<p>Wesam, that list is for graduate education in the end. Frankly, I am surprised Dartmouth and Brown ranked that high, as they are primarily undergraduate institutions! </p>
<p>The lack of community at Chicago plus its lack of extracurriculars make it a no go for me, but no one will argue its academics. The selectivity is also lower than almost all the Ivies with exception of special programs like Cornell CAS, Penn Nursing, etc.</p>
<p>slipper, Cornell CAS is College of Arts/Sciences, which is privately endowed and the most selective school at Cornell. This year, its acceptance rate was 17 percent.</p>
<p>Yeah sorry typo, I meant CALS.</p>
<p>"The selectivity is also lower than almost all the Ivies with exception of special programs like Cornell CAS, Penn Nursing, etc."</p>
<p>Don't forget the Middlesex Community College Nursing Program (more selective than Harvard.)</p>
<p>um...ur school and every school cares about nobel prize winners.</p>
<ul>
<li>Yes I understand that my school among many others cares about the number of Nobel winners it has; however, this is a forum primarily for pre-college and undergraduate students, many of whom are not concerned with the number of Nobel winners a school has.</li>
</ul>
<p>Doesn't nobel prize winners teaching mean that you get people teaching you who are truly at the forefront of your area? Isn't it true thats its always good to learn from the best?</p>
<p>Kjoodles, not really. It depends on what you mean by 'best'. Just because you're a great researcher doesn't mean that you're a great teacher. There's a big difference between having the ability to make groundbreaking discoveries and having the ability to communicate your ideas clearly to people who are at a much lower level than you. Teaching is a skill unto itself. It's really about how you communicate, how you demonstrate, how you engage your students, and how you are able to pick up on cues that your students don't understand something. </p>
<p>In fact, I would argue that in many cases (not all, but many), teaching ability and research ability are inversely correlated. Teaching is a skill that takes time to learn and practice. It's not like you can just get up in front of a class and start teaching a good class. Good teaching requires that you spend time developing good lectures, good lesson plans, that you practice your public speaking skills, etc. Lots of star researchers would rather not spend that time, preferring to work on their research. You also get the 'frustration' factor, particularly when teaching low-level undergraduates. Lots of star researchers in esoteric disciplines like physics don't want to spend time teaching basic concepts. If you're a Nobel Prize winner in Physics, you don't want to be spending your time explaining basic force diagrams to freshmen. You'd rather be talking about your research, but your research is obviously far too complicated for most freshmen to understand, and it's easy for you to get frustrated. That's the same reason that star athletes often times make for poor coaches, because they just can't understand why their players are not as good as they were. </p>
<p>The point is, taking a class from a star researcher often times means disorganized and desultory lectures. I would personally rather learn from a person who isn't quite as famous, but has spent more time developing teaching skills.</p>
<p>Hey,</p>
<p>Thats true, but the problem is how do you know which teachers are good at teaching? Sure you can ask and sit in their lectures but I'm puzzelled as to how exactly you can tell where to find the better teachers? Wouldn't you assume they would have better "teachers" at Harvard than a community college???</p>
<p>I know what you are saying the how would I know exactly which colleges have good teachers? Even so there are always good teachers and bad teachers. All I'm suggesting is at a lack of information- the nobel prize teachers thing is a good estimate for the relative level of education there. Isn't UChicago's economics ranked 1st alongside Harvard?</p>
<p>it doesnt freaking matter. </p>
<p>yes chicago's economics department is the best. however, it;s not like you will learn THAT much economics as a undergrad. and as a high school student, how can you be so sure that you will love economics so much?</p>
<p>PICK A SCHOOL YOU ACTUALLY LIKE AND FEEL COMFORTABLE IN.</p>
<p>microecon and macroecon and US econ hisotry and game theory and financial economics at most top 50 universities WILL be the same.........they are the courses most undergrad econ majors take........they are extremely basic/fundamental compared to the Nobel Prize discoveries........it;s not like you need super bright researchers to teach you these undergrad courses.</p>
<p>when it comes to graduate school, it begins to matter more and more, coz you are actually doing research.</p>
<p>Well, untiltled, not all the courses will be exactly the same -some schools, especially LACs, like to come up with "alternative" possibly "more effective" ways of teaching intro courses. But to the rest of your post, hear hear!</p>
<p>Yeah. Thats why chicago is my second choice after Princeton.</p>
<p>oddly- before I visitted I had better impressions for Northwestern than UChicago. When I visited- yeah the lake was nice but I didn't Northwestern at all. CHicago- ouuuu those gargoyles at night are sexy.</p>
<p>I'm argueing about the nobel prize thing is that Chicago is one of the most underrated schools and the nobel prize thing is just a supporting statement as too how good its research is- and if you don't go there you shouldn't be making statements like "nobody cares if they have nobel prize winners". I'm sure at Northwestern I would find many people who will still rant about some sugerball thingy a few years ago! ( thats what I was told when i visited)</p>
<p>I went to UChicago
I visited, sat in a class and loved it. Full stop.
Talked to people, everyone is nice
Campus is sexy, GREAT
I like it. Full Stop</p>
<p>
[quote]
Thats true, but the problem is how do you know which teachers are good at teaching? Sure you can ask and sit in their lectures but I'm puzzelled as to how exactly you can tell where to find the better teachers? Wouldn't you assume they would have better "teachers" at Harvard than a community college???
[/quote]
</p>
<p>How do you know? Prof teaching evals. Teaching awards. There are also a number of websites where students rate their profs. You can also ask the students there how good the teaching is. </p>
<p>I'll give you an example. My brother went to Caltech and he did well there, graduating with honors in geophysics, one of Caltech's top-ranked programs. But he'll be the first to admit that the actual teaching at Caltech was mediocre at best. Sure, the profs were brilliant researchers, but they were also often times inarticulate and had great difficulty relating to undergraduates. Now obviously some Caltech profs are both great researchers and great teachers. But on average, the teaching really isn't that hot. As a result, my brother often times found he was better off not going to lecture at all, because he would learn more just by sitting in his room and reading the book instead. </p>
<p>Nor is my brother an isolated case. The teaching at Caltech is widely reported to be problematic. Many of the college factbooks like the Fiske Guide and Princeton Review say so. Heck, even here on CC, many of the Caltech'ers say so. Ben Golub, for example, is a huge Caltech fanatic, and even he concedes that the teaching at Caltech isn't the best. That doesn't mean that Caltech is a bad school. Indeed, Caltech has many things to offer. It's just that great teaching is not one of them. </p>
<p>There are also certain schools that are known to emphasize good teaching over research. The elite LAC's immediately come to mind. In fact, the whole raison d'etre of the LAC's is to provide a highly personalized and highly effective teaching environment, where profs are hired and promoted based on their teaching skills rather than their research. Obviously that doesn't mean that every single LAC prof is a better teacher than every single research university prof, but the trend is clear - when you're talking about comparable LAC's and research universities, the LAC's will tend to have better teaching. </p>
<p>
[quote]
I'm argueing about the nobel prize thing is that Chicago is one of the most underrated schools and the nobel prize thing is just a supporting statement as too how good its research is-
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I am not disputing that Chicago is a great research university. The fallacy is that just because it is a great research university, it must automatically have lots of great teachers. This is not true. Again, take the example of Caltech.</p>
<p>I've said it before, I'll say it again. If top-quality teaching is really what you're after, then you should be shooting for an elite LAC like Williams, Amherst, Swarthmore, Pomona, places like that.</p>
<p>A friend of mine at Duke has a mother who went to UC. Being from the Chicago area, he had been to the campus many times, for various reasons.</p>
<p>When I mentioned I was interested in applying, he vehemently told me not to, saying it's where fun goes to die. </p>
<p>I get the distinct impression the school is on par academically with most Ivies, but the atmosphere is distinctively somber.</p>
<p>The early posts to this thread answer the original question accurately about the University of Chicago versus the Ivies. Among the Ivies Chicago is most akin to Columbia in academics, locale, and enivronment. Hear of any great Columbia football teams lately? "Intellectual passion" is an appropriate phrase for Chicago and its students. Now to the later posts regarding life beyond academics at Chicago. My little tidbit addition to this discussion is the brawling, thriving, exciting city of Chicago itself that the University is so proud to be part of. And many UC students (and I was one once myself) immerse themselves in the City. You are a subway ride from seeing baseball games played by the World Series Champion White Sox (I did a number of times) or stay on the same subway line and see those lovable losers, the Cubs in Wrigley Field. How about the more high brow stuff - the Symphony anyone (Chicago Symphony Orchestra - one of the best in the world which had student tickets for selected dates); the Lyric Opera perhaps.. How about laugh-a-second low brow such as the Second City Comedy Troupe (John Belushi and a zillion other comics are alums over the years). Guess where Saturday Night Live got its inspiration? And this not for a lot of money. Want an endless variety of restaurants for cheap eats? Chicago fits the bill - Chinatown, Greektown, and every cuisine in between. Guess where deep dish pizza got its start?</p>
<p>And I did all of these activities as a student and I was far from a hell raiser. One of my friends from college (who is now the lead economist for a Fortune 250 company) would go out once a quarter and seek out the grungiest, liveliest jazz bars throughout Chicago's South Side. So the University of Chicago and the city of Chicago are symbiotic. You can't do one without the other. So homebodies stay away, but the adventuresome I encourage to plunge into the University of Chicago and the proud vibrant city it calls home. So much for the phrase "where fun goes to die".</p>