<p>I think that you're misunderstanding my main point. There is no bias against a high gpa. In fact, people would speak in wonder at people who managed to graduate with 3.8/3.9 gpa's (I never knew anyone who had a 4.0). </p>
<p>The point that I was trying to make was simply that being insecure to the point that you are constantly comparing yourself to others, defining your self-worth, as it were, through grades, is not mature behavior. </p>
<p>Ultimately, the only person you are competing against should be yourself. The ideal process should be one where you set goals for yourself and you either succeed or fail at meeting those goals. The success or failure of others should really be tangential to your own, internally driven motivations.</p>
<p>I do now realize that I misunderstood your post. I agree that obsession with grades is potentially detrimental to the learning process and annoying to those around that person. I was under the impression, as my post suggests, that students at U of C disliked other students who care about grades.
In any case, I can't wait till the decision letter comes out.</p>
<p>I think tk said it really well. I'm pretty relaxed when it comes to my grades (I have a target GPA I want to be over, and I'm over it and have always been over it) but I have other friends who are much more interested in their grades. However, they realize how insensitive it is for them to complain that they got an A- and not an A. It would be like a student complaining about getting water on their bag, and pointing out that their bag costs $500.</p>
<p>So it's not like it's not okay to think about grades or care about grades, it's that it's important for students to be sensitive to the fact that they are spending time with people who have different GPAs and different attitudes. Some of my best friends really, really care about grades, but they care about a lot of other things too-- that's what makes them awesome people.</p>
<p>And I do know of a 4.0 student who graduated a few years ago. She never told me directly, but I heard from her best friend's friend's, friend. She's doing really well. :-)</p>
<p>I read not long ago that there had not been a 4.0 college graduate at Chicago for about 25 years. It would be interesting if this has changed. The last time it happened it made headlines.</p>
<p>The irony at a place like UofC, and I think it stems from the grading subjectivity of a lot of the core courses (after all, what is an "A" hum paper? how is it different from an A- or B+ paper?), is that the kids who really excel, getting the 3.8 or 3.9 GPA, do so in spite of their best efforts.</p>
<p>By that I mean that they do well because they like to work hard and just "do well", not because they've set a target of getting all A grades. After all, conventional wisdom has it that you can't get all As anyway. </p>
<p>In fact, there is a small subset of our population that seem to excel at things they set out to do. And they often do so in rather private ways, without seeking a lot of personal glory or fame. They view excellence as a personal matter. But this behavior does get noticed by faculty, and these are the kids that go on to great opportunities. They are the "unknowns" that win top scholarships and honors. Not in every case, of course, but frequently enough. </p>
<p>The one thing they don't do is obsess about grades, or worse, talk about them.</p>
[/quote]
Best point on this thread. You can go on and on about how great and rigorous your school is, but admissions people have enough data to cut through the nonsense. (The average GPA here is about 3.3, I think, which is roughly the average GPA at other schools.) Blaming bad grades on your alma mater will not work on these people.
[quote]
after all, what is an "A" hum paper? how is it different from an A- or B+ paper
[/quote]
Or an A+ paper. (They're not uncommon in some of the "fake" hum sequences.)</p>
<p>The yield numbers are old as is the acceptance rate. Last year the acceptance rate was about 28% and the yield about 40%. As far as comparison to peer schools, many of Chicago's peers have ED admissions which inflate yield numbers. The yield for RD is not that different, I believe newmassdad or perhaps someone else went through the numbers on a different thread. And like it or not, Chicago is more rigorous than many of its peers. </p>
<p>Though, from time to time, it is claimed that many U of C students don't want to be there, Chicago has one of the highest transfer back (after transferring out) rates in the country (as much as 20% as reported in an article from a couple of years ago). I recently read that for every 4 students who are accepted at both Harvard and Yale, 3 of the 4 pick Harvard. Yale has only a 25% yield rate for cross admits, pretty low and depressing. Yale must be full of Harvard rejects, I guess they don't want to be there either...</p>
<p>I have a child who is a third year at Chicago. It was her first choice and she turned down schools like Johns Hopkins to go there. She absolutely loves it and is by no means withdrawn, nor does she feel that she lacks a sense of community. She created that community by participating in three major choirs where she has lots of friends and participates in their social functions. She has broadened her horizons in other ways as well, such as taking martial arts and swimming. In short, the school has really been well rounded for her. She enjoys going to the city with friends, doc films, cultural events ( i.e. international dinners ,speakers,on campus concerts), going out to eat at the many ethnic restaurants in Hyde Park and around the city, the museums, etc. In short she is very happy there. While she is not a partier, she has acknowledged having fun and even having a few drinks now and then. The school has been very supportive and she is now a finalist for a major fellowship. Her grades are excellent and she cares about working hard and doing well, but she doesn't talk about her grades with others and doesn't really care how other people are doing. She has never considered the school to be cutthroat. In fact, quite to the contrary. She loves to learn and will not be upset if she doesn't get an A in a course that stimulates her. As a parent, I couldn't ask for more for my child.</p>
<ol>
<li> I think I was the one with the yield numbers. The past few years, Chicago's yield has been about 36%. That is right in range with all of its non-Ivy competitors (and even some of its Ivy competitors), after you back out the yield-boosting effect of ED. (Example: when Princeton abandoned ED, its yield dropped 10 percentage points.) Only a handful of colleges have RD yields above 40%. For example, last time I looked Northwestern's RD yield was about 34%, and Cornell's 38%.</li>
</ol>
<p>The analysis is a little tricky, because Chicago probably does get a higher yield from its EA acceptees than from RD acceptees, so comparing Chicago's overall rate to others' RD-only rates is a little unfair. I think if you back out EA with a guessed-at 50% yield (which would imply that Chicago was filling half of its class with EA), you get about a 30% RD-only yield at Chicago. So it may be a little low on an apples-to-apples basis, but not by more than a few percentage points.</p>
<ol>
<li> The NBER revealed preference study published a few years ago had Harvard and Yale splitting cross-admits 60-40. But the data for that is now about 10 years old.</li>
</ol>
<p>Hi, I am in high school right now and am fascinated by medicine. I want to go to a school for undergrad that will provide me a really good education that will prepare me for the mcat, not have 200 other people in the class who are premed to compete with, and will allow me to explore my other interests other than science. I have heard really good things about university of chicago and I want to know everyone’s opinion of it as a school to go to for premed.</p>
<p>^^ This is strictly anecdotal, but my sister’s friend who attended Chicago for undergrad and then went to Michigan for medical school said that the pre-med sequence was very theoretical and did not directly help her with the MCAT. Also in general if you are looking to seek admittance into top medical schools, Chicago does slightly worse than its counterparts (Penn, Duke, Columbia etc.) in undergrads gaining admission to top schools. I am a potential International Studies major, so I am not an expert on this topic, just got this information through word of mouth.</p>
There is NO evidence of this other than anecdotal claims. I put it in the same category as UofC’s supposed grade deflation - hard to accept when you consider that 2/3 of June’s graduating class had a GPA over 3.25, because over 2/3 graduated with some kind of honors. So please take these things with a grain of salt because, unlike admissions to undergrad from HS, it is very difficult to compare institutions with regard to professional school success. The data is just not there - it is not public. And what little data you do find, such as matriculation lists and such, are impossible to interpret with regard to questions like this. </p>
<p>Think what you want, but remember that we just don’t know.</p>