BJ. It might make sense that they’re only offering it to certain dorms where too many returning students have filled rooms needed for incoming first years. From what my son described, many of the people in his house are staying, few left. House culture is strong in BJ and it’s a nice setup with large singles and a good dining hall close by. But if too many choose to stay only in particular dorms, the college will need some open rooms in all the dorms so that first years don’t end up clumped in a few places.
^ A single in BJ is my son’s first choice. This underscores the “could end up anywhere hypothesis” for him :neutral:
“could end up anywhere hypothesis”
In that case, he could end up sharing a tent on the quad with my S!
@momo2x2018 How about the Burton Judson courtyards instead. More secure and they would have access to Cathey.
Actually, during fall and spring, a tent on the quad might be kind of fun! ?
We actually have the camping equipment! We might even have a large tent . . .
@JBStillFlying @browniesundae … thereby creating a new ‘neighborhood’ for the Chicago Studies program to research & study! 
I understand from a fellow new UC parent, that students who have been placed in I-House are in a FB frenzy! Left & right, students are looking to switch dorms / swap rooms / express feelings of being second class etc.
Is this disappointment typical of I-House placements? Is the community as tight as others ie Max / North etc.?
It is typical. Nobody wants to be in I-House because nobody wants to be in I-House. It is not rational. The community is tight. Once the academic year starts, housing placement becomes a nonissue. Besides, many I-House residents choose to stay there the following year.
FYI, son ('17 Graduate and a '13 RD applicant) liked it just fine. Moved out after second year, but until then it was good. He retains 1 or 2 close friends from that time. House was Phoenix, and it was active for him for most of his first year.
Not an onerous walk to key locations in any sense for a 19-22 year old. Ate at both dining halls (no North at the time) depending on how he felt or where he was at the time.
Rooms are warm and comfortable. Bathrooms are not 4 star, but there is privacy.
In the scheme of things, and to put things in perspective, your dormitory / house experience will be about 5-15% of the total experience. Good luck all.
This is not a new issue. As an older dorm that’s also located not just further from campus but also from dining halls, I-House is not generally a dorm that students seek out when they fill in their housing requests. Students assigned there are already disappointed to discover they didn’t receive one of their top three choices so they start out disappointed and the disappointment is made worse when they discover they’re not in the type room they requested and the travel to meals and campus is longer than anticipated.
It’s actually a nice building - nicer than BJ which has a very loyal following - and the house culture is known for being good, but students don’t see any of that until they arrive. Right now, they’re mapping the walk to campus, Ratner athletic facility, breakfast, lunch and dinner, and realizing that just to eat those three meals a day at their house table is almost 5 miles of round trip walking and that’s without going to class or the gym. They’re wondering if it’s safe and if they’ll freeze to death. Once they arrive they’ll realize that there is a frequent shuttle if they don’t want to walk, that the walking route is as safe as the rest of campus and regularly patrolled, that they can get breakfast in the cafe within I-House and some of their fears may not be as serious as they thought. It’s fairly common to hear of students who were unhappy with their placement in I-House but then to have a good experience.
Some of the complaints that are a bit overwrought but some are understandable. The college could do a better job in how they market the dorms and in how the meal issue is handled.
@momo2x2018 I won’t expound on I-House again (see my other posts) except to say my daughter likes it, her house is really tight, and she is staying for another year. She even told me the other day that, finances permitting, she’d like to stay in I-House all four years rather than move off campus. It has certainly been a positive experience for her.
Re: the student FB “frenzy”, a similar thing happened last year - not sure it was a frenzy but there was some negative sentiment… There was even one parent on CC who was pretty unhinged about I-House. It is definitely a perception vs reality thing. Experienced students will likely tell you that the only negative is that there is some extra walking involved, which can be a good way to stave off the freshman 15!
Your son will be more than fine in I-House. As others have said, it will be a non-issue 5 minutes after he arrives on campus. My advice is don’t waste energy on baseless negativity. Look forward to the world-class education he will receive, the glorious campus that will inspire him everyday, and the truly amazing peers he will meet at UChicago.
The frenzy is pretty typical - students and parents with lots of time on their hands, and not much else to do in the next month, fixate on the only bit of news they’ve received for a while as determinative of their entire college experience.
The disappointment vanishes when people move in, as they discover 1. I-House is fine, 2. they like most of the people in their house, 3. I-House is a tighter-knit community than most (more than North or Max, for instance), and 4. there’s lots to like about college.
To give you some sense of how students who’ve actually lived in I-House view this reaction, the name of I-House’s Scav team last year was the entirety of a hysterical Reddit post about getting placed in I-House. They put the post on t-shirts and everything. Here’s an excerpt:
Even this overstates the issue a little. Most people I know (even folks much closer to dining halls) eat two meals a day - either sleeping in through breakfast, or skipping lunch (since it’s not uncommon to have classes/work to keep you busy through midday). And a lot of folks will go straight from meals to class or vice versa; there’s no need to walk from a lecture in Kent or Harper, back to your room, and then to the dining hall when Bartlett’s right next door to the quad and Cathey’s a block away.
So it’s not outlandish for someone’s day to look something like:
Breakfast in Cathey/Tiffin → Class 1 → lunch in Cathey/Bartlett → class 2 → other stuff around the quad (clubs, studying, gym, etc.) → early dinner in Cathey
Or maybe someone’s got a while between meals/classes around midday, and they walk back to I-House (for a total of two round trips instead of one)
You start and end the day with a bit of a walk, but it’s only really daunting for people who’ve never left their subdivision on foot.
This is the post I made last year after the I-House complain frenzy:
In light of @BrianBoiler walk on campus on September 7th, I decided to do the same today and I used the stopwatch on my iPhone to time myself. Naturally this is by no means to be definitive in any sense. I am a middle age man while the College kids are teenagers or early 20’s. So they may walk a whole lot faster than me. Also today is 76 degree with 48% humidity and sunny. You can’t find much better walking condition during school term than today.
First of all, for parents who are not familiar with the UChicago campus, here is the official map:
I would start with I-House in light of the recent controversy on freshman being assigned there. All time is being rounded to closest ten seconds.
7 minutes 30 seconds from I-House front door (near 58th and Blackstone) to Saieh Hall
9 minutes 40 seconds from I-House front door to middle of Main Quad
You have to add at least 3 to 4 minutes to account for the time to get from the dorm room to front door of I-House and the time from Main Quad center to, for instance, Eckhart for your math class.
3 minutes 30 seconds from Main Quad center to Max P Purple Entrance next to Reg
4 minutes 30 seconds from Main Quad center to Max P Yellow Entrance on 56th Street
6 minutes 20 seconds from Main Quad center to Baker Dinning Commons at Campus North
6 minutes 40 seconds from Baker Dining Commons to Levi Tunnel
6 minutes 30 seconds from Levi Tunnel to Cathey Dining Commons
9 minutes 30 seconds from Cathey Dining Commons to Booth Woodlawn Entrance
Judging from my walking experience I-House is really not that far away from the Main Quad than RGG or Campus North. We are talking about two to three minutes each way. In fact, I think the walking time from RGG to Saieh or Booth will be more or less the same as from I-House to Saieh. Do remember that if you or your kid is an Econ/Business Econ major. On the other hand, if you/your kid is a STEM major, it would be a much longer walk from I-House to Crerar than from RGG to Crerar.
I did the I-House to Cathey Dining Room route today. Somewhat to my surprise it only took 12 minutes 40 seconds. I did take a couple of diagonal shortcuts.
This is more for parents and prospective students. Midway Plaisance is technically speaking a Chicago public park, although UChicago pretty much treats it as part of its campus. In my days it was just simply grass fields with tall trees on each side of 59th and 60th Street. But in the last ten years UChicago landscape people have put in quite a few small gardens with bushes and perennials. They are very nice and serene little enclaves on Midway that can be quiet escapes from the hustle and bustle of the Main Quad.
By going through these small gardens I could somehow get to Cathey Dinning Commons faster than I thought. Yes, it is still not as close as living in BJ for Cathey but a 12.5 minutes walk is not that bad. Besides, there are UGo shuttle stops right in front of I-House and BJ.
Thank you ALL!!! Notice, I said it was a fellow parent in a tizzy, and not my kid! My S is happy with a solo room, he’ll fare better in a smaller community, and a 10 mile walk each day is his typical MO, albeit in 70 degrees not minus 70!
My FB knowledge is second hand; when I asked him about it, I think he was a little disconcerted but he said ‘it’s fine’, in his typical ‘brush-it-off’ manner.
Of course, since somebody mentioned Reddit, I had to go find the thread; maybe I should have finished my morning coffee first LOL!
ps - could somebody link (or PM) the unhinged parent post? I’ve seen reference to it several time but can’t find it. Tsank.
Well all I can say for those who don’t like where I House is, in relation to campus, if and when they move off campus the walk will be a lot further.
When I was a grad student in the 1980’s, I would say the majority of ALL students lived further than from I-House to Main Quad. There were Broadview, Maclean, and of course the infamous Shoreland for the undergrads. Most grad students lived in either typical Hyde Park rentals or University grad student housing. And they were all outside the “Golden Rectangle”*. So everyone had to walk at least 15 minutes or even 30 minutes one way to school. And there was no UGo those days.
Nowadays with UGo, practically everywhere in Hyde Park and South Kenwood and North Woodlawn is accessible and relatively safe. Indeed many students now prefer to live in North Woodlawn, which was previously urban jungle in the 1980’s. In fact, we were then explicitly warned by UCPD not to cross 60th St. and go south. How much has changed in the last 30 years! Now with WRC opening next year, North Woodlawn would be the main hub of student housing.
- Golden Rectangle is the area defined by 59th in the south and 55th in the north and Ellis in the west and Harper in east. This is the most desirable place in Hyde Park for housing. and price of real estate there earns a premium over the rest of Hyde Park.
I was so confused when my notification said “@85bears46 mentioned you in a thread,” I popped it open and thought I was on last year’s thread. I’m so happy to see that doing away with the preference by commitment date didn’t really fix this issue.
1> I-House is really not off campus, but there’s a high school on the campus between it and the rest of the college.
2> Every college has “A Least Favorable” option, be thankful that I House is only a little farther from center of campus vs. some of the other options in the world of college campus living
3> This would not be an issue 30 years ago when there were no websites, social media, etc. We were just happy to be moving out of the parents house.
These insights from @browniesundae and @DunBoyer are worth repeating:
Once your student arrives on campus, your fears will be allayed.