Info on UChicago please!

College Search & Selection
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<p>As I'm looking at schools to visit, UChicago looks fantastic and educationally it sounds really fascinating. I've also been sent a couple letters from the administration, and they have come across as generally friendly and genuinely intelligent. But the student body of this school has a rep for being totally academic and nerdy... can anyone attest to this? It seems kind of strange that a school like that should have such a stark contrast in social life and in the behavior of its student body from other top-20 schools.</p>

<p>Thanks in advance...</p>

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<p>Hi,</p>

<p>Here's where you want to go:</p>

<p><a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/university-chicago/%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/university-chicago/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Yeah, they are a nerdy bunch!</p>

<p>I was reading Slate articles on college education and I ran into an article that asked what people's favorite books were. The people who responded all had opinions on college education and education reform, and one person, a UChicago grad, said that one of his favorite books was The Leviathan, and then he joked, "Hey, cut me some slack, I'm a UChicago grad!"</p>

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<p>Oh there's an entire sub-forum! Thanks for the link, this topic can drop I guess.</p>

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<p>
[quote]
But the student body of this school has a rep for being totally academic and nerdy... can anyone attest to this? It seems kind of strange that a school like that should have such a stark contrast in social life and in the behavior of its student body from other top-20 schools.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Yes, we (UChicago kids) an academically inclined group of people, but we're not alone in that regard. Many posters and their children on this forum are also pretty academic, and they have scholastic allegiances of all kinds. I don't think the U of C has some sort of premium on academically inclined and motivated students., though it has a darn high concentration of them.</p>

<p>Nerdy? I guess so. I don't know what sorts of images the word "nerd" conjures in your mind, but you'd probably be able to find some people like that here. I think you would find that most students here are "nerds" in the way that they like school, but not "nerds" in the way that they look, dress, and talk like they are from Neptune. Most students I meet are very social and relatable. Some, of course, are not.</p>

<p>Chicago compared to other top-20 schools? I guess we could be the black sheep of the bunch, but I think that overall we're probably more alike than different from other schools. Yes, Chicago kids like to party, watch Family Guy, play sports, see movies, and do all the sorts of things that "normal" people like to do, so I don't think that we're so wildly different from every other school out there or in the Top 20.</p>

<p>Chicago's reputation and it's different-ness has a long history I won't bother retelling in the space of a post, but it mostly has to do with this education reformer named Robert Hutchins who tore down our football field and built a library on top of it. Hutchins created a school that seemed to polarize students-- some loved it, others hated it.</p>

<p>One of my profs who has been here a long time thinks that students who attend Chicago now are much happier with the school than students who attended it 5, 10, 15 years ago because the overall quality of the student body has increased, while the academic rigor has remained pretty constant. It sounds like Chicago was, for a while, admitting students who were not up for doing the work. Now, I feel like everybody offered admittance (everybody I know, at least), is more than capable of handling the workload.</p>

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<p>I agree with unalove.
I attended graduate school at The U of C in the 1980s and again in the 1990s. I work there now with work-study students. Undergraduates today are far stronger academically than in the recent past. The male-female ratio is about at parity today as well, which works if you happen to be heterosexual. The students generally seem to be more physically attractive than in "olden days", but then I suppose there aren't many unattractive 19 year olds when you're my age.
I digress.
Anyway, partly because of my experience at The U of C, I have coaxed my first two kids to more "social" schools "The East". They are less likely to engage in offbeat and esoteric conversations than they would at The U of C. Of my daughter's school, a recent graduate told me that the place was more competitive socially than it is academically. That seems to be absolutely the case, from my daughter's experience.
In a roundabout way, I am saying that I have come to value the U of C undergraduate experience a bit more over time.</p>