Everyday Lifer at the U of C: An Upperclassman's Take

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of Chicago ✅
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<p>Hi all,</p>

<p>I remember how useful this site's forums were for gaining information about finding a college. But I don't remember seeing anything addressing this kind of topic and I think it's an important one in your college decisions.</p>

<p>This won't be about the academic rigor, social life, or work life balance here. That kind of information is easily findable elsewhere. I will instead talk about some of the more specific and overlooked factors in life here, which I think have a great deal of weight on your personal happiness, career aspirations, and academic performance.</p>

<p>There's no really logical ordering here, so let's begin with topic 1:</p>

<p>Luck:</p>

<p>I've had fantastic professors here, and very bad ones as well. You really can't avoid it because randomness is built into the system. During course requests, you must rank which classes and professors you want. People who do research on teachers generally all pick the same ones. As a result, it can be incredibly frustrating and difficult to access professors with solid reviews. This is a huge issue for core classes in particular, as those last 3 quarters. You do not want to be stuck with an inarticulate professor who decides that a B- is an acceptable grade for "good" papers for the entire year. Having 1/3rd to 1/4th of your year shaped by the outcome of these arbitrary chance games on just 1 class is horrendous, and all you can hope for is to add/drop your way out between quarters (which is also a game of luck). That is why students here actually develop computer programs to game this and gain advantage.</p>

<p>Teaching on the Cheap:</p>

<p>I remember UChicago often advertising in its literature about how classes are small and are usually led by faculty. I am an econ major and have finished 10 of the required courses with 4 more to go. Thus far, I've had 1 econ professor, 1 stat grad student, 2 math grad students, and 6 econ grad students. The one professor was actually pretty poor, and it was his first time teaching, so he had even less experience than the grad students. Furthermore, the senior faculty and nobel laureates do offer advanced courses. But, they sometimes do so 1 quarter every 2 years, and those are always huge classes that can be difficult to get into through, what else, course requests. Do not come here expecting Gary Becker to personally shepherd you through your education.</p>

<p>Inflexibility:</p>

<p>The school bills itself as one offering a broad education to students. While you may read philosophy you'd never even imagined taking, and this is a good thing for me, there is much less freedom in structuring your schedule than I would like. You need to come in prepared. If you want to do an econ phd program, you have to begin the process first year. Any later and it's impossible to fill the requirements. If you want to study a new language, you have to start the first quarter. You can't start language sequences after the fall. If you want to study abroad for a quarter, you have to be able to weave that in between sequence classes (those you have to take in order). Many students simply cannot do this, and it's not a smart decision to interrupt a year long organic chemistry sequence to go sit on a beach in Spain.</p>

<p>Technical support:</p>

<p>Technology is an essential part of a college student's life. Unfortunately, ours is mostly frustrating. Do not expect the residence halls' printer/scanners to do anything but print. Scanning something and sending it to your email address will not work, and you'll just waste your money. The staff at these halls will say that anything wrong with these machines is not their concern. I even have a friend who was told to call up Canon himself to get the issue resolved. This is not something you want to hear when you need to desperately print and the guy telling you this plays solitaire for 6 hours a day. Granted, there are always the machines in the libraries, and those tend to be more reliable. But spending a half hour to walk back and forth to do something so simple is not something you want to do when the academic pressure is on and it's 20 below zero outside. Plan accordingly.</p>

<p>More importantly, our career website, the direct link between the student and on-campus recruiting is inexcusably buggy. It is sometimes impossible to view all the listings, and your documents, which needed to be converted through the website to be submitted, can simply not. I cannot tell you the number of times I've tried and retried, uploading and reuploading the same word doc. This is not a productive way to spend 2 hours. Furthermore, there is no email notification for granted interviews. You don't want to miss an important interview because you didn't check the site for 3 days and no one ever told you that you got a time slot. </p>

<p>Customer service:</p>

<p>On a related note, the friendliness of the support staff, those at the halls, the cafeterias, driving shuttles etc. is almost universally nonexistent. Do not expect to be smiled at, given full attention to, or sometimes even looked at. I even saw an occasion on a shuttle ride where the driver insulted a passenger for trying to say directions with a heavy accent. You may think this is a trivial issue. But not all of the grind here comes from academics. These small things add up. </p>

<p>Healthcare:</p>

<p>Take a look at this:
Students</a> voice frustrations over SCCservices - The Chicago Maroon</p>

<p>In it, a student was refused care, cried and begged to be seen by a doctor, got complaints for interrupting someone's lunch hour, and was told that if she had not been seen, her eardrum would have exploded. While admittedly, this is a rare event, I don't know anyone whose had a positive experience with our student care center. Want to make an appointment? It could take 2 weeks. Want to begin treating your muscle tear? Come back in 5. Did something come up unexpectedly? Sit in the emergency room for 6 hours. The take away here: try not to get sick or injured here.</p>

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<p>Hey! At least our Computer Science guys are good for something :). Cheers.</p>

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<p>So pseudonymous, what do you like about the U of C? Too much of your thread makes a value-laden statement about the U of C without setting up contrast. So for example, you point to the “inflexibility” of the U of C curriculum without demonstrating what a “flexible” curriculum should be, or why “teaching on the cheap” differs from say, all those schools that teach “expensively”.</p>

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<p>That article was eye-opening.</p>

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<p>Is there some reason you are trying to scare people away from the U of C?</p>

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<p>I think it’s important to note that a lot of the problems the OP notes are major-specific. A number of my fellow Econ majors have expressed similar sentiments about classes. I, as a Biology major, have never had a problem getting into classes and none of them were taught by graduate students. I’ve only taken one class in the four years here that was taught by a graduate student: my Calc 153 class.</p>

<p>I also think the note on “flexibility” is not specific to the University of Chicago and the “technical support” section can just be solved by going to a library, which employs quite competent people.</p>

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<p>I would also like to point out that the article about the Student Care Center is from 2009; while it has been suboptimal in the past, the College has taken great steps to improve the service (I have experienced vastly decreased wait times and increased friendliness because of it), especially in hiring Dr. Alex Lickerman to run the SCC/SCRS services: [Lickerman</a> named interim Assistant Vice President for Student Health and Counseling | UChicago News](<a href=“http://news.uchicago.edu/article/2010/12/02/lickerman-named-interim-assistant-vice-president-student-health-and-counseling]Lickerman”>Lickerman named interim Assistant Vice President for Student Health and Counseling | University of Chicago News)</p>

<p>So, yes, it used to be crappy, but it has since changed for the better and, having met in a student group with Dr. Lickerman and been very impressed, I’m certain these changes will stick and that it will continue to improve.</p>

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<p>I am glad some students are responding to this. While I have no doubt that the OP has presented his true experience, I know that it doesn’t correspond to my kids’ experience at Chicago at all, really . . . except for the long-waits-in-the-ER part. And that is entirely due to the fact that when students have medical emergencies, they are rarely the kind of medical emergencies that get you to the front of the emergency room line – heart attacks, sepsis, stopping a bullet.</p>

<p>Flexibility: That’s true everywhere, but just last week in another thread some Chicago econ majors explained how you really could complete your econ major in four years even if you didn’t decide to major in it until the end of your second year (provided you were up to speed on math).</p>

<p>Grad students: One of the benefits of going to a great research university is contact with great grad students, who can help you bridge the gap between where you are and where, say, Gary Becker is. That said, one of my kids had a number of classes with grad students in her (large) major, all of which she loved and chose because she thought the particular grad students were hot stuff in her field. My other kid has only had one non-Core class taught by a grad student. And he has had multiple classes with the biggest names in his world-class department – including a seminar where the famous professor volunteered to keep meeting with the students once a week for another quarter after the class ended because everyone was getting so much out of it! </p>

<p>Luck: My kids had some duds, but never for a whole year, only for a quarter. The worst luck was when every one of my daughter’s top five choices for BA advisor went on leave or had serious family crises all or part of her fourth year. Luckily, she had a grad-student preceptor whom she had known for years and really liked, and who shared her interests foursquare. But stuff like that does happen – and it happens a lot more frequently in places (LACs) with smallish faculties to begin with and no grad students to pick up the slack.</p>

<p>Tech support: The real takeaway from this is that, yes, at the University of Chicago the libraries are still the centers of student life. It’s old-school like that.</p>

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<p>i think it’s important to appreciate the negative aspects of life at all colleges. i wish the OP had presented a few of his favorite things about UChicago, but i am grateful for a rare dissenting perspective. it doesn’t necessarily change my view of the school, because i understand that there are negative aspects about all schools that we as applicants rarely hear about. articles like this should serve less to scare away potential students (i don’t think that’s the aim, and it doesn’t really make me any less likely to attend) than they should to articulate some of the universal realities of college life, and prepare future students for these issues. to varying degrees, daily annoyance, administrative inefficiency, inadequate facilities, and disappointing teaching, are unavoidable elements of every college experience. for me, it’s kind of expected, and why i generally focus on the strengths of the colleges i am considering. </p>

<p>still, perspectives like this are valuable and realistic. so we shouldn’t reflexively jump to “why so negative?”. presenting a college as a pristine utopia only sets eager students up for frustration. it’s like coaching yourself to expect rejection from your top college…it makes acceptance more exciting, and rejection less painful.</p>

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<p>S1 reported that by in large his classes were taught by profs, most of whom were quite good with a few actually great. He has become even more appreciative of his Chicago education and is now employed in a great job he loves. He has found that being from Chicago confers an instant assumption of accomplishment, intelligence, and great work ethic.</p>

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<p>If this “scares away” a potential applicant, then that applicant has led such a sheltered, naive life that the post-secondary educational environment, wherever he/she receives it, will be terrifying, confusing, and disorienting. </p>

<p>Every school has negative aspects. If you’re unintelligent enough to let one obviously biased post significantly influence your academic future, you probably shouldn’t attend a good school.</p>

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<p>The intent of my question was not to imply that all of this information is shocking and/or is drastically changing my view of the University of Chicago. I was just wondering if there were any underlying currents actually driving that very long and negative post. After all, who wouldn’t be suspicious of a one-time OP who only joined this month with the apparent intention of knocking his soon-to-be alma mater?</p>

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<p>Parent of a third year here.</p>

<p>A lot of the OP’s complaints are going to happen at any college. I hear some of the same stuff from my younger S at Tufts. </p>

<p>My Chicago student has been generally happy with his profs. Liked his HUM instructor a lot, who was a grad student and is now at Georgetown. Has learned the hard way that the Core can bite your butt, even if you like the classes. Has never had a TA for a math or CS course.</p>

<p>The departmental advisors have been extremely helpful. The general academic advisor has been a bit too laid back for my taste, though stepped up to the plate when needed.</p>

<p>He has had some incredible opportunities, and Chicago has opened doors to some terrific stuff.</p>

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<p>I would say that there is a disconnect between how the place was presented to parents at accepted students weekend and the reality of class size and professors not teaching every course. As for student services, I think CAPS needs a major overhaul and as a physician, I would judge my son’s experience at student health as poor. It is never going to be perfect but it could use improvement.</p>

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<p>S1 hasn’t been particularly impressed with his general academic counselor either and has relied mostly on advice from upperclassmen. I don’t know what he is going to do now that he is one but as a 3rd year he seems to be taking advantage of a more, for lack of a better word, aggressive CAPS.</p>

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<p>Yes, I could add that my S’s academic adviser was worthless. Luckily, he switched to another one recommended by a friend and that has worked well. There is also a disconnect between the academic quality and the quality at student services at UChicago. They are at least 10-15 year behind the ivies in that regard. As they move a bit away from the old life of the mind concept and the concept of the College financially supporting the graduate schools and towards a more modern undergraduate friendly ethos, they are going to have to improve student services and college-student relations.</p>

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<p>The general counselors are a mixed bag, to be sure. My son has had the same one forever but barely talks to her. My daughter’s changed twice, although she liked the last one. Newmassdad thought the world of his daughter’s counselor, who apparently gave her quite a bit of help in achieving what she achieved.</p>

<p>Some of the OP’s complaints may be fairly specific to Economics as a major. About 20% of the students seem to choose that as their major, and I am certain the department doesn’t represent 20% of the faculty. In addition to which, that is a field where faculty have many lucrative opportunities out in the real world, and their standing in the field more or less depends on their availing themselves of some of those opportunities. Also, there is a really high ratio of essentially introductory classes to advanced classes. You have ~250-300 kids/year taking the same 7-8 backbone classes in math and economics. As a practical matter, that means large lecture courses and/or heavy use of graduate students. If I’m not mistaken, you hear some of the same complaints from econ majors at Harvard.</p>

<p>The contrast with my son’s much smaller major is sharp. The ratio of faculty to majors/class is about 1:1. He feels he knows almost everyone in the department, some of them quite well. The rough equivalent of Gary Becker HAS personally guided his education, at least to some meaningful extent. Only one of his major classes was taught by a grad student, and that was completely appropriate since the point of the class was to learn how to write like a grad student.</p>

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<p>When I was a grad student at Harvard, the intro economics class was taught by Martin Feldstein in Sanders Theater, which holds around 1100 people. I took a much smaller graduate course with him and he was an OK teacher (I recall that he loved to make digs at Chicago), but lacked the charisma one would need to be really good in front of 1100. I suppose there was some name-dropping value for students in the huge course and he could tell stories now and then, but I think more actual learning of economics would happen in a smaller class taught by a good grad student. </p>

<p>[I’ll add that S is a first year and has also found his advisor to be pretty useless. She is brand new, so that might be part of it. But I also think that S sort of expects her to be useless and doesn’t bother to be prepared for their meetings–so surprise, surprise–she is useless.]</p>

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<p>My D’s advisor(s) have also been worthless, but it hasn’t mattered:</p>

<p>1) She is organized–one of the big jobs of the advisor is to make sure you fulfill everything you need to do to graduate on time. </p>

<p>2) She’s outgoing (enough) to have met plenty of faculty members who can give her more academic guidance. She had one eminent professor for a core class who has gone on to be her BA advisor.</p>

<p>As for the core class staff–I think it’s been a wonderful mix of famous profs and Harper fellows (fellowships for young Ph.D.s with a heavy teaching responsibility but also a great opportunity to join the faculty of a great university–some of them are delightful). When she’s taken classes from grad students, they’ve been wonderful in their own ways–you get someone who is totally into their topic, and the class is really small. I think the mix of older, eminent faculty members and young dynamic ones has been the best of all worlds. It doesn’t mean that there aren’t a few duds–but they can just as easily be famous people as grad students with not enough teaching experience.</p>

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<p>The same is true in my son’s major, although even more so. He is one of seven art history majors in his class. There are obviously more than seven faculty members in that department. (Of course, there are large numbers of art history grad students.)</p>