Entrepreneurship at UChicago+other questions

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of Chicago ✅
1

Hey everyone,

I just have a couple questions regarding this amazing school!

  1. Does UChicago provide resources and support for undergrads who want to start their own business?
  2. Is the curriculum at UChicago tailored towards academia (theoretical) or pre-professional track (practical), or both?
  3. Is it true fun goes to die here? What do Uchicago students typically do on weekends?

Thanks in advance!

2

While its not my alma mater, I hear they lock all the students into the Reg on weekends… :-bd

3

I was in the Reg. once and they turned out all the lights and locked me in! Warning: don’t use those basement study rooms you completely lose track of time. PS - I wasn’t even a student at the time ;))

4
  1. Here are some links for you to check out.

https://careeradvancement.uchicago.edu/uchicago-careers-in/entrepreneurship

http://polsky.uchicago.edu

https://careeradvancement.uchicago.edu/content/uchicago-students-host-first-annual-phoenix-pitch

  1. Others more knowledgeable than me can chime in here, but I believe for a very long time, the curriculum was more "theoretical". However, my understanding is that there has been a concerted effort to make the curriculum more "practical". I think the new requirements for the economics major reflects this new philosophy.
  2. I suppose it depends on how you define fun.... Hopefully, one of the current students can respond to this one.
5
  1. Don't know enough to comment.
  2. The Core is largely a theoretical/liberal arts experience. You'll use the math you learn in your econ courses, and you may pick up/perfect a language that'll come in handy down the road, but that's about it.

The practicality of the other 60-70% of your classes will depend partly on your major and mostly on course selection.

  1. Fun is a social construct. Each house organizes early-morning treks to the Reg, where we lock ourselves in cubicles and study till we drop.

Sadly, the talented performers/artists on campus, the museums in the vicinity, the vibrant neighborhoods adjoining Hyde Park, and the massive city at our doorstep make it kind of hard to never have any fun.

6
  1. A group of kids(class of 13) I know stayed on/near campus to complete a CS project that is funded by UofC. So, the U does support Entrepreneurship.
  2. More towards theoretical, but does have professional elements.
  3. Totally a myth. It can be fun on campus, party every week, but most of them do not participate.
7

Obnoxious and clichéd as that old “fun goes to die” trope is, it seems unkillable. That’s odd in that it’s not nearly as witty as many other t-shirt slogans dreamed up over the years by U of C students. There seems to be a consensus that this one was started up in or about 1986 by some unremembered genius in the now extinct Tufts House in the now extinct Pierce Towers.

So how does a not very funny slogan hang on for over 30 years and become the dominant thing that potential students know or think they know about the University of Chicago? It must be that notwithstanding DunBoyer’s amusing ironical take on it, it’s in some sense true. After all, it originated with students with first-hand experience, and there’s a slightly prideful nuance to it, which is often missed by the rest of the world, for whom it is hardly a compliment. But here’s the thing: serious study is not about immediate gratification. The pains of learning and study are usually the more immediate effects. This is a theme of all the classic authors. Yet the dirty little secret, which true Chicago students know, is that knowledge, which is the goal of study, brings real pleasure. “All men by nature desire to know” - Aristotle.

That’s why we do this hard thing. That’s the real meaning of fun, Chicago-style.

8

The slogan survives because it’s simple and vivid, and unlike some of the other, funnier, just-as-simple and even more vivid slogans, it can be repeated at the dinner table to your parents or at school to your counselor.

9

When a slogan is mentioned in a movie (ref:The accountant with Ben Affleck), you know it has become an iconic reference that will last for decades…

10

The slogan was actually filched from a baseball saying about two great centerfielders, Tris Speaker in the twenties and Willie Mays in the fifties: “His glove was where triples go to die.” The unsung poet of Pierce Towers who applied the phrase in the eighties to fun at the University of Chicago must have been a bit of a baseball historian. I also have to give him some credit for making the rather unexpected leap from the world of baseball to a university not known for the sporting life.