<p>I know U of C has a huge number of grad students. What does this mean for the undergraduate experience? Do the grad students teach many of the intro classes? And how about research opportunities? My s is big into the sciences, and places like Harvey Mudd and top liberal arts colleges have lots of opportunities for students to work on projects with professors. But at U of C, I expect the grad students mostly do this sort of thing instead of the undergrads--right?</p>
<p>One of my good friends works in a lab alongside grad students. She got the job by e-mailing a bunch of professors over the summer before her first year (she lives in the burbs and was willing to commute) and asked them if there was anything she could do. She got back a few replies, and right now she's working in a lab on an NIH-funded project. She's giving presentations to grad students at weekly meetings and she's catching up on the nitty-gritty biology in her spare time.</p>
<p>All of the people at the front of the classroom are either full professors or "ABD" grad students. The only way to tell a grad student apart from a professor is that a grad student is younger, cuter, more together, and has a fuller head of hair. I've had mostly professors here so far, actually, though knowing that a class was being taught by a grad student has not deterred me from it.</p>
<p>Also, U of C doesn't really have "intro classes" the same way other colleges do. The core classes aren't really intro-- if you consider intro tying a bag of rocks to somebody throwing them into the deep end of a pool. The classic intro to psych, econ, chem, bio, etc. are taught by full professors and are lecture classes. Intro to Micro is taught by Allen Sanderson, who is very famous and quite awesome, I hear. My intro to art history class, though, was a 25-person discussion class with an ABD grad student.</p>
<p>If the grad students do anything helpful, it's serving as writing tutors in core classes and helping bring in more resources to undegraduate students, by letting us take their classes and use their facilities. There are 4.5 million books in the main library-- I wonder how many would be there if we didn't have 9,000 grad students. As an undegrad, I don't feel like the grad students dominate the scene-- I still have my life as a college student, I still have my frat parties and my dorm and all of the typical things that an ug has.</p>
<p>Great post, Unalove. I agree completely. I really think that the grad students bring many positive things to the school. I can't really think of the negatives because the common downsides of having grad students don't really exist: attention is still focused on undergrads, and graduate students don't teach courses you wouldn't want taught by a grad student (and they ones who teach tend to be Harper Fellows, I think they're called). </p>
<p>As I've said before, I have never heard of an undergraduate student of any year who wanted to be involved in research and couldn't find an appropriate opportunity.</p>
<p>You'll find a lot of other helpful answers to your questions and similar questions by running a search of past threads. They all tend to come up pretty often.</p>
<p>I'll add that years ago my wife and I attended another top research university where people always wonder about whether grad students crowd out undergrads. We both loved the grad students we came into contact with, by and large. They were a great bridge between undergraduates and famous faculty, helping to get us up to speed on what we needed to know to take advantage of our opportunities. They also showed us what career paths actually were in the academic world.</p>
<p>Grad students (in the humanities) with whom we felt close became, in later years, department chairs at Harvard, Yale, and Michigan, a famous activist/law professor, and an extremely successful television producer. Strong departments attract strong grad students, and strong grad students can be a real plus for undergraduates.</p>
<p>I never understood Princeton's widely held belief that the fact that their undergraduates outnumber their graduate students is a positive thing for its college. Here at the UofC, I couldn't be more thankful for the number of graduate students we have. You have to realize that the more graduate students you have, the more research-focused professors are hired and stay, the more research goes on, and the more opportunities you have for involvment in cutting edge research as a college student. Also understand that since the college is relatively small, there are tons of opennings out there and relatively few students to compete for them, so the prospect of you finding research positions in your first year are quite high. All of my first-year friends, in fact, have found research positions (working in a physics lab, the GSB's Decision Research Lab, for a sociolgist) - that is, of those who wanted one. </p>
<p>The fear that the grad students would teach a lot of classes is certainly very real. That is one aspect which the college could certainly put in place if it wanted to. The only way to prevent that is if the University insisted on not doing so, on actually making sure that the undergrads had a true experience with the University's foremost profressor. I'm glad to say that is the case... heads of departments teach in the core, Nobel prize winners teach a few quarters of the intro sequence in the econ department (that is, the Econ Analysis sequence, not the intro to micro and intro to macro classes). </p>
<p>It is also very important to note that the University of Chicago allows all its undergraduate students to take classes in any professional school of the University and in the graduate departments of arts and sciences. I have heard of third years who enrolled in what is probably the most famous University class in the world - Graduate Price Theory taught by Gary Becker - ,second years who have taken financial engineering or business ethics at the Graduate School of Business (I will be one of those next year!), and several students taking classes at the law school and divinity school - a third year friend of mine even took a class at the Med. school.</p>
<p>Lastly, I would just like to offer an anecdote. The Economics department here is by far the most populous and the one which enjoys the worst student-faculty ratio. I am glad to report that in spite of this, Steve Levitt's famous Econ of Crime class had about 60 students in it, and my first class in the major, Econ Analysis 1, is taught by the man who is considered to be the best classroom lecturer the deparment has to offer - there are about 30 kids in class every day. I know also that for Econ Analysis 3, which has one section taught by Robert E. Lucas, Nobel Prize winner in 1995 and a graduate of the college!, has every year about 20 kids in it.</p>
<p>Further, yet another anecdote to research experience. Despite the number of econ kids wanting positions and whatnot, several faculty members, including Nobel Prize winner James Heckman, asked the undergraduate department chair to send an email to all students in the major stating that they all had positions open for students who wanted to work here for the summer and beyond. Note also that if you were offered the job, the department would give you a grant to support you here for the summer.</p>
<p>My point being.... God I love this place.</p>
<p>Contrast all of this with a friend of mine who is taking the equivalent of my econ class at Stanford: He sits everyday in a huge lecture hall, and his class is so big that they required 8 graduate TAs to handle it.</p>
<p>These posts are very helpful indeed. Thanks for taking the time and trouble to write such thoughtful replies. My concern was based on my first-hand experience of being an undergrad and grad student at a very large, quite-well-respected public university--and no experience at a school like U of C. Sounds like undergrads at U of C really can be part of the intellectual community that is usually just faculty and grad students at many other schools. Of course, undergrads at many universities (like the one I was at) are de facto majoring in beer bongs, and U of C is obviously quite different there. Thanks again for your posts. I'll pass on your wisdom to my son.</p>
<p>P.S. A typo. I meant to say "MANY undergraduates at many universities (like the one I was at)." Of course, there were some enthusiastic, smart, very intellectually engaged students among the undergrads, but we were a small minority and were not part of the intellectual life of our departments.</p>
<p>That was a wonderful post Felipecocco.</p>
<p>My son looks at grad students at a university as an opportunity for him -- to get into graduate-level work sooner and to find others who are passionate about their field of endeavor. The presence of grad students tells him he won't run out of things to explore during his time as an undergrad.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Sounds like undergrads at U of C really can be part of the intellectual community that is usually just faculty and grad students at many other schools.
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This is a very positive fact of the school. All students, from first years (or visiting high school students) on up are respected as students and scholars. That's a very important fact. Professors think carefully about student comments, and if they don't know the answer or the question intrigues them, they'll put it off until next class as they think it over. Professors are more than happy to discuss related subjects during office hours or by email. There is active discussion amongst students that is really respected by faculty. Several professors, including a couple very well known ones at the U of C, have said that they love teaching at the University of Chicago because of the quality of the undergrads--which I take to mean the commitment students have to thoughtful discourse--and the regular interaction professors have with them.</p>
<p>I was recently on campus for a visit and the professor I talked to said there wasn't a ghost of a chance that I wouldn't get into a lab if I wanted to. I considered it a funny bonus he had "retired" ten years ago and was still showing up to work :p</p>
<p>**** Something that hasn't been said yet:</p>
<p>I am a transfer from a good liberal arts college, and I have to say, while it was easy to get into the labs, the mentors did not seem to care about their students, struggled to find things to keep them busy with which was related to the fact that they don't have the resources that Chicago does. The topic creator named some good schools, but don't count on great research opportunities there.</p>