hi! I’m drawn to all three of these colleges but I don’t want to apply to too many reaches (my college list is WAY too long). Could any current/former students give some insights on their experiences? What are some big differences? I’ve heard people talk about open curriculum vs. core, different locations, etc. But what are the impacts of these differences?
I really want to do STEM internships and study abroad- is there a lot of support available for these types of things? Also- I care a lot about the having a close-knit community (Yale’s residential houses sound really appealing).
I’m particularly interested in a math, physics, computer science or EE major, but I care a lot about the humanities as well. Yale’s Math and Philosophy major sounds super interesting. What are these departments like at each university? I feel like all of them must have good departments- are there any significant differences?
I think I want to apply early to one of these schools and I’m trying to figure out which one. Right now I’m leaning toward Yale SCEA, but I think that’s because I know more about it. Insights on the other schools (and Yale as well) would be much appreciated.
You have to take more required classes. If you aren’t a bio major you have to take bio anyways. If you aren’t an English major you will have to take a literature class. If you aren’t a sociology major you’ll have to read social theorists. Etc, etc. It gives us a common base of knowledge. Superficially this leads to a lot of bad Plato/Durkheim/Marx jokes that basically everyone in the school gets. Less superficially, this leads to a lot of interesting discussions. People talk about what they’re learning in their Core classes and how it applies to life all the time, not just in class. Life becomes one giant joint exercise between all of us to see whether the texts we were reading apply to life or not, and almost everyone participates. I don’t think I’m explaining it very well but even when I’m annoyed at a core class (looking at you, Core Bio), I’m really happy we have it and think every school should do something similar. The advantages are really hard to explain but they are definitely there and tangible.
Yes. There is a weekly (!) workshop to help you get an internship hosted by the CS department. Lots and lots of people go abroad, whether for a quarter in one of UChicago’s programs or for longer in an exchange with a university or a different university/independent program. You can do parts of your core abroad, so it’s fairly easy to do it without feeling like you’re wasting your time.
Yale’s Colleges are too big, imo. Our houses are much smaller, they range from about 80-100 on average so you will know everyone in the house on a personal level. Some communities are closer than others, BJ, Snitchcock and I-house have very close communities; South and Max are much less close knit. It remains to be seen about North.
No idea about the differences between departments, though I (biasedly) think our math department is the best in the country in terms of teaching math - the profs are magic I swear I feel like I’ve ascended to a higher plane. The biggest difference is at UChicago everyone will have read the major works of philosophy thanks to the core. We also probably have more philosophy majors/more people generally interested in philosophy.
Also you can’t do EE here so don’t bother applying if you’re hard-set on it. But we do have systems/os classes offered by the CS department, it’s not like you’re only going to learn theory of algorithms.
Also it’s very easy to double up on those majors at UChicago: there’s like 10 people doing a math/physics/cs triple every year. I don’t think that’s possible at Yale.
Atmosphere is very different. People at Yale party more and work less. There are less nerds.
It would seem so, but my D was attracted to both UChicago and Brown. She liked the vibe at both schools and probably would have chosen a broad selection of classes at Brown anyway. In the end, she did not apply to Brown but did apply to a small LAC that also had a very open type curriculum.
@NotVerySmart Interesting - my daughter initially was attracted to Brown by its open curriculum. Now she is intrigued by Chicago’s Core. The common thread, I think, was that she saw courses in both places that crossed disciplinary and topical boundaries and were intellectually interesting.
@HydeSnark that was incredibly detailed, thank you so much for taking the time to write that! UChicago sounds SUPER appealing, I’m definitely going to apply. Do you know if there’s any benefit to applying early? Also, this is pretty specific, but do you know anything about their debate program?
@NotVerySmart Haha I know, but like @goingnutsmom 's D, I would take a broad range of classes at Brown anyway. I guess the appeal of the open curriculum is that I could choose really specific history, english, math, science classes that sounded interesting, while I would perhaps have less freedom at UChicago. But the classes offered in the Core that I’ve seen all sound incredibly interesting anyway and I think that you do have a little bit of choice (?)
@mamaedefamilia exactly! That is definitely the vibe I’m looking for throughout my college search- did you find any other schools that stood out to you / your daughter?
@theledri Yes, applying early will help you a lot. A ton of the class got filled up EA, no idea how ED will change things but probably make it harder to get in significantly if you don’t apply ED.
I don’t know anything about debate. I assume it’s very good and fairly competitive like the rest of our academic tournament teams.
And you do have some choice for the core. You will read similar works and do similar things in hum/sosc/civ but you can choose between different approaches for it. For ex: sosc is an overview of social theory. You can choose to focus on political philosophy (power), sociology and cultural theory (self), or a general overview where you go chronologically and read entire books (classics). There is overlap between all three, but they are still different in some ways.
For the other core classes you have a lot more freedom but you cannot get out of not taking classes in those areas.
@theledri She is looking mostly at smaller universities and LACs. Uber reaches are Brown (already visited) and Chicago, WUSTL (will visit soon). More realistic reaches/high matches are Oberlin, Macalester, Kenyon, CWRU. Still working on the list of solid matches and safeties, other than our state U.
My D liked Brown a lot but really loved UChicago during her visit. The kids did seem similar, with Brown kids being a little more laid back. But the UChicago kids were funny and quirky and unpretentious.
She also visited WUSTL and liked it but she said that the kids were more mainstream. The campus was beautiful and pristine according to her and her dad.
I really liked CWRU during our visit. It is in a very culturally rich part of town with the art museum, art institute, music conservatory around it.
My kids went to Chicago almost a decade ago, and neither so much as set foot in a CS class, and I think @HydeSnark captures what they would say almost perfectly, Neither of my kids wound up caring much about his or her house, but I know other Chicago students for whom their houses were the center of their social lives.
Brown: I have said many times that, notwithstanding the obvious core/no core distinction, Brown and Chicago have a huge overlap and appeal to lots of the same students. My daughter, however, had/has a number of friends who went to Brown, and she insists that there is a significant anti-intellectual streak there that is practically unheard-of at Chicago. The students there are super-smart – as smart or smarter than the Chicago students – but she thinks they fundamentally disrespect classroom learning, while everything at Chicago revolves around the classroom and its dialogues. ( @HydeSnark doesn’t exactly say that, but he or she shows it perfectly.)
Yale: The same daughter who disses Brown said, when she and her Chicago BFF had shared an apartment in Brooklyn for a couple of years, “Apart from our UChicago friends, the only people Anna and I really like talking to are the people from Yale. For whatever reason, they are really interested in ideas and are always open to learning more, in a way that other people our age aren’t.” Note that Yale has Directed Studies, which is more or less a voluntary version of the Chicago core for 10-15% of the class.
In addition to the other helpful comments added already, I would just emphasize the effect that a stronger core vs. a looser distribution requirement, vs. minimal requirements (e.g. Brown) has on the type of community that results. It makes a big difference to a university community whether or not a large number of students have read many of the same works and covered many of the same topics in their core classes. One approach promotes a kind of maximal individualism in curriculum, while the other promotes a broader, shared learning community. For my money, the latter is generally preferable for most students at that age, because it promotes greater interaction and discovery and a better vibe. It also seems even more suited for students who are less certain what they want to focus on, or who have multiple, serious interests. In general, my son loved his core classes and discussion at UChicago, and even re-read some of the core textbooks during his junior and senior years. But he also reported that occasionally there were some students who clearly did not want to be in a particular class, and it seemed to create a damper on the class environment.
I think it’s a reasonable rule of thumb to say that Chicago students tend to like the core a lot more after they no longer have to take the classes. It’s great to have that shared base of ideas and texts. It’s not always great to be sitting in class with people who don’t want to be there.
I had a friend who was the mathiest of the math undergrads at UChicago at the time who transferred in as a second year. Was not a fan of the Core and not sure he even knew about it before he transferred in. His Hume class took him under their wings and made him their pet project and he ended up being an integral part of the class. Didn’t make a humanist out of him but he survived. Also, the core kept him at school for the 4th year to finish his BA even after he’d received his MA after the 3rd year.