Oranges and Apples: Princeton and Chicago

<p>And clothes do make the man (or woman).</p>

<p>Part of the UChicago stats could reflect the fact that sports is mandatory at many private schools. Around here, maybe 90% of the private school graduates have a varsity letter of some sort, and the ones that don’t are either physically disabled or serious dancers. Of course, being a softball benchwarmer at a private school with a crappy softball team does not exactly make you an “athlete”.</p>

<p>Don’t know, it is all speculation, but S1’s first year roommate was a state wrestling champion, several of his other friends had many individual athletic honors, his GF was a HS track star with a national rep, and none participated in sports other than clubs or intramural while at Chicago. Don’t sell those L of the M kids short.</p>

<p>Yeah - what JHS says is heavily credited. I played three varsity sports in high school, and in the spring, for fun, I oftentimes played soccer with some of the guys on Chicago’s men’s soccer team. I was hardly an “athlete” and most of the guys on the DIII teams were what you would term “ok to pretty good” varsity athletes. </p>

<p>I remember hanging out with some friends at Princeton years back, and we wound up talking to a few girls who were rowers, and I later found out they were Olympians.</p>

<p>Yeah, you don’t get that at Chicago. </p>

<p>Also, generally, I got the sense the athletes at Princeton - even the ones who were not varsity athletes tended to be, well, just really good athletes. </p>

<p>I’m bringing this up more now because I have several friends who are back at Chicago for grad school, and I constantly ask about the college. For better or worse, the general sentiment seems to be: “yeah, the college really hasn’t changed.” What they mean is the core of the place - the challenges, the grittiness, the sort of self-involved nature of the students, are all pretty much in place.</p>

<p>I wanted to elaborate on this in my post about that Chicago facebook group (the facebook group’s name is: why have sex when UChicago ________ me all the time?), but that thread got deleted! I didn’t know there was such moderation on these boards, especially since I think the conversation on the thread was actually pretty civil.</p>

<p>“since I think the conversation on the thread was actually pretty civil.”</p>

<p>I was surprised to see it disappear. Was getting ready to rumble :p</p>

<p>Haha maxwell what were you gonna say?</p>