<p>Sure - if you try to foster a community of eggheads - which UChicago used to do - certain key metrics for institutional health begin to flag. In the 1990s, alumni donations lagged considerably, especially because, well, eggheads don’t tend to go on and make lots of bucks. Further, the “niche” status of the school turned off just as many students as it attracted - the U of C had about a 70% accept rate at this time, and maybe a 25% yield rate. The bottom quarter of Chicago’s class struggled, and the school had a low retention rate. </p>
<p>It was much more of a “pure” learning environment - but that can cut both ways. Professors graded hard, and students who loved the learning flourished, but others struggled. As students didn’t really care much about other pursuits, all of the other amenities/resources on campus lagged.</p>
<p>From a personal point of view, I don’t think it’s reasonable for a medium-sized university - and medium sized private college - to have such a narrow mission. This may be fine for a small college, but for a larger school with a lot more moving parts and, ostensibly, broader reach, being a “niche” school that incubates future academics doesn’t seem useful. Preparing students for a broader array of pursuits - and having a more diverse class, seems a better way to go.</p>
<p>Now, was there a way to provide a richer umbrella of support services to an eggheaded group of students, and foster a quirky environment that also supported its students better? Maybe. This would require a lot of careful care, though, for little gain. </p>
<p>If Chicago continues to keep a vocal minority of eggheads, while also appealing to the sentiments of the bright jocks, the smart future leaders, etc., why is that not the preferred route to go? Just as diversity is an “in” word in so many circles, I think that incoming classes - especially for larger schools - are better served by being varied rather than more of a niche.</p>
<p>I hear what you are saying, Cue7. A lot of colleges have a certain population of those types of kids. So honestly, since U of C’s mix is starting to look more like others, those other colleges are getting are longer, harder look than U of C for my “egghead”.</p>
<p>Just curious, have the professors stopped grading hard? Seriously, I wonder how the faculty is adapting to and feeling about this change.</p>
<p>Intparent - the common consensus is that grade inflation has hit UChicago, just like most other top schools. I believe other posters have said a fair number of UChicago grads graduate with honors from the College (i.e. a GPA of I think 3.3+), which in my day was less frequent.</p>
<p>Also, I certainly think the eggheads will shop around a bit more than they used to, and that’s fine. Back in the 90s, a fair number of the quirky types felt they were in paradise at UChicago, because they were finally in a community with thousands others like them.</p>
<p>That can be nice, but it can also stunt growth when you’re surrounded by people who are all of the same general mindset. Again, it’s just my personal opinion, but I prefer that groups of people have steady exposure to lots of groups of people with alternate aspirations.</p>
<p>A case in point, when I was at UChicago, the question wasn’t “oh what’re you going to do after college?”. Instead, the question was: What academic graduate program will you be entering? Being such a niche incubator for future academics has its drawbacks.</p>
<p>I don’t intend to engage fully in this debate, but I think both Cue7 and intparent are taking small differences and small changes and blowing them way out of proportion. There was never as much difference between Chicago and the rest of the elite private university world as people pretend, and there still isn’t that much difference. I have written about 50 times here about my daughter meeting her absolute twin after college. These were two people who grew up about 5 miles apart, never met but had dozens of friends and acquaintances in common, nearly identical academic interests and tastes, and a similar way of looking at the world. And the identical post-college job. One went to Chicago, and never considered Northwestern, the other went to Northwestern and never considered Chicago. Each loved his or her college more or less equally. And Northwestern and Chicago are pretty much the opposite poles of elite universities as far as culture is concerned. There are “Chicago type” students everywhere, and even in the olden days the vast majority of Chicago students were indistinguishable from students elsewhere.</p>
<p>At the same time, there’s no question that Chicago has one of the most distinctive, un-homogenized cultures in American academia. It still does. It may be admitting more students who would have been perfectly happy at Northwestern or Penn, but their experience at Chicago IS different than it would have been at those places. The differences may not matter as much as people think, but they are there and they are real. And it is going to take a lot more than a couple of years of popularity among high school students to change that. (What’s more, I agree with Cue7 that not all of the changes are necessarily for the worse. There isn’t any excuse for the Maroon to be as crummy as it is, for example, especially since it publishes about 1/3 as much as student papers at peer colleges. And, really, a little fun is not anything to be ashamed of.) No one who values an intellectual environment should stop looking at Chicago on the theory that it doesn’t provide more of that than anywhere else.</p>
<p>As for the faculty, I think they are very happy. The Chicago Economics Department doesn’t operate from the assumption that it will never be as good as the Harvard Economics Department. They operate from the assumption that they are the best Economics department in the world. They want the best students in the world, at every level, and I believe they think the current regime is doing a great job of moving in that direction.</p>
<p>Grade inflation: I think it is easier than it used to be to get a 3.3 GPA, and clearly over half of every recent graduating class has done that. On the other hand, I think it is much harder to get a 3.8 or 3.9 than at many peer institutions. The places I have seen that try to assemble data on this still show Chicago GPAs to be .1-.2 below Harvard or Brown GPAs.</p>
<p>JHS - good points as always, but I have to dispute that, in the olden days, the vast majority of chicago students were the same as students at other colleges.</p>
<p>During my college years in the 90s, my friends from other schools would come to visit, and oftentimes they’d just say - man, uchicago kids are just weird. They didn’t necessarily mean this badly, more just that going to quiz bowl on friday night or play magic cards seemed to happen with more frequency at U of C than other places.</p>
<p>Similarly, when I visited other schools, such as Princeton or Penn, I was struck by just how different the student culture seemed. UChicago had nothing similar to Princeton’s “street,” and I met gobs of Princeton students that well, basically didn’t exist at Chicago when I attended (I’m thinking of the uber-prepsters, super wasps, etc.). </p>
<p>Maybe I’m looking at this through quirk-tinted glasses, but back in the day, the quirky types who may be a vocal minority now absolutely ran the roost. It was just a different vibe. I’d say bohemian kids and the quirky nerds made up maybe 75% of the student body. Now, I imagine that percentage is much, much lower, which has to change the culture quite a bit. Perhaps I’m wrong about this? </p>
<p>Maybe UChicago of 5 years ago isn’t terribly different from UChicago today, but for someone looking at 15 years of change, the differences seem quite stark.</p>
<p>My D would be in absolute heaven at a college where it would be considered normal to go to Quiz Bowl on Friday night. U of C will probably stay on her list, but it is not the slam dunk first choice it would have been “back in the day”.</p>
A lot of colleges have at least one or two odd traditions/stories of note like the hammer and sickle statue, yes. At any rate it isn’t something that impacts anyone’s daily life here. The differences in content of two tours, meanwhile, does not necessarily indicate a change in the atmosphere of the school. You talked about the tour guide’s sex life because the tour guide was willing to. That could happen at any school. As for the admissions brochures, unless Nondorf pulled the plug on all of the “quirky” mailings within the last year, they’re still getting sent out. I received several of the unique post cards, including the coffee one mentioned on this thread, as well as the same “Life of the Mind” book that my sister was sent 3 years earlier. All incoming freshman this year (and in previous years I’m guessing) also were sent an “Insider’s Guide” written very much in the style of the admissions postcards. Even if admissions has taken up a completely different focus this year and no one is getting the mailings myself and others received in past years, would you say this indicates UChicago’s culture has suddenly changed within the past year? You haven’t even given these supposedly less UChicago-types a chance to matriculate yet. </p>
<p>I dislike the term quirky because it is consistently regurgitated on CC and elsewhere to the point where it doesn’t mean anything. Someone with very high test scores/raw intelligence who enjoys literature and hanging out with intellectual-types would indeed fit in very well here. Those traits alone don’t make her quirky, though, nor does being introverted. Of the things you mentioned, collecting insects is probably the only truly “quirky” one. I do think there is some truth to calling UChicago students quirky in an individual sense, but this is difficult to define and probably has something to do with a very general increased ability of students here to “be themselves.” </p>
<p>I object particularly to your classifying someone who is “introverted” as a “U of C type.” That is not to say that your daughter would not be welcome here, but no school actively aims to build a class of introverts in the same sense that no school actively looks to build a class of white people or baseball players. Introversion isn’t closely linked with intellectualism, just as it isn’t part of the definition of “quirky.” To me this suggests that when you say quirky you’re not actually describing quirky at all. A quirky school is not one where it would be normal to go to Quiz Bowl on a Friday night, that would merely be a homogenous school filled mainly with one type of student. A quirky school would instead be one where there are enough different things happening on a Friday night that none of them are really “normal.” While I am sure UChicago leans more in this direction than other schools, I can guarantee you that it still isn’t considered “normal” at the U of C to do anything academic on a Friday night (informal discussions/debates aside).</p>
<p>Best of luck with your daughter’s college search.</p>
<p>Is it also worth considering a community where there are a diversity of options for what is normal for a friday night? </p>
<p>Going back to my original point, on the one hand, it can be wonderful to go to college somewhere where one’s “quirky” inclinations can be exorbitantly indulged, but again, this can cut both ways. There are detriments to being in an environment surrounded by other folks with generally the same mindset. </p>
<p>This is just something to consider. It seems as if your daughter may have loved the U of C of the 1990s going in, but also very possible that she could face the difficulties many students faced at the end of their terms in Hyde Park. Being in a culture super-saturated with quirkiness has its benefits and drawbacks, even for (or especially for) those that are quite “quirky.”</p>
<p>Dunbar, I have to say, your condescending tone is turning me off to U of C in a hurry… would you prefer “borderline Aspie” to communicate quirky? Or will you start quoting new/old DSM definitions to me if I use that phrase? She has some other interests and traits that would also be considered somewhat quirky by most people, but I don’t care to elaborate more on a public forum (if nothing else, they would make her very identifiable as an applicant). And maybe they have cut out those mailings this year… because she has NOT received them. Only a couple of very generic postcards that could have come from someplace like Northwestern. She signed up on the website as an interested student, and also visited campus/went on a tour. She ought to be on the mailing list if they were sending them out, and we have not received any. And regarding the “traditions”, as I mentioned before, we have been on TONS of tours. Yup, there are a lot of traditions like not stepping on a certain place, freshman singing on the steps of the union, etc. But U of C’s were smart/intellectual stories. Not so at most other colleges. Maybe we just had a lemon tour guide this time around, but I really think it is more that they have put some effort into spit/polish/standardization of the tour. To its detriment, I think.</p>
<p>Cue, of course that is worth considering. But my kid has already spent her whole life in that kind of environment. The world is made for extroverts (and not necessarily very smart ones, IMHO). U of C was a spot where she could clearly be herself and feed that intellect at the same time. I don’t think it is too much to ask for a college where she is more the norm, rather than part of a small pocket of kids like her. It is just disappointing when she (and we) felt a vibe that was right for her several years ago, and we don’t feel it so much now.</p>
<p>I didn’t spend any time at the University of Chicago when I was college-age. But I know plenty of people who did, and they are not very different from the people I knew in college. With a few exceptions, they are the opposite of introverts. And they didn’t have post-graduate personality transplants. That isn’t to say that there weren’t plenty of introverts back in the day, but they weren’t necessarily the majority.</p>
<p>I also know some people – no longer kids, they’re in their 30s – from what I think is Cue7’s period at Chicago. And the thing is, they are pretty ambivalent about the college, because although it was tremendously stimulating intellectually, the atmosphere was impoverished in many other respects. They weren’t happy at the time, and in retrospect they still aren’t sure they should have been happy. That is a strong contrast with my kids, recent graduates who on the whole had a great time in college. (And they are U of C snobs, too. They honestly think it’s better and more rigorous than anywhere else . . . except they don’t feel that way about the career advisory office.)</p>
<p>Anyway, if I were going to recast this thread, it wouldn’t be: Is the University of Chicago losing its idiosyncratic culture? It would be something more like: Has the University of Chicago stopped using its idiosyncratic culture as an excuse for something less than excellence? I think the idea is to keep the idiosyncratic culture, but to express its values more perfectly.</p>
<p>intparent, projecting a condescending tone was not my intent. I only tried to give an impersonal defense of the U of C, but I recognize that in rushing through my responses I am most likely not always landing upon the most proper choice of words. In any case I am only one student, so even if I were trying to be condescending, I would hope that I would not turn you away from the U of C. I think it’s clear that neither admissions five years ago nor admissions this past year preferred applicants of a specific extroversion/introversion inclination. The U of C is instead looking for candidates with intellectual prowess, which is not a factor inherently connected with introversion. I believe your concerns are unmerited and rest on an inaccurate interpretation of the U of C’s goals, as your daughter can definitely be herself and feed her intellect here.</p>
<p>I was a TA at Chicago during the 1980s, when the Core was much more daunting and there were where far fewer student amenities. I knew many undergrads who hung out in our lab and from the courses I helped with or taught. I found students of all types, but many were fun, partying, and as extroverted as anyone. Many I knew were into the punk rock (or new wave as it was called in that day) scene, traveling north to Chicago’s alternative clubs such as O’Banion’s or Jamie’s Elsewhere Lounge. The so-called stereotype of the introverted Chicago student was more of a joke that people enjoyed than an actual fact. The work at Chicago, particularly in those days, was quite demanding. There were fewer undergrads so many more of the courses were combined grad and undergrad classes, which added to the challenge. The quarter system also meant there was little down time. Still it was fun and intellectually thrilling. I agree that the students who entered were not much different than their peers elsewhere, but I do think the Chicago culture and approach to college had its effect and provided an education second to none. After seeing how the College affected S1, I believe it is much the same today.</p>
<p>Dunbar, here is what I am wondering… are you a student who would have definitely filled out the Uncommon App for U of Chicago five years ago? I think you have an interest in playing up the positive side of these changes if you are someone who wouldn’t have applied without the switch to the Common App. It is hard for me to give much credibility to your comments when I wonder if you are the type of person who wouldn’t have gone to UC in the past. </p>
<p>I do not mean to imply that all U of C’ers were introverted in the past. But the super bright, slightly unusual kid did find a home there for many years.</p>
<p>idad, your perspective is quite interesting, since you have seen it from both a longer-ago TA view and apparently also as a parent of a recent student. What year did your S1 enter and/or graduate? How do you see that it impacted him?</p>
<p>S1 entered in the class of 2009, but took a year off to travel in the middle. He was always a bright, outgoing kid. He is intellectual, but loves fashion, fine dining, and has a great girl friend he met at Chicago. They both have great jobs they enjoy. What Chicago did was provide an education beyond my greatest expectations. There is nothing he is not comfortable discussing, whether it is science, philosophy, social thought, mathematics, anything. I have seen him in conversations and arguments; he often startles me with both the depth and breadth of his knowledge and his ability to argue his points. He continues to seek out and explore new things to learn, and readily reads on all those topics today. He has been asked to assist on projects by major corporations and feels the confidence to tackle any problem, which I attribute to surviving Chicago. Recently, he made an interesting comment. He said he sometimes wonders if Chicago was the right place for him. He wonders what a more “normal” college experience would have been like. Yet he said (with a big grin) he knew one thing was for sure, he would insist that his children attend!</p>
<p>I don’t know when or how the wires got crossed but you seem to be misunderstanding Dunbar on several levels. There seems to be a certain animosity towards his comments which appears unfounded and stems probably from a misunderstanding somewhere up the discussion flow.</p>
<p>Regardless, Dunbar has made it clear that there was no animosity intended in the earlier comments and perhaps you should re-read the comments in that light.</p>
<p>FWIW, I don’t detect much of a difference in student culture now and back when I first started here in 2009.</p>
<p>Also, I just came back from a visit to WashU, and I can say that the students at UChicago are still significantly more prone to having intellectual conversations than those at WashU (incl. both grad students, undergrads, and alumni). It could be just the people I hung out with – they were actually perfectly amiable and likeable, and I definitely enjoyed my time there – but there just wasn’t that much talk about academic interests outside of … well, homework-we-need-to-do (and not even the content of that homework). The most stimulating conversation I had while I was there was in fact not with a WashU student but with a middle-aged massage therapist who lived in the area. (We chatted about the history of writing, some ancient literary works, and how bureaucracies of ancient societies functioned before the invention of a writing system, amongst other subjects.) :)</p>
<p>But then again, [insert joke about WashU being completely filled with pre-meds and engineering students].</p>
I get the feeling that you haven’t read my posts with much thought, as you keep bringing up much of the same points. The unusual kid may very well have found a home at UChicago in years past, and in fact the unusual kid is still welcome here at the U of C. The difference, however, lies in the fact that the U of C does not now, and never has, specifically sought the introverted unusual kid. </p>
<p>I think this point speaks for itself, but nevertheless I can say that five years ago I most definitely would have applied to the U of C. The number one factor I wanted in a school was an intellectual atmosphere, and UChicago was one of my top choices. Incidentally, I got into college admissions rather early when my older sister (now a senior in college) started getting mail. The U of C mailings caught my eye even then, and this would have been exactly five years ago. </p>
<p>As JHS put it, the idea is to keep an idiosyncratic culture. The notion that this entails limited social interaction and the cliched “where fun comes to die”/“If I wanted an A I would have gone to Harvard” self-deprecation, however, is unequivocally false.</p>
<p>My daughter just started looking for a college/university and came across U of Chicago. It has quite a “reputation” among my daughter’s peers. </p>
<p>One of her friend said you will get a great education but you won’t get a job when you graduate.</p>
<p>Another friend told her, U of Chicago is only for really nerdy people.</p>
<p>It has such a great academic standing (us news ranking). With the changing environment, is there any truth to the “reputation” that seems to be pervasive among my daughter’s friends?</p>