<p>hey i gathered some information about chicago and i just want to have them confirmed/disputed by y'allz.</p>
<ul>
<li>the environment is academically suffocating</li>
<li>little school spirit, especially in terms of college sports</li>
<li>small classes</li>
<li>grade deflation? average gpa is rather low.</li>
</ul>
<p>thanks! feel free to mention anything else i should know about chicago!</p>
<p>um... the first one is completely untrue. </p>
<p>the second one is true in terms of sports, but most people here do really love the school. </p>
<p>the third one is correct for discussion sections. lectures are larger (around 50 or so in my experience). discussions are around 15 or 20. </p>
<p>the fourth one is somewhat correct. it takes a lot of work to do well here, but i don't think that professors generally deflate the grades.</p>
<p>I guess if you don't like the prospect of doing hard work, then this place may feel suffocating, but for the people who choose to come here, there's nothing better than this school. So even though some might find this school suffocating when looking at it from the outside, those who are inside are having a good time. Check out akx06's post for more detail of one way in which you can work hard and still have a good time.</p>
<p>I wonder what you mean by "suffocating"? To me, that word would mean the kinds of classes where you're expected to parrot a professor or find your grades suffering. I would hate that kind of place, but I suppose others might find it freeing in that they would know exactly what's required of them.</p>
<p>The UofC has a reputation for pushing individual inquiry, which would suggest that parroting might not be the best way to get a good grade. Of course, this will differ by professor and class, and reputations can be inaccurate, but that sort of classroom environments sound exhilarating to me.</p>
<p>School spirit is tough to measure. What is it? Is it always a good thing? Isn't school spirit just a different way to talk about blind chauvinism, at least in some cases? Does the University of Oklahoma really have more school spirit than Dartmouth because one has a successful, big-time athletics and the other one doesn't? Based on the number for alums who contributed to Dartmouth and the number that contribute to the Univ. of Oklahoma, it wouldn't appear so.</p>
<p>My experience with students from the UofC is that they have enormous pride in their school, their education, and in each other, but they rarely assert that their school is the be-all and end-all of universities in the known universe.</p>
<p>Smallish classes seem a given, as this link suggests:</p>
<p>Grade deflation is tough to measure.</p>
<p>Our school pride is rather ironic-- the ubiquitous "Where Fun Comes To Die" sweatshirt pretty much says it all. We are NOT a rah-rah school, but that doesn't mean we're not proud of ourselves and what we're doing.</p>
<p>One thing I expected to see a lot of before I came here was a sort of Ivy bitterness... a sort of "Take pity on me, I only got into the U of C" attitude. I rarely, rarely, rarely see or hear people talking in that sort of way. I more often hear students bragging about other schools they got into and turned down for one reason or another.... "My science teacher wouldn't talk to me after I got into Duke but decided to go here instead...." "Princeton offered me more money, but I said no...." School pride for the U of C? Yes. Annoying? Yes.</p>
<p>I think the vast majority of the students who come here are well aware of what they're getting themselves into and want very badly to be a part of it.</p>
<p>"My science teacher wouldn't talk to me after I got into Duke but decided to go here instead...."</p>
<p>lol</p>
<p>Another thing: a 3.26 average GPA (that's from '99, I think the average is probably higher than that now) is not low.</p>
<p>the princeton review saws the average gpa at chicago is a 3.89 or something...and it just didn't seem right to me so i had to ask people here, haha.</p>
<p>art_star</p>
<p>I believe Princeton Review is referring to the average high school GPA of the matriculating class.</p>
<p>haha alright, that would make a whole lot more sense!</p>
<p>How would the Princeton Review get that data? Chicago does not release GPA statistics.</p>
<p>I suspect they do release it. Here's a link in which not only is there an average, but also a breakdown by ranges.</p>
<p>Tarhunt -- This is sort of confusing. Chicago's website seems to indicate that they do not 'keep' (which I erroneously interpreted as 'release') statistics on the average GPA of the entering classes:</p>
<p>Chicago:</a> Cost of Attendance</p>
<p>... and yet PR and CollegeData agree on the average GPA of the entering class. Huh. I guess they give the stats to ranking organisations and the like but not to prospective students?</p>
<p>ha yeah those are almost all ridiculously untrue. i especially like the first one.
as far as school spirit goes, we're probably the only school that debates what its actual mascot is.
small classes- class sizes range. bio, chem, and other lecture classes will be quite large. math, hum, sosc, and discussion based classes ranges from 6-30 students.</p>
<p>Regarding grade deflation </p>
<p>The median GPA continues to be about a 3.25. Department heads hand down orders to professors to make their grades fall in line. This is supposed to be unspoken in a sense, but in my final year I started noticing it on syllabi in some form or another with greater frequency. Indeed, we had an interesting discussion about it in SOSC while discussing the philosophical role of Francis Galton, the father of modern statistics (only at Chicago). Continuing though, the principal that a majority of the students are superlative and therefore deserve A's does not fly at Chicago. There are easy graders and hard graders however, since indeed the 3.25 number is ceiling and not a floor, and also is a median and not a mean. If you want an example of this process in work, I had math classes with hard graders where something like 60% got a B or better (median at 3.25), and the rest got Cs or failed since the instructor was under no institutional obligation to bring them up (no grade floor). On the other hand, I had courses with professors known as easy graders since it seemed impossible to get below a B if you merely did the work (implicit grade floor), despite it being hard to get an A (median still at 3.25). </p>
<p>My reflection on the matter leads me to believe such a grading system is archaic and hence unjust. While a lot of Cs at Chicago are perhaps deserved on an objective level, grades today are meant mostly to discern relative merit not inherent quality. A major resulting problem with the U of C grading system is that it is not comparable to the schools it competes with. When the average, not median, GPA at schools like Harvard, Stanford and Duke is 3.5+, a few things necessarily have to result. First off, such schools are not willing to hand out Cs like candy since it would mean more automatic As. What you get is a lot of B+s and A-s spread out over the class (I know this from first hand grading experience as a TA), which does wonders for professional school and career placement. The tangible impact in this vein can be seen at the following [<a href="http://wsjclassroom.com/pdfs/wsj_college_092503.pdf%5D%C2%85%5B/url">http://wsjclassroom.com/pdfs/wsj_college_092503.pdf] [/url</a>] which reflects the fact that business, medical and law schools are notoriously GPA / standardized test score centric since they live and die by their rankings. </p>
<p>Second, Chicagos proclivity to give out grades below a B- makes interpreting a students transcript difficult for employers and the like. At most good schools today a C+ means you failed (at many schools you cannot count a C+ graded course for your major), not that you were somewhat proficient but undistinguished (the U of C tack). It always struck me as laughable when companies would post recruiting flyers to career services demanding a 3.6 or above to work for their somewhat noteworthy consulting / finance firm, and then would either leave empty handed for a lack of applicants (quite a few) or end up adjusting their numbers far downward (we really meant like a 3.0!). </p>
<p>Overall, I think this is the single biggest area the College needs to address if it wants to move out of being a second choice amongst the lesser Ivy band for many students (although not all by any means). Indeed, as one student I know well put in regarding his decision to choose Brown over Chicago, it had everything to do with Brown achieving through it idiosyncratic grading system the best premedical placement rate in the country, and nothing to do with Browns atmosphere or Ivy links (he liked Chicagos independent minded, academic culture more). Frankly, as more and more prospective students get savvy through guidebooks and the like about such inside numbers, and increasingly view colleges as but stepping stones to further graduate work, I really doubt the system can stay the way it is. To the extent that Chicago students do well in placing into programs afterwards, it clearly is in spite of the grading curve they face.</p>
<p>^^I totally agree with you, My son, who is very smart, was accepted at many top colleges,, including 2 Ivy's, Chicago, Wash U, etc., transfered to Chicago this year, and is devastated by the "punitive"[ his words] grades he has received. He has made the decision to return to the college he transferred from, and I don't blame him. We had such high hopes that he would love Chicago, because it seemed all along as the perfect "fit", but for him, Chicago truly is the "school where fun goes to die."</p>
<p>Good post, uchicagoalum. Not sure if I agree with you all the way, but I'm certainly sympathetic to your point of view.</p>
<p>My experiences thus far (a year and a third of the way in) have been more or less that doing the work and showing up to class, even if perfunctorily more or less puts you at a B. Working hard may promote you to a B+/A- range. May. I'm in a 10-person class right now where I feel quite the slacker and my other classmates are pretty intense. I'm the B, they are all A's and A-'s. That's more than fair to me.</p>
<p>I like having the A as a carrot. I've mentioned that I don't really pay much attention to grades, but to the extent that I do, I think of A's as the Platonic ideal, not what I'm producing, not what I deserve because I did the work. Not getting an A inspires me to work harder and do more. In high school, I did best numerically in my harder classes and worst in my easy classes for exactly this reason. Once the class became easy (both in grading and in content), I lost all interest in it.</p>
<p>I wonder, also, how important the GPA is in the long run. UChicagoalum, you do have a point that the Chicago kid at a disadvantage in comparison to the Stanford, Harvard, and Brown kid, etc. when considering GPA. But I also think there is something to be said for the students who choose Chicago in spite of this grade "deflation" (which I still think is more mythical than anything else), and it seems like Chicago kids are able to achieve what they want to achieve regardless. I think it says a lot that we had 3 Truman scholars last year (more than any other school that year), and this year we are tied in first with Stanford for Rhodes Scholars. We know from the PhD productivity ranks and WSJ feeder scores that Chicago alumni flock to grad school and professional school in quite high numbers. Two good friends of mine have fathers who are Wall Street fatcats and think exceptionally highly of UChicago undergrads (both fathers wanted their children to attend Chicago-- neither child was admitted). </p>
<p>Is it possible that the personality of the sort of person who chooses this school, the kind of person who wants to work, regardless of the quality of the grade earned, is held in higher regard by than the actual grades themselves?</p>
<p>^^ mpm, see my PM.</p>
<p>I agree somewhat with both points. There is no doubt that generally U of C students must work harder to get the same grades as students at peer students.</p>
<p>However, it is not at all impossible to get a 3.5+ if you care for it. You have to make the decision of taking classes known to be difficult (Such as Honors Calc for example) when it could potentially harm you GPA simply because of the amount of time it takes. </p>
<p>I have pre-med friends above 3.75 and a fellow 2nd year math major with a 3.9, so its possible if you care for it. However, people need to understand that you can't take 4 classes every quarter because you think they're all interesting, while they might be extremely time consuming and difficult and hope to keep you GPA high.</p>
<p>Each student needs to think about themselves, what they hope to gain and achieve from their undergraduate years, and decide for themselves how they want to spend their time in school.</p>
<p>Also, sort of going from akx:</p>
<p>Some may be used to expecting A's in classes. At Chicago, that A might happen, but it is not expected.</p>
<p>What's really at stake here, as far as the classroom goes, is learning and morale. I do not know of any professor ever who has aggressively decided to ruin somebody's spirits through harsh grading. (I hear Dennis Hutchinson in Law Letters has a lot to say and a big red pen, but students still love him, as he often calls out BS when he sees it). So far, my two favorite and most undergraduate-driven professors have also been my hardest graders... I've gotten a string of C+'s and B-'s from both of them. (One was for my core sosc class, and I never earned above a B-). Come this spring, I want to take a class from another relatively harsh grader who is also quite passionate about undergraduates. As you can see, these low grades don't quash my spirits, they merely indicate that I have a long way to go. I will happily take whatever grade I'm given in exchange for the experience of being a part of these professors' classes, as the two harsh graders I've had so far have improved the way I look at life and have re-invigorated my zest for learning. I'll take that low grade for experiences that will last me forever.</p>
<p>When I was in high school, though, I had a teacher who absolutely crushed my spirits and successfully made me and my classmates feel dumb and worthless. I was doing quite well in his class, though, getting mostly B+/A- grades. To me, morale and grades earned are two entirely, entirely different things.</p>