<p>I know that I want to attend a good grad school. </p>
<p>At Chicago I visited and did not like the vibe that I got from it..
No one seemed to have school pride, everyone seemed nerdy, and overall pretty boring.<br>
But I like that it is a great academic school. </p>
<p>At Notre Dame I loved that everyone was so down to earth and had so much school pride. But Im not sure that the opportunities presented after college will be as good as if I had gone to UChicago...</p>
<p>Help? Thoughs?</p>
<p>uggggghhhh....I have approximately two days to decide. </p>
<p>Personality-wise, you’re probably a fit for Notre Dame. While UChicago probably isn’t as nerdy/spiritless as your visit may suggest, I urge you to trust your gut feeling. Don’t force yourself to love UChicago just because it has stellar academics/opportunities/etc. Attempts to do so will only yield faulty decisions. You’ll get a good education at Notre Dame–not as good, but good nonetheless–and if you do well there, you’ll be fine as far as grad school goes.</p>
<p>You seem to value being “down to earth” and having school pride. Those are two qualities where Chicago lags behind, not only Notre Dame, but practically everywhere. Also, you are seriously thinking about going to Notre Dame. It’s not like no one at Chicago would do that, but I bet it’s a minority position.</p>
<p>Notre Dame is really a high-quality Catholic LAC with a great professional sports program. If you focus on it and are intelligent about it, you can do everything you need to do there to be able to go on to the next level. You are likely to be better off going there, and liking the people and the atmosphere, than going to Chicago and thinking that everyone else is a boring, pretentious nerd.</p>
<p>JHS, Notre Dame isn’t a LAC. It’s classified as a national university. And about your dilemma, collegeisgood, just follow Daggerman’s advice, because it’s the gut feeling you get that tells you ultimately if you’ll have an enjoyable college experience or not.</p>
<p>@iPacman- I think JHS was saying that despite its standing as a National University, ND essentially functions like an oversized LAC. At least that’s how I read it.</p>
<p>And I completely disagree about trusting your gut. The first time I visited Harvard I thought it was completely blah. The people were snobby, the professors inaccessible, etc. I was amazingly close to following my gf to Bucknell, a great school in its own right, but simply not on the level of Harvard. The academic between ND and UChi isn’t so wide, but just as a general decision-making guide I would really caution against using such a tiny sample size to extrapolate what your next four years are going to be like. In the end, my head screamed down my heart and I loved Harvard from the moment I started. </p>
<p>So, while I’m all for picking the place that is the best ‘fit’ for you, there are so many more variables to that than what you saw in just one visit. Geographic surroundings, campus organizations, etc. etc. Your gut feeling is important, but it’s really just one factor to consider alongside all the other available information.</p>
<p>iPacman, Notre Dame is classified as a national university by USNWR, but its PhD programs are limited, in number and in number of students. In reality, there is no bright-line border between “national universities” and “national LACs”. Notre Dame, and its cousins BC and Georgetown, go on the university side because they have substantial professional schools, some (albeit small) PhD programs, and have bigger undergraduate classes than most LACs. Dartmouth is another in-betweener. To some extent, all of them are rated as national universities because people would scream bloody murder if they weren’t. Clark University – historically clearly a research university – is treated as an LAC.</p>
<p>To illustrate: Chicago has about 3,000 students enrolled in PhD programs in arts and sciences. Harvard has 3,700 (plus 1,300 in engineering). Notre Dame has 800 students in PhD programs in arts and sciences (and another 400 in engineering). Dartmouth has 600. Those are meaningful differences in terms of the character of the institution and what kind of work is going on there.</p>