Reed v. Oberlin v. UChicago

College Search & Selection
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<p>I haven't gotten in to any of these schools just yet (in fact I got deferred EA from Chicago, but a friend with almost the exact same interests, numbers, classes, extracurriculars, and writing skill got in, and I'll be a little surprised if I don't get in, although he's a boy...), but I am anticipating that I'll at least get in to Oberlin and Reed, plus I've gotten into Smith College (a back-up) "Early Write," so if all else fails, Smith will be there. ANYwhooo, I love English (literature, creative writing, essays), Philosophy (taking a class at Hamilton College), French and assorted languages (Spanish, Mandarin, teeny bit of German), Music (I play harp, guitar and sing), Visual Arts (painting, drawing, photography, film), psychology/neuroscience (who doesn't?), and linguistics. I'll also be doing a Rotary year in Taipei, so I will defer admission.</p>

<p>Oberlin: GOOD: nice size, large variety of courses, optional thesis, great atmosphere (quirky intellectual), music, Exco and J-term, languages, good neuroscience department. Wealthy. Food! BAD: location, and maybe not quirky enough, and no linguistics. Also worried that it might not be intense enough for me. Ugly-ish. I visited and it was pretty fun.</p>

<p>Reed: GOOD: PORTLAND, PEOPLE (crazy quirky intellectual silly unathletic hippy), Hum 101 and thesis, good visual arts, linguistics, literature, neuroscience, food! again!, did I mention people? and Portland? Possible Sarah Lawrence Year. BAD: drop-out rate, study abroad is not a thing, languages, music is OK, and the size is not really all that bad, but it's not a pro, I guess. Distance from me (I live in Clinton, NY). I visited and it was GREAT, but that might have been because I was with other prospies.</p>

<p>UChicago: GOOD: Size (when it comes to variety of classes), Chicago, core curriculum, "prestigious," quirky and weird people, resources, academics, art, and music seem to be good overall--nothing stands out as a weak point there. BAD: Too big? And impersonal? People--as in pre-professionals and wannabe bankers, and athletes (ugh!). Also, my close friend is probably going there, and I'm not sure how that would work, because college is really about striking out alone, I believe. I think "Where the fun goes to die" is not bad or good--it's just kind of cute. Oh and I might not get in...hahaha.</p>

<p>So? Thoughts? Advice? Please?</p>

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<p>UofChicago Total undergrads: 5,388</p>

<p>very few people would consider this too big</p>

<p>UofChicago is not known for its athletic student body</p>

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<p>Academically, Chicago is a level above both Oberlin and Reed</p>

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<p>If you think of Chicago as pre-professional and full of jocks, I’m scared of what you think nearly every other college that exists is like. Besides perhaps Reed and Oberlin, Chicago students are as far away as possible from being pre-bankers and athletes.</p>

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Well, that depends on one’s perspective. Chicago’s undergraduate and graduate enrollment in the arts & sciences totals 8700 students, a population more than 6 times the entire student population of Reed. Counting professional students, Chicago has an enrollment more than 10 times greater. Nobody who has set foot on both would say a medium-sized university and a LAC have similar feels, regardless of “undergraduate focus” or other such claims. </p>

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According to IPEDS, econ majors make up more than 20% of graduating seniors at Chicago. According to a [url=<a href=“http://www.montana.edu/stock/undergraduateorigins.pdf]study[/url”>http://www.montana.edu/stock/undergraduateorigins.pdf]study[/url</a>] of economics PhDs, Chicago produces approximately 1 econ PhD for every 75 econ majors. What are the others doing?</p>

<p>I don’t think there’s a bad decision here, as all are excellent options. You seem to like Reed the best. As something to think about given your wide-ranging interests, however, it requires a senior thesis of all students - unlike the other two - which makes double majoring more difficult than it would otherwise be.</p>

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<p>It’s not clear to me that the number of professional students or even phd students really affect student life. The OP’s characterization of UChicago as full of jocks and pre-professional students also misses the mark considerably. There have been many posts about this in the Chicago form and the general consensus seems to be that while students are more pre-professional than they used to be, it’s nothing like most other top schools. Chicago is also certainly much prestigious and academically stronger [Chicago is also likely to give better FA too] than the other two so if you get into Chicago I don’t think this is a particularly hard decision.</p>

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<p>I can’t really talk about the other two schools you’re considering–other than to say I also applied to UChicago and it was my first choice together with Reed because of the urban location and certain overlaps in the academic culture–but I’ll address a couple of your misgivings about Reed:</p>

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<li><p>The graduation rate. It is pretty low compared to the graduation rates at some other schools, but it’s rising rapidly. The 4-year graduation rate jumped 10% last year, up to 70%, and the administration hopes to bring it up to 85% soon. I’m not saying your concern isn’t a valid one–it is, and it worried me too. So far, however, I haven’t had reason to suspect I won’t be able to graduate on time.</p></li>
<li><p>Reed actually has great study-abroad opportunities, but relatively few people take advantage of them. If you want to study abroad, you can definitely do it, and you can go to some pretty amazing universities/programs/places.</p></li>
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<p>So far I’ve met a lot of people who either picked Reed over UChicago/Oberlin or also applied to UChicago/Oberlin, so there’s a lot of overlap there. If it comes down to a choice between some of these schools, I think you will need to visit them to make up your mind, because the biggest differences are actually the ones you have to experience for yourself. For example, a girl I know here thought the UChicago campus was too unwelcoming, and that’s what her decision came down to. Since you’re not talking about, say, Swarthmore and UCLA, but about three schools that tend to attract very similar people for similar reasons, the differences that matter to you may be 1. very hard to articulate, and 2. extremely subjective.</p>

<p>Okay, I’ll bend my own rule a little and just say that UChicago is an amazing school with great resources, but people who claim it is vastly superior to Reed and Oberlin in terms of pure academics aren’t as familiar with either school as they think they are.</p>

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<p>It’s probably not strictly true that “Chicago students are as far away as possible from being pre-bankers” but I got the impression that many/most of the pre-professional students at Chicago major in Econ. I think it is also true that more of the pre-professional students go into banking than at other peer schools because of the reputation of Chicago’s econ department. There’s also a large difference between say a pre-professional business major at most schools and a pre-professional econ major at Chicago who needs to take very theoretical econ classes.</p>

<p>Contra Ghostt, I think it’s pretty clear that Chicago is considerably better than Reed and Oberlin in terms of academics. Chicago is a top 10 world research university in all three major world rankings [Times, QS, and Shanghai/ARWU]. Reed and Oberlin are excellent LACs but they’re not in the same league as Chicago.</p>

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<p>Oh, I see now what argument you’re trying to make. Sure, UChicago is ranked very highly by several agencies that rank research universities. I agree that’s pretty neat!</p>

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My own university is usually ranked in the top 15 by such rankings, but I don’t really know that’s all that important. Some people prefer small colleges, and they do perfectly well there. Suum cuique, eh?</p>

<p>Rankings are good for bragging rights, but they often serve little purpose except to muddy the waters when selecting a college. Anyone who has followed my posts over the years knows that I am exceedingly fond of Chicago, but Reed and Oberlin are excellent options as well, and to dismiss them out of hand is foolish.</p>

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<p>Granted it’s an apples to oranges comparison between Chicago, a research university and two LACs. Although no one would or should base their entire college decision on international rankings, they do show that Chicago’s faculty is much much stronger than Reed’s or Oberlin’s. Similarly, Chicago’s student body is considerably stronger than either Reed’s or Obelin’s. Maybe the OP cares more about going to a small college than about the other factors and then turning down Chicago for Reed or Obelin would be a reasonable decision. That doesn’t change the fact that Chicago’s students, faculty, and academic reputation are considerably stronger than Reed or Oberlin [maybe some other metric of academic strength has them as peers].</p>

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<p>I’m not going to get sucked into the LAC vs research uni debate. Personally, I think you need to look at how the graduates of each school wind up. I think you’d find that all three do extremely well post graduation, both in terms of grad school admissions and job placement.</p>

<p>As the parent of an Oberlin sophomore, I’ll put in a plug for Oberlin. First, I wouldn’t worry either about not enough quirkiness or intensity. Second, Oberlin has great Chinese studies, should you choose to continue that, and also a world class art museum. Finally, Oberlin isn’t in a great city like Portland or Chicago (though Cleveland has its merits), but at least in my D’s experience there is far more interesting stuff coming to the Oberlin campus than there is time to do it.</p>

<p>You’ve chosen four great schools. Check back and a month and let us know what your options are.</p>

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<p>You can find placement information about Chicago here <a href=“Home | CareerAdv”>Home | CareerAdv. I briefly looked for but was unable to find similar information for Reed and Oberlin. Further discussion of Chicago’s job placement can be found here <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/university-chicago/1293226-caps-employment-graduate-school-outcomes-infographic.html?highlight=caps[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/university-chicago/1293226-caps-employment-graduate-school-outcomes-infographic.html?highlight=caps&lt;/a&gt; and here <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/university-chicago/1255927-uchicago-shines-international-employability-ranking.html?highlight=job+placement[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/university-chicago/1255927-uchicago-shines-international-employability-ranking.html?highlight=job+placement&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>Chicago alum here.
For undergraduate academics, I don’t think this is all that clear. </p>

<p>Chicago is more selective, but not so much more so that it’s sure to make a huge difference to your classroom experience. Its libraries have a few million more books than either LAC, but you’re unlikely to get to most of them. It has more professors who are famous/distinguished in their fields, but they won’t necessarily be your teachers, and they won’t necessarily be better teachers than the ones you get at Reed or Oberlin. For average class size they are all good but Reed and Oberlin have somewhat fewer large classes (> 50).The Reed curriculum is every bit as rigorous as Chicago’s, even a bit more so (with the PhD-style qualifying exams and thesis requirement).</p>

<p>If you’re indifferent to LAC v. university, and academics are your only criteria, then yeah I’d say Chicago has an edge … probably a strong one if you’re ready to move early into advanced classes and start doing research early in your major. Really, though, we have no good way to assess the impact of its advantages on undergraduate education. Probably the best metric I’m aware of is PhD productivity. They’re all similar on that score, with Reed slightly out-performing Chicago.</p>

<p>One thing I liked about Chicago was the diversity of its students. I don’t mean racial/ethnic diversity but diverse outlooks. I’d expect you to get much more exposure to libertarians and social conservatives (along with far leftists) at Chicago than you would at Reed or Oberlin. My impression of Reed and Oberlin is that they tend to attract people of a single “tribe”, which in my opinion is not such a great thing for undergraduate learning.</p>

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<p>Not sure that’s true–at least in the case of Oberlin, which has a thriving libertarian club and a generously funded Ronald Reagan lecture series (Michelle Malkin is an Oberlin alumni and was a speaker). Also Connies tend to be on the more conservative side. I think you’d find that LACs like Oberlin and Reed are pretty successful at not attracting people of a single “tribe.” Certainly local politics and town/gown interactions are going to expose you to a lot more conservatives in Oberlin than in Hyde Park.</p>

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<p>Wow! Lots of feedback, I see.
Rankings don’t interest me–they seem a tad on the arbitrary side, and seeing as one of my schools (Reed) doesn’t even submit information to US News for rankings, that discussion is not really pertinent, in my case.
I guess I am a little biased against Chicago because they recruited a wannabe banker tennis player from my school EA over me (one whose numbers weren’t great and who DIDN’T DO THE SUPPLEMENTS)… left a bad taste in my mouth and gave me a slightly negative impression of Chicago. BUT compared to Reed and Oberlin, it definitely leans a little more to your typical Ivy-ish University. </p>

<p>However, I should probably take into account the social homogeneity of Oberlin and especially Reed, whereas Chicago is really a mixed bag. But is this homogeneous, tribe-like environment really a bad thing? I thought that was what “school spirit” was. Any more thoughts on which is better? </p>

<p>Really my main concerns are not cutting myself off from all the interests that I have (philosophy, literature, psych/neuroscience, linguistics, art, music, languages… basically not econ), while ALSO figuring out what I really want to do with my life… which I think is quite the balancing act. I guess it is pretty good advice to see what kind of careers graduates have, but the famous ones that come to mind are just kind of bizarre and not representational (I think?) of the schools–Steve Jobs (Reed, didn’t graduate), Kurt Vonnegut and Philip Glass (Chicago), and Ed Helms and Karen O (Oberlin, actually that does make sense). But maybe digging deeper would be a better plan here.</p>

<p>Thanks for the input, links, statistics, opinions… still not really decided, but this has given me a lot of material to mull over until I have to decide in May. Keep it coming! I promise I will tell you my decision when I make it.</p>

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<p>How is Oberlin homogenous socially? and something you said about Wealthy? I’m confused.</p>

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<p>Another Oberlin parent here. My daughter really enjoyed her four years there. She was challenged academically and wound up going off to an excellent Ph.D. program (fully-funded!) afterwards. You will not find many “wannabe bankers” at Oberlin, but there is a lot of variety of interests in the student body. There is plenty quirkiness at Oberlin. Also the campus is a busy place during the academic year with lots more activities than any one student can ever participate in. There are concerts all the time. My daughter was actively engaged and had little time to get off campus.</p>

<p>Best of luck with your applications.</p>

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<p>(cool name haha): compared to Reed, Oberlin is better off financially (I think. I could be totally wrong about that, but judging by the huge number of great guest speakers and musical groups that they invite to campus, that is the impression that I got). University of Chicago is not the rich per student or compared to other research Universities.
W/r/t Oberlin’s homogeneity: really any school that can be described as “hippyish” or “hipsterish” has got to have a certain degree of homogeneity, and Oberlin (from what I’ve heard and experienced) definitely can be described in those ways, which is not a bad thing!</p>

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<p>**Wrong yet again</p>

<p>Chicago’s endowment/student is 8th among the hundreds of major research universities. Higher than Ivy Legue schools such as Columbia, Brown, Dartmouth, Cornell and Penn and behind only HYPSMC and Rice**</p>

<p>Institution – Endowment Size–Endowment $'s Per Student</p>

<p>Princeton-------$17.1 billion-------$2,259,812.00
Yale------------$19.4 billion-------$1,673,424.00
Harvard---------$32.0 billion-------$1,507,656.00
Stanford--------$16.5 billion-------$1,077,094.00
MIT------------$9.90 billion----------$953,390.00
Caltech--------$1.77 billion----------$794,263.00
Rice-----------$4.45 billion----------$731,906.00
U. of Chicago–$6.31 billion----------$612,384.00
Dartmouth-----$3.41 billion----------$569,567.00
Notre Dame----$6.26 billion----------$533,504.00
Duke----------$5.75 billion----------$389,758.00
Emory---------$5.40 billion----------$388,683.00
Wash U.-------$5.28 billion----------$377,288.00
Northwestern–$7.18 billion----------$374,413.00
Penn----------$6.58 billion----------$310,429.00
Brown---------$2.50 billion----------$289,051.00
Columbia------$7.79 billion----------$282,170.00
Cornell--------$5.06 billion----------$241,626.00
UVA-----------$4.76 billion----------$231,610.00
U. of Mich.----$7.83 billion----------$187,167.00</p>