sick of people thinking University of Chicago is all that

College Search & Selection
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A lot of people don't care about that, don't care whether they're learning from the world's top scholars and thinkers, may not care all that much whether they're really learning at all. They're content to be at a school with "a good social scene" or "a great Greek scene," or one that's in "a great college town," or the one that's the fashionable flavor-of-the-month among high school gossip networks.

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<p>Or the one that has the best network to get them onto-Wall-Street-making-six-figures-and-hopefully-seven, because they think that's the purpose of education and the meaning of life.</p>

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<p>it's ironic how chicago is usually neglected as a good school. Now...it's gained so much popularity recently from all these debates about whether it deserves its status</p>

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<p>This quote is exactly why I don't really like Chicago. I've always felt that Chicago puts out a false choice- that you are either intellectually curious, or some prestige mongering drunken fratboy. The top schools all provide fantastic educations and people are incredibly motivated. The fact that at many of them you can have fun on the weekends and participate in a social campus does not negate this. It just means that they are balanced.</p>

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<p>slipper, if you've spent any time on campus within the last couple of years, I doubt you would come to the conclusion that Chicago, as an institution, somehow discourages "lower" forms of activity like socializing and parties. If anything, the institution has put a lot of attention on taking student interests and drawing them out.</p>

<p>These programs that actively seek to provide extracurricular support and programming are known to Chicago kids by acronym and are ubiquitous on campus: ORSCA, COUP, CPO. (For a detailed description of what each acronym stands for and what it does for students, PM me-- I could go on for days about this stuff). There are also a lot of student groups-- everything from varsity crew, frisbee, to a cappella groups, to literary magazines, ballroom dancing, cultural groups, theater, etc.-- all of these groups serve as social networks and are "fun" things parallel to coursework. I don't think they can be ignored, and because of them I don't get your argument that Chicago students aren't "balanced." At Chicago, like at any school in the country more or less, there are various options and opportunities that students can seek out, and it is up to the student to create a balance for him or herself. </p>

<p>We <em>also</em> have a greek system. It's a small one, yes, but you will run into some popped-collar-and-charming frat boys at the U of C. Some of them are my friends, and many of them are devilshly smart, AND many of them are also really into academics. We have become friends not because I go to every frat party on the planet, but because we have a lot of classes together or are in a club together.</p>

<p>Individual students might look down on "frat boys," or anything that's not as "pure" or "rarefied" as academia, but I have a hard time of thinking of somebody who fits that mold. Most of the kids I know, and most of the ones I become good friends with, are people who like to have a good time but are also pretty darn into academicy things. Definitely not an either/or there.</p>

<p>On the other hand, I sometimes think that Chicago gets the "halo" complex a lot. While I appreciate bclintonk's appraisal of the school, I think that Chicago is more alike than it is different from other schools. ("Other schools" here to me means Ivies plus). Yeah, the school puts a lot of time, thought and energy into giving its students what it believes is a good education, but it doesn't mean that we are absolutely peerless. Given the choice, I think President Zimmer would love for Chicago to be a "flavor of the month" school. But maybe where Chicago is a little bit different is that there's a good amount of resentment about the goal to increase applications, as well as the changeover to the Common App. Read into that what you will-- is that Chicago thinking it's better than everybody else, or an honest effort to preserve the qualities a truly unique school?</p>

<p>Sorry for reviving this thread another time, but I felt that I needed to respond to that.</p>

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This quote is exactly why I don't really like Chicago. I've always felt that Chicago puts out a false choice- that you are either intellectually curious, or some prestige mongering drunken fratboy. The top schools all provide fantastic educations and people are incredibly motivated. The fact that at many of them you can have fun on the weekends and participate in a social campus does not negate this. It just means that they are balanced.

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That false dichotomy is usually promoted by people only loosely affiliated with the university (e.g. parents, prospectives). That said, I have to admit that Chicago promotes it to a certain extent. The "life of the mind" does work well as a marketing tool (Chicago's "hook," if you will). </p>

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it's ironic how chicago is usually neglected as a good school.

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Eh? Only the Ivies, Stanford, MIT, Michigan, and the UCs get as much press here. :)</p>

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<p>^^ It looks like I cross-posted with IB.</p>

<p>Every school has its own feel-good rhetoric. I can't tell you how much I love reading about Wellesley's sisterhood, Dartmouth's community, etc. etc. etc. I always found "Life of the Mind" to be catchy and relatively distinct, but really pretentious!</p>

<p>Part of the students' job is to read past the rhetoric into what they think the school is <em>really</em> going to be like for them.</p>

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sick of people thinking University of Chicago is all that

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<p>If you're happy with your own circumstances and where you're heading, then whether other people think Chicago is "all that" or not won't affect you in the least. It doesn't take away from your own accomplishments if other people think Chicago is all that, does it, jmanco?</p>

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<p>Who’s laughing now, eh? 40%? Try 16% instead.</p>

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<p>are you angry cause you’re in the 6/10 that didn’t make it?</p>

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<p>That’s a very important reason, but not the only one. There are other schools with great faculty. Chicago applies that faculty strength to undergraduate education in a fairly unusual combination of curricular, pedagogical, and governance models. The result is more than the sum of its parts.</p>

<p>[The</a> Idea of the University Colloquium: Donald N. Levine](<a href=“http://iotu.uchicago.edu/levine.html]The”>The Idea of the University Colloquium: Donald N. Levine)</p>

<p>Highlights (Donald Levine on The Genius of this Place)</p>

<ul>
<li><p>a “conviction that the discovery of knowledge is inseparably related to the transmission of knowledge” (the unity of teaching and research)</p></li>
<li><p>“a celebrated–some would say notorious–brand of academic civility. It is a place where one is always in principle allowed to pose the hardest question possible–of a student, a teacher, or a colleague–and feel entitled to expect gratitude rather than resentment for one’s effort.”</p></li>
<li><p>“a marked preference for original sources in place of textbooks, and teaching by what [Chicago faculty] have called structured discussion instead of through formal lectures.”</p></li>
<li><p>“hospitality to perky, quirky individuals who marched to drummers no one else ever heard”</p></li>
<li><p>a willingness “to gamble on young talent that might appear risky and disruptively innovative”, and on new fields</p></li>
<li><p>“a curriculum geared to the end of cultivating human powers; pedagogical methods geared to that end; examinations geared to that end; and procedures for periodic experiment and assessment of all these elements”</p></li>
<li><p>a pride in “interdisciplinarity, not in an ad hoc or artificial way but because, as Provost Geoffrey Stone observed recently, other universities try to be interdisciplinary; at Chicago it is bred in the bone”</p></li>
<li><p>“the principle of academic self-government” (Chicago has always been run by its faculty, not by professional administrators; it has strongly resisted “distortions of government control”)</p></li>
<li><p>an historic refraining “from carrying out money-making ventures that did not live up to [the University’s] academic standards”</p></li>
</ul>

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<p>jeez…and how old is this post?</p>

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<p>I think it’s weird OP had nothing else better to complain about.</p>

<p>But it’s certainly changed, so he should have no complaints now.</p>

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<p>Yeah, it’s funny how they accept 19% of applicants now and have basically dubbed themselves as selective as Ivies. UofC must’ve really wanted to show him!</p>

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<p>I am always amazed at how teens are so impressed by a university’s low acceptance rate. It is the primary criteria by which they judge universities. The University of Chicago is a perfect example of this. In every way that matters, Chicago has not changed whatsoever for the last decade or so. Its faculty, facilities, resources (endowment, labs, libraries, research funding etc…), peer assessment score, graduate and professional placement, strength of student body, curriculum etc… have all remained the same. None of those important criteria have changed. All that has changed over the last 5 years is Chicago’s acceptance rate, which has dropped from 40% to 15%. As a result, high school students have gone from thinking of it as a good but not great university (clearly underrating it) to now comparing it to the Ivy League (which is well deserved).</p>

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<p>Woody Allen was a pretty astute observer of the human condition when he said “I’d never join a club that would allow a person like me to become a member.” :)</p>

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<p>By now the OP has probably graduated from college!</p>

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<p>gadad, I really enjoy Woody Allen’s comedy, but here I think it would be appropriate to give credit to the comedian that Allen was borrowing from with that quote – Groucho Marx: “I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member.”</p>

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<p>Case in point, Georgetown.</p>

<p>A very good school, but people sometimes focus a bit too much on its acceptance rate.</p>

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<p>UC is a world class university.</p>

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<p>Absolutely, I’m not sure what all this jibber jabber is about. University of Chicago’s academics takes the academics at a school like Georgetown to the woodshed.</p>