<p>Academically, what are U of Chicago's strongest programs?</p>
<p>engineering</p>
<p>Econ sucks. Kidding... Economics would usually be recognized as Chicago's strongest department. Any econ. geek can tell you the University's contributions to the field were, and are, very significant. </p>
<p>As I understand it, Chicago has a very strong history with sociology and a very strong department in that. I hate to give this answer, but all departments are probably fantastic. The most recognized, though, are probably economics and sociology. If not sociology, definitely economics.</p>
<p>and physics
and near eastern language
and everything pretty much</p>
<p>I want to study international relations and do pre-med. Say I begin to really hate premed. Would it be a nice school to go to if I don't want to worry about switching majors and ending up at a horrible department? Basically, is the school going to be good in pretty much all departments? (I know many of you will be biased here, but give me an honest answer, please!)</p>
<p>i dont go there and i can tell you that the unviersty of chicago has award winning facutly from virtually every departament..here ill copy and paste from wiki</p>
<p>Notable faculty and alumni of the University of Chicago include: political theorist Hannah Arendt; former U.S. Attorneys General John Ashcroft, Ramsey Clark, and Edward H. Levi; former Vice President of Taiwan and the Kuomintang Lien Chan; Nobel Prize-winning economists Gary Becker, Milton Friedman, Friedrich Hayek, and Robert Lucas; acclaimed Nobel Prize-winning writers Saul Bellow and J.M. Coetzee; Nobel Prize-winning physicist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar; current Governor of New Jersey and former U.S. Senator Jon Corzine (D-NJ); influential philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer John Dewey; dancer and choreographer Katherine Dunham; Nobel Prize-winning modernist poet and dramatist T. S. Eliot; Nobel Prize-winning physicist and developer of the first nuclear reactor Enrico Fermi; paleontologist Michael Foote; composer Philip Glass; Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh; New York Times columnist David Brooks; astronomer and pioneer of physical cosmology Edwin Hubble; leading neuropsychologist Muriel Lezak; New York Times best selling author Tucker Max; Nobel Prize-winning experimental physicist and researcher of the photoelectric effect Robert Millikan; Academy Award-winning film director Mike Nichols; prominent philosophers Allan Bloom, Martha Nussbaum, Paul Ricoeur, Jean-Luc Marion and Leo Strauss; current U.S. Senator Barack Obama (D-IL); balloonist and priest Jeannette Piccard; philosopher, mathematician, and Nobel Prize-winning writer Bertrand Russell; Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Philip Roth; current judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals Richard Posner, Frank Easterbrook, and Douglas Ginsberg; banker and internationalist David Rockefeller; astronomer and highly successful science popularizer Carl Sagan; influential anthropologist Marshall Sahlins; current U.S. Supreme Court justices Antonin Scalia and John Paul Stevens; novelist Kurt Vonnegut; playwright and novelist Thornton Wilder; former U.S. Deputy Secretary of State and former head of the World Bank Paul Wolfowitz; essayist, award-winning novelist, film maker, poet, activist Susan Sontag.[71][72].</p>
<p>Chicago may the single best undergraduate school in the U.S. largely due to it's studentbody, dedicated professors, academic rigor and seriousness of purpose. CalTech, MIT and Wellesley as well as Yale and Princeton are also in the same category with respect to undergraduate education. Swarthmore, Wharton and Columbia too. But, if I had to pick the best and it could only be one school, it would be the University of Chicago. Chicago students, both undergraduates and graduates, certainly get their money's worth. (And I have no connection with Chicago. But I wish that I did!) Although I have two nieces who are sisters and one recently graduated from Chicago and the other from Brown, which I find amusing as academically speaking they are complete opposites with Chicago's demanding core curriculum and Brown's create your own course of study freedom.</p>
<p>yeah, the core really it what makes chicago stand out in my book. the core makes it so that everyone has a solid background in philosophy, math, arts, physical/biological sciences, literature, and social sciences. i think it's remarkable that math majors are going to graduate having read hundreds of pages of plato and adam smith... and english majors are going to graduate having taken tough calc courses. it's a wonderful core, it really is... even though it's very challenging. </p>
<p>as far as departments go, you can't go wrong here. i'm studying music, and the music department here is regularly ranked 1st or 2nd in the country.</p>
<p>Somebody correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think Chicago has an actual pre-med major. You can still go on to med school with a Chicago degree, there just isn't a pre-med program. At least I think that's what I've heard, but I'm not expert.</p>
<p>There's a recommended courseload for those who are thinking about med school ("pre-med,") but not an actual major. Of course, a lot of bio majors are pre-meds, but so are a lot of English majors, history majors, anthropology majors, etc. etc. etc. Your professional aspirations need not dictate your course of undergraduate study.</p>
<p>Anyway, what makes Chicago so amazing for me is the one-two punch: excellent academics, yes, but also a really chill learning environment and an emphasis on intellectual and personal growth. I didn't want college to be a way station between high school and a career-- I wanted it to be something in and of itself, in a distinct academic sense.</p>
<p>Even beyond the undergrad program, the numerous influential, well-funded graduate programs offer incredible opportunities for research experience if you volunteer. Taking a class with a nobel prize-winner is cool, but crunching the numbers for their latest study is the bomb.</p>
<p>There is one thing that people who plan to go directly to medical school should consider about Chicago: The core curriculum requirements there are more extensive than the general education requirements at most colleges, and can take up to five full quarters (out of 12) to complete (usually a little less if you get credit for, say, language study pre-college). The courses you need to take to qualify for medical school represent at least another three quarters' worth, only one of which overlaps with the core requirements, and all of which basically have to be completed by your 10th quarter. So, basically, the core and pre-med will account for 7 out of 12 available quarters. Fulfilling the requirements for a major represents another 3-4 quarters' worth of classes. If your major requirements don't overlap with the pre-med requirements to a significant extent (i.e., if you are not a biology or chemistry major), you will not have room for a lot of electives outside of the core, especially during the first three years.</p>
<p>Thus, it's true that you can be an English or History major and be pre-med as well, but it's meaningfully harder to do that at Chicago than it is elsewhere, and you will be limited in the number of, say, Economics or Political Science classes you can take. </p>
<p>That's certainly not a reason to write Chicago off if you plan to go to medical school. There are fantastic opportunities for research there, and the core courses are nothing to sneer at if your ambition is to be a doctor with a broad humanities and social science perspective. But it's clearly not exactly the same as being a pre-med elsewhere.</p>
<p>
[quote]
there just isn't a pre-med program.
[/quote]
Undergraduates used to be able to apply to Pritzker during their sophomore year, but I think they discontinued that.</p>
<p>Read the viewbook. It has a lot of information about concentrations.
<a href="http://collegeadmissions.uchicago.edu/lifeofthemind/SWF/106_139.swf%5B/url%5D">http://collegeadmissions.uchicago.edu/lifeofthemind/SWF/106_139.swf</a></p>
<p>I'm biased because I go to school at U of C, but I really do believe that attending UChicago for your undergraduate education will provide you with the MOST well-rounded, in-depth, and ridiculously illuminating education you could possibly find. I find it very, very hard to believe that there's another college out there that provides an education like this one. The Core is just so remarkable in what it offers and it helps create incredibly insightful students.</p>
<p>You're right, JHS... but say that you want to be a humanities and social sciences scholar as well as go on to medical school, your core will satisfy those wishes. Most pre-meds do bio, chem, psych, human development, etc. as a major, because the pre-med requirements fall into line with those majors (also, I imagine that most pre-meds are interested in studying hard sciences at the undergraduate level, anyway). However, I do know some pre-med anthro, English, and Russian majors. Their courseload is difficult, but they bring it on themselves.</p>
<p>Completing a major is pretty easy. I know a lot of people who have dilly-dallied into their third and fourth year without declaring one, but have still graduated on time. If I wanted to, I could complete all my core and major requirements by fall quarter my third year and I probably could graduate in three years. However, I want to diversify my education even further and take more classes in fields I may never see again.</p>
<p>I'm doubling majoring in Wizardry and Ninja Studies, and I must say that both of these programs are incredibly strong.</p>
<p>hahaha. gosh, how's that going for you?</p>