contribute.</p>
<p>Full disclosure: I fit your BS-er profile pretty well. All APs last year, one single blemish on an otherwise 4.0 record for the past 2.5 years (although that is about to come to an end soon, and spectacularly), and I–didn’t get a 2400, but I came pretty close. So perhaps it’s to my own defense that I rise.</p>
<p>…wait, I thought I said I wasn’t going to argue with you. Oops.</p>
<p>shadowzoid:</p>
<p>I put quotation marks around “leaders” in order to distance myself from it a bit. “Leaders” is shorthand for “the sorts of students HYP traditionally pursues”. And of course not all the “old, quirky” kids were damaged goods, but often they (or their records) were flawed in a way one normally wouldn’t find at HYP. And if you read what I wrote carefully, I was hypothesizing a shift, not a complete exchange. There’s no question that Chicago will still accept, enthusiastically, a seriously intellectual kid with a seriously imperfect transcript . . . but not necessarily all of them who apply.</p>
<p>I think you are wrong, by the way. There are plenty of students (unfortunately!) who get good grades, and do well on tests, and who spend lots of time looking up extra things because they care, or debating impractical philosophical ideas. And there are good students who instead of doing those things throw themselves into this or that other activity – theater, music, politics, math team – because they care about THAT deeply, too. You aren’t wrong that there are top students out there who don’t really learn, and don’t have anything to offer other people, but you are wrong if you think that all good students are like that.</p>
<p>You SHOULD sacrifice your grades to learn, if necessary. (It’s almost an article of religion at Chicago. If you read enough Chicago threads, you will see that pretty much everyone there thinks they made that deal when they decided to go there.) You just have to learn to deal with the fact that sometimes you won’t get immediate rewards for doing that, especially in College Application World. Not that you will be condemned to a life of bad community college and making the fries, but that you won’t necessarily be accepted everywhere you apply. (But hardly anyone is.) Luckily, there are scads of great ways to get more education out there, and anywhere you go is likely to have a whole bunch of people who are like you (maybe not everyone, but a whole bunch).</p>
<p>That’s not going to stop you from feeling stressed, I know. But it should.</p>