<p>I'm applying to UChicago and I wanted to know if I'm making the right choice.</p>
<p>Is the campus nice?
and how is the surrounding environment?</p>
<p>I personally do not like a college like USC because of its environment ( for those who have been there) </p>
<p>any comments suggestions or feedback will greatly be appreciated</p>
<p>Wow. The University of Chicago and USC are about as different as two private universities can be. There’s almost nothing similar about them. But if what you mean by “the surrounding environment” is USC’s proximity to some lower-income neighborhoods in Los Angeles, and that makes you uncomfortable, then you will probably have the same problem at Chicago. The University of Chicago is located in a sleepy, upscale residential enclave not terribly unlike the older sections of Santa Monica. It has a mixture of Collegiate Gothic buildings (the first such campus built since everything looked like that) and modern buildings, and it sprawls across and is largely integrated with the Hyde Park neighborhood. Some parts are beautiful, some less so; generally it’s pretty nice. But there are no gates with guards at them (although there is a large police force), and no walls separating the campus from the surrounding community, and especially to the west (past a park) and to the south the surrounding community is mainly poor. It is possible to attend the University of Chicago and to limit any kind of encounter with that community, but not necessarily desirable. And it’s not worth going there if you aren’t excited about living in a big city and travelling around it to do things. (Which you can and should do on public transportation in Chicago, unlike LA.)</p>
<p>JHS, does the average undergrad spend all four years on campus? For those not living on campus, do they live close or do they tend to live several miles from campus? Thank you.</p>
<p>The average undergraduate spends the first 2-3 years living on-campus in a dorm, and the last 1-2 years living in an apartment nearby (in some cases nearer-by than a couple of the dorms). </p>
<p>The university has dorm slots for about 60% of the undergraduate population, so that gives you a pretty good macro idea. Most people spend all of their dorm years in the same dorm; indeed on the same floor or entryway – the dorms are broken up into “houses”, except for a couple small dorms that have only one house, and students stay in the same house unless they transfer or become RAs. Only one set of dorms really has a full complement of 3rd and 4th years; the others are either dominated by 1st and 2nd years, or have only 2nd+ years.</p>
<p>The off-campus housing stock in Hyde Park is pretty good, and varies as to price and quality from dirt-cheap/lousy to expensive/posh. Peoples’ lives still pretty much revolve around campus, and they spend most of their time there. It’s not anything like a commuter school – probably about the same as Penn or Cornell, which have the same kind of structure. Last year, my son lived in a building that was across the street from one dorm, a block away from the dorm where his then-girlfriend lived, and two blocks from the gym where his team practiced. What’s more, all four apartments in the building were mainly occupied by students involved in a particular EC. It was pretty indistinguishable from an on-campus theme house at some other college.</p>
<p>Two additional things: </p>
<p>100% of 1st years live in the dorms.</p>
<p>The university would clearly like to have more students living on campus, and long-term it wants to increase dorm space and get more upperclassmen to live in the dorms. However, the existing dorms aren’t so great that students don’t tend to get tired of them after a couple of years, sometimes sooner. Unlike, say, Harvard and Yale, they don’t have lots of especially nifty rooms for upperclassmen to aspire to (although I think the newest dorm takes a stab at that). And unlike, say, Stanford and Columbia the university has trouble competing with the plentiful, relatively cheap, convenient off-campus housing stock. If the Olympics had chosen Chicago, the university would have gotten a passel of new dorms out of it, and students might well have been priced out of private Hyde Park housing, but that didn’t happen.</p>
<p>Thank you, JHS. You’re a wealth of knowledge. </p>
<p>Your son is an athlete, and so am I (swimming). If accepted to Chicago, I must decide whether to swim or focus my time entirely on school. The answer will largely depend on the time commitment required to swim. I would love to swim, but I don’t want to fall behind what everyone agrees is a tough academic load. Can you share your son’s perspective? Also, you seem to know a great deal about Penn. Could I pm you questions about that school? Thanks again. You’ve very helpful.</p>
<p>Hapa, I’m more a big procrastinator than a wealth of knowledge.</p>
<p>My son isn’t much of an athlete, although he has gotten reasonably serious about a club sport. But we’re talking 12-15 hours/week, plus some travel, which would be sort of like a vacation for a competitive swimmer. I’m sure you could talk to women on the swim team to get a sense of how it affects their lives and studies. And you can always try it and quit if things aren’t working.</p>
<p>Penn: It’s an important institution where I live. My knowledge is pretty spotty, actually. I know tons about the neighborhood and physical layout, lots about stuff my friends do there, a little about the experiences of kids’ friends and friends’ kids there, and practically nothing about huge swathes of it.</p>
<p>How difficult is it to gain admissions into UChicago ?</p>
<p>Here’s a thought: I live off-campus, in the heart of the student off-campus area (54th and Woodlawn-abouts.) It takes me about 15 minutes to walk the closest part of “campus” for me. I know students at other schools who live “on-campus” but live further away from any significant buildings than a 15 minute walk.</p>
<p>I like Hyde Park a lot, though it can be a bit of a shock to somebody used to a certain kind of living. The crime rate is not zero and there are some black people around. (I know that sounds very blunt, but for people coming from a homogeneous area, it’s something to consider and the mixed-race-ness is what it comes down to.)</p>
<p>JHS, I’ve never been to Chicago or Philadelphia, so you are still a wealth of knowledge to me.</p>
<p>Does it make sense for a student to have a car at either Chicago or Penn? If so, where do they park? </p>
<p>I don’t party. I know nobody holds a gun to your head at either school and forces you to drink, but all of us want to fit in. Penn is known as the Social Ivy. Chicago seems to have a healthy party scene as well. I am very fun-loving, but my type of fun is probably more congruent with what kids did in the 1950s than what happens today (I’d love to see how many people we could stuff into a phone booth, if phone booths existed today). Will a stone-cold sober student like me have any problems fitting in at either school? </p>
<p>Which school do you believe has a stronger collegiate atmosphere? What I mean by that phrase is a place where people unify behind the school and feel part of the campus. I will define Temple as the opposite of what I mean by “collegiate atmosphere.”</p>
<p>Thanks!!</p>
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<p>Sorry, but we’re all very proud of our school here at Temple.</p>
<p>dion, I meant no offense. Temple is a great school. But don’t most students commute to campus? Some colleges are like that. Schools like Dartmouth are just the opposite. Everyone lives on or near campus. My question was whether Chicago and Penn are more like Temple or Dartmouth.</p>
<p>To add to what JHS said about dorms, housing is guaranteed for all students who request it, whether this is a second-year student, a fourth year student, a student taking a fifth year as an undergraduate, someone coming back from study abroad or a leave of absence, even a person who moved in to an apartment but wishes to move back on campus… if you are an undergrad on campus and wish to have on-campus dorm housing, all you need to do is show up to the housing office and you will have a place. It can be rather difficult to get OUT of housing midyear for reasons other than leave of absence or work abroad (say, you realize midway third year you’d rather be in an apartment), but as long as you want it you’ll be able to have access to it.</p>
<p>^Thank you.</p>
<p>Yeah, please, don’t dis Temple! It has tons of collegiate atmosphere. The last Temple basketball game I went to, no one would sit down until Temple scored. Temple was going through a bad stretch, and they got 5-6 minutes into the game (game time, not actual time) before sinking a bucket. My feet hurt from all the collegiate atmosphere!</p>
<p>The 50s: You wouldn’t believe what people drank in the 50s! Have you ever seen Mad Men? Those people were in college in the 50s, and by the 60s they had toned down their acts!</p>
<p>Cars: It really doesn’t make sense to have a car at Penn, since there is good public transportation (including to NYC) right there, and lots of amenities, and you can walk or bike most places you would want to go anyway. Parking is also difficult or expensive unless you are fairly far off campus (but not towards Center City). At Chicago, most students get by without cars, but I think they deeply appreciate knowing at least a few people who have one. Hyde Park is a little off the beaten path, and getting from there to where the action is on public transportation can take an hour or more, whereas in a car it might be 15 minutes. And Hyde Park has much less by way of shopping, restaurants, entertainment than the area immediately around Penn, so traveling some distance is something that happens more frequently. Parking is difficult or expensive in Hyde Park, too – maybe even more so than in the areas where students live near Penn.</p>
<p>The good news is that colleges are made for car-sharing programs. Some have them now, and in a few years I bet most will.</p>
<p>“Collegiate atmosphere”: Jeepers, choose your poison. Penn has more, larger, and better parties. It has real fraternities and sororities. People like sports. Not everyone, but lots of people, especially women, dress very nicely most of the time. It’s right smack in the middle of a pretty vibrant city, so there’s always stuff to do, with or without alcohol. There are lots of different kinds of people there, though, so you would find plenty of non-drinkers to hang out with, and it IS an elitist college full of smart people, so the drinkers mostly aren’t idiots who will try to make you drink to validate their lives.</p>
<p>Chicago has parties, too, and lots of drinkers, and frats, and even some nice dressers, but I think everything is lower key.</p>
<p>Both campuses are a mixture of fake-old, old, mistakes of the past generation, and new. Both have beautiful and not-so-beautiful parts. Penn feels a lot more urban because big, busy streets go through it or next to it; you’re never far away from traffic. Penn’s newer buildings are gorgeous, and its mistakes of the 60s-70s are truly heinous. Chicago didn’t build as much in that period, and what it did build isn’t quite as awful as Penn’s. I don’t like its recent buildings quite as much as I like Penn’s, either, but I think they are getting better at it.</p>
<p>Don’t worry too much about the campuses. If you go to either, you’ll wind up loving what’s lovable there and ignoring the rest, just like everyone else.</p>
<p>EDIT: Responding to your residential point – They are basically about the same. Half the kids (and all the freshmen) live on campus, and almost all of the rest live within easy walking distance. People spend most of their time on campus. Students living off campus live with other students, next door to other students. It’s really about the same. I think it works for both schools, too. High schoolers tend to think they want a 100% residential situation like HYP or Dartmouth, but if you polled Chicago or Penn upperclassmen most would probably tell you they would rather be waterboarded than move back into a dorm.</p>
<p>See? I told you that you were a wealth of knowledge. Thanks for everything, JHS!</p>
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<p>Why do I get the feeling you’re being utterly sarcastic?</p>
<p>Not at all! I thought the custom was a little goofy, and it got ridiculous when they couldn’t hit a basket, but it was completely charming. Anyone who tried to sit down got yelled at by current students and alumni alike. Totally collegiate. Nothing like that would happen at the University of Chicago (assuming anyone showed up to watch a basketball game there).</p>
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<p>Coming a bit late to the party, but . . . I’m a teetotaller, and it is absolutely fine here. At the beginning, some people may pressure you to drink (er, thinking specifically of my ex-roommate and her boyfriend), but once you make your position clear, people pretty much leave you alone on that subject. :)</p>
<p>So if I hate LA I wouldn’t like UChicago would I ?</p>