<p>^^^ I am sorry. I sense a little bitternes here. I was accepted early to Harvard and got likely letters from Dartmouth, Northwestern, Duke and U-Miami. I do not want to seem arrogant, but after that, I am sure I will be accepted to U of Chicago. I am waiting on Brown, Yale, Hopkins and Georgetown.
By the way, corranged, I have never posted on UMich. I did not applied there</p>
<p>Since I am not defensive on the topic (like most of U of C students are) I will keep you posted if I get turned down...or accepted so you can keep your stats on me going.</p>
<p>^^^^^Then, you should consider not wasting your valuable time and stop keeping tabs on my posts. That will just become more useless trivia for you to know.</p>
<p>MovieBuff, I don't think we would be acting "defensive" if you hadn't begun with the generalization that EVERYONE at Chicago is cutthroat. I'm absolutely sure that's not true, and since it appears you're view of Chicago is based upon word of mouth and not experience, well... you're gonna have to accept that people aren't going to accept your criticism without a bit of resentment.</p>
<p>...but congrats on your acceptance to Harvard and on all those likely letters. I've no doubt you have the stats. As long as you're not a troll...</p>
<p>(I don't want to sound all hippie and "let's all be friends," but I think we've chased away enough people from this forum already-- creativemind ring a bell? What's the use?)</p>
<p>this is actually something i really like about the school! when i was visiting, i saw that students helped each other a lot with their homework and there wasn't really any competition. and why should there be?</p>
<p>i'm a newb to these forums, but i get the feeling that if you spend too much time on here, you tend to get a little too numbers-obsessed d: let's ask other questions that are more useful! to current uchicago students: what's your major, and how did you decide upon it? personally, i'm interested in human development, but i'm sure we'd all love to hear them all.</p>
<ol>
<li>Are you proud of Chicago's reputation for academic rigor?</li>
<li>On a scale of 1-5 (5 being most concerned), rate how much you care about grades?</li>
<li>Do you feel that your grades accurately reflect the learning process you have undertaken?</li>
<li>What is your GPA?</li>
</ol>
<p>If you guys didn't care about grades, why not just post them? After all, the GPA is just a number anyway (which might or might not accurately gauge your intellectual prowess and knowledge), right?</p>
<p>I think students would be more willing to talk about their grades in specific classes and circumstances. I'll post a little later tonight if I have time, but I have to hit up a review session right now for my final tomorrow.</p>
<p>I am always pleased to read post on the U Chicago forum because they almost never digress into petty arguments. I'm actually impressed that this thread on such a trifling subject remained civil for as long as it did. For the most part, the posters on the Chicago forum sound uncommonly brilliant, and I can't wait to sit in class with them next fall.</p>
<p>The motivation behind this thread must be obvious. Tis is a prospective applicant that is worried about the rigor of Chicago. Perhaps some of you are offended at his question, but if you Chicago kids are so intelligent, you should be able to answer the question by simply attesting to the difficulty of the school. I am impressed by some here that have done just that without resorting to stating their GPA since they consider it very personal; I am puzzled, however, by the responses of others.</p>
<p>It's not that UChicago students are defensive about their grades. They generally don't consider their GPA that important, unless they happen to have plans for after college where grades are super-important (like medical or law school). And it's also actually pretty common for people to not even know exactly what their GPA is. I would say it's about as non-competitive as you can get.</p>
<p>The article tells you that the average GPA is 3.26. I don't know what utility could further be gained by knowing the specific GPA of a tiny sample of anonymous students. As I've said, very few people do extremely badly, and folks who work at it tend to do just fine. It's not impossible to do well, but you aren't going to do well just by showing up.</p>
<p>Brand, there are countless threads about the rigors of Chicago that the poster could have easily looked up. I'm assuming there are some on the first few pages since it comes up so often (that and whether we have fun and what the girls look like tend to be popular questions). </p>
<ol>
<li>Basically every student at Chicago is proud of the school's academic reputation and rigor. </li>
<li>I'm not sure about this number system. I care about my grades in that I'd like a GPA high enough to keep my options open, whether it's for a job, graduate school, or professional school. At Chicago, this is generally considered a 3.5+, with a 3.33 being on the lower end of the spectrum. Most of the time, I do not work exceptionally hard. Remember that college kids live at school, so the division between work + play isn't very clear. I procrastinate, put off my readings, fool around online, and go out with my friends. I care enough about grades to complete the readings before I write a paper about them, speak up in class where participation counts (even when I'm tired, even when I haven't done the reading), stay in on Friday and Saturday nights if I have a lot of work to get done, go to review sessions, and go to office hours before writing papers. I'd say the majority of students do these things, but not all. Some students do much more and really dedicate themselves to getting all of the work done and done well. These are the students who go straight from class to the library every day. </li>
<li>Like many current students, I don't actually know what my current GPA is. My lowest grade in college thus far is the same as the lowest grade I ever got in high school (in what is practically the same course--and I worked harder for the grade in my high school class. I'm assuming it says more about my high school than Chicago.). I've gotten As on papers and exams, and I would guess that the top half of the students at this school do get As, though some students get many more than others. I'm relatively happy with my lowest grade this term since my scores in the class have gone up steadily every exam. All of my final grades depend on what I get on my final papers and exams. Some students here are in the A/A- range, I'd say the majority of the "better" students sit in the B+/A- range for many classes. There are obviously students with lower grades, as well. Students who challenge themselves with difficult classes may have significantly lower grades then they would if in easier classes. Many students are in the A-/B+ range in their best subjects and the C+ range in their worse subjects (I'm mainly talking about the Core since humanities students need to take math and science, and vice versa). Some students really struggle for their grades, and other students get away with pretty good grades and being laid back. I don't know what students on this board mean when they say they're doing "well." As I've repeated many times, it depends on many different factors. A student can be extremely happy with a B- or upset with an A- depending on his effort, past grades, expectations, general strengths, and the median for the class. There are students who fail. My professor for one of my large, lecture classes emails out exam statistics, and there are generally about equal numbers of As and Fs, sometimes more Fs and sometimes more As. Obviously these students exist and did not drop the class. I think Maroon is exactly right. Few students do very poorly in every class, few truly excell in every class. Everybody who does well works for it. Most people who work hard get grades that are OK with them, though your expectations may change once you start school. The 3.26 average sounds about right, I think. If you can give me good reasoning why knowing my specific GPA (a single, mostly anonymous person online who has no reason not to lie) is important, then I'll give you a guess for my GPA this quarter.</li>
</ol>
<p>metonymy: thanks for your comments and i agree with you. Generalizations are bad because there are always exceptions to every rule. It is all about "personalities". I believe it is very important to visit the schools because that is the only way one can get a clear sense of "belonging or not". We make a lot of our decisions on the basis of our own experiences.</p>
<p>MovieBuff -
"I believe it is very important to visit the schools because that is the only way one can get a clear sense of "belonging or not"." </p>
<p>Very well stated. I believe this is more true for some schools than others - UChicago and MIT in particular.</p>
<p>Corranged: so that I could answer specific questions about how you attained that GPA: the rigor of your specific courses, specific professors, assignments, your EC involvement at the school, improvement from high school, etc. Doesn't it make sense to view the GPA in light of a person's specific circumstances rather than get the average GPA for all Chicago students?</p>
<p>Thanks for your very informative (albeit general) post.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Am I proud of the reputation? I don't know. I'm proud that I'm being challenged, if that's what you mean.</p></li>
<li><p>On a scale of 1-5 of being concerned with grades, I would rate myself a two. When I get back an essay that I've worked hard on, I read all the comments first and think about them carefully before I look at the grade. The comments are what will help me to improve in the future and give me my best idea of where my strengths and weaknesses are; I use the grade as a relative marker of quality from one assignment to another. If I get a 35/50 on my first Spanish assignment and then a 45/50 on my second, I'll be able to tell myself that I've improved. That's a good feeling.</p></li>
<li><p>My grades reflect that I'm learning and improving. Grades are inherently arbitrary; my best friend's mother, a professor at Columbia University, once decided to sit down with some of her colleagues to read and grade the same paper. Grades varied from a C+ to an A-, though the strengths and weaknesses that they identified were similar. Grades are extremely contingent upon the professors' judgment of what he or she feels constitutes each.</p></li>
<li><p>I did look it up, so now I know it, and again, I will not say, for I believe it is irrelevant.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>I think maybe the point of corranged's entry being general was to show that his or her position with grades, school work, social life, etc. is that each person is different. Without knowing the specifics of your life and your experiences, without knowing what you write, how you test, without knowing what professors you will have and without knowing how they grade, there is no machine any of us could create that will calculate your GPA.</p>
<p>My GPA did go down from my high school GPA. I went to a difficult high school to begin with. In my high school, doing the work, doing the readings, and taking class seriously could be approximated to a B+-- to get anything above that required additional talent and effort. Here at Chicago, as has been stated in previous posts, this same standard slides down to about a B.</p>