@PepperJo My D has also found the campus and surrounding areas to be very safe and laughs when I ask her about safety issues. She said like in any major city students have to be aware of their surroundings but she has never felt unsafe around campus. The only time she ever felt creeped out was when a middle aged Uber driver who was taking her and a couple friends home from a concert in downtown Chicago started asking whether they would consider dating a guy like him. Also, I’d ignore a certain poster whose child attends a different college who for some reason only known to him has an ax to grind and who has no first hand knowledge of what it is like to be a current UChicago student.
The video I linked is just a snapshot from one student who chose to post about her student life. It is just one perspective from one data point. I did not say how great U of C was. I just want to show other prospective students and their parent what life at U of C may be. Emphasize MAY.
I am trying to get away from your type and especially you in all U of Chicago discussion. I have no intention to get into any ranking discussion or comparison to Brown (or whatever your bias is). I am just trying to stay on the topic and help other students understand life at U of Chicago. You have never visited Hyde Park and studied at U of C. You have no first hand information. But you have an agenda to push and it is very tiresome. I never understand why a parent will go to another forum and badmouth another school and KEEP DOING IT IN EVERY SINGLE ACTIVE THREAD. Go find another more productive hobby.
I had forgotten about the “missing students” and its correlative - that the administration is lying in claiming a 99 percent retention rate. If I put these allegations together with the others being made by @nrtlax33 they all seem to connect up something like this:
- The University does not publicize the existence of the Core in order to drive up its application numbers and enhance its yield.
- There is a lot of crime, which no one seems to know about.
- Many kids who come to Chicago are surprised and upset by the Core and all the rampant crime.
- This makes them very unhappy, and they have high levels of mental health problems.
- These mental health problems result in an exceptional number of student disappearances, which the University lies about in order to drive up applications, etc.
Have I got that right?
@marlowe1 Add the following:
You cannot study STEM. If you are considering premed, forget it. Too many Asian students
@85bears46 : I have no doubt you will be successful there. I have been following a large group of college v-loggers to try to understand what generation Z are thinking /doing. She is on my feed since she started her channel. She is an econ major (most popular in UChicago) high-stats Asian kid which makes her experience interesting. Her home in NYC is worth at least 1.5M(seriously underestimate). You might be able to tell me how much her boy friend’s apt. would cost per month. She has a dorm room but she never stays there. She is not a ditzy girl as some of the personal attackers here suggest.
@KnightsRidge : By choosing UChicago, your daughter obviously gave up engineering. How about computer science or chemistry? I am interested in your daughter’s STEM journey in UChicago. Thank you for sharing your daughter’s experience.
My son is a STEM major. What questions do you have?
We’ve entered the twilight zone.
Sometimes I feel sorry for the poor high school senior reading these UChicago threads and encountering adults debating when all they really want to know is what the UChicago experience and students are like. So, like KnightsRidge, I’ll present just another data point - my D.
She’s a first year and is having a good experience all around (although the academics are demanding). She is not a partier at all, but loves being social in a smaller, non-alcoholic setting and taking advantage of the GREAT city of Chicago. She loves her house and it seems like she goes to almost all its activities - midnight soccer, broomball, intramural bowling, apple picking, ice skating, study breaks, movie nights etc. She earned a prized Kuvia shirt, and she was even lucky enough to win a free ticket to see Hamilton with some housemates. In the process, she’s made some very good friends. She’s also a member of one of the university’s instrumental ensembles. Her only lament is that there are so many activities she’d like to do but just doesn’t have time.
Academically, she told me that she feels well-equipped smarts-wise but feels like others have a better grasp of their goals and have clearer visions for their futures. This is sometimes unsettling but her fellow students are “inspiring” her to think hard about where she’s headed in life.
Over break she started sending out some resumes for Metcalf internships and has received good advice/support from her career advisor.
Although she ended up in a certain geographically undesirable dorm, she likes it and is planning to live there again next year (albeit the current super cold temps don’t make for a fun walk to the quad).
In terms of the “types” of students that OP inquired about, it seem like there are plenty of the “quirky” personalities UChicago is noted for, although I don’t think she necessarily falls into that category. She is an intellectually curious, smart young woman, who has good study habits but would often rather watch Netflix or go out to eat with friends. She is “unhooked” unless you count having above average musical talent and being from a state that probably doesn’t usually send a lot applications to UChicago. Maybe she is one of the more “mainstream” kids UChicago is admitting in an attempt to make the university more broadly appealing, but in my view she’s found her niche, is contributing to the vibrant life of the campus in her own way, and appreciates the diversity of “types” at UChicago.
Actually my DD is majoring in engineering at UChicago, and from what I here about placement after college its been outstanding. Not many students get a chance to work at National Labs (Fermi or Argonne) as undergrad engineering majors but they have more than a leg up at UChicago.
BTW UChicago’s molecular engineering program basically breaks down into two more “traditional” programs, chemical and biological engineering and then the “non traditional” quantum engineering.
I can follow the lead of @browniesundae
My son is a first year from a large suburban Philly area public school. He is one semester in and has absolutely no regrets. He started thinking econ, but after talking to his career adviser and some others who have went on to law school, which is his goal, he has looked at some other options. Is now leaning towards Public Policy and Philosophy.
He is also on the Track and Cross Country team. Between this and his other hobby, which I’ll mention next have pretty much established his social group. Being an athlete is a lot of work for him and he finds himself spending a good 3 hours per day either in the gym or running. He also misses some Friday classes if the team has to travel to an away meet.
The other extra curricular he has really enjoyed is Moot Court. He nor I were familiar with this, but he found it at the Student Group fair in the fall. The UChicago Moot court is entirely a student led and run organization. However, they compete against some schools where it is a class and professors are coaches. Despite the disadvantage, the team performs very well in the National Competition, this year my son placed in the top 25 as an individual speaker and he and his partner finished somewhere between 17-32.
Because of all of his activities he spends a considerable amount of time on them. He estimates he averages 6 hours sleep, has about 45 minutes of free time/day during the week and the rest is class, track, gym, library, dining hall. Because of this he hasn’t really connected with his House and is planning on living off campus next year with some of his track/xcountry teammates.
Over the break, when asked if he has any regrets, he says he has none. He did very well in his classes. I asked him about demographics as far as private school/public school and he said he felt that there were slightly more private then public school students. I then asked if he felt that he was well prepared. He told me he wasn’t the smartest person in his classes but maybe in the next group. My concern was that maybe the privates did a much better job of preparation. He told me he thought there were a good number who maybe had some help via test tutoring, or college consultants who struggle some. I asked what he meant and he said there seems to be some that probably weren’t as smart as their test scores/transcript showed that they were. That these types seem to withdraw or pull back in the core seminar type classes.
I think he would tell you that there are all types of students. His room mate is very smart, but also plays pretty hard it appears. He obviously would be a “Jock,” but he shared the following from his most recent meet at UW-Whitewater. Their team arrived a couple hours early on Friday and all huddled together in the bleachers on their laptops while the UW-Whitewater team invented a game like hacky sack, but with a Gatorade bottle.
@BrianBoiler
I thought UChicago makes living on campus mandatory for the first two years. Or is that just in effect for next year’s incoming class?
It goes into affect with the next class. My son’s class will be the last group of Sophomores that will be able to live off campus.
@CU123 : UChicago does not have any ABET-Accredited Programs. Just a FYI. It is not necessarily a deal breaker for an engineering program. (http://main.abet.org/aps/Accreditedprogramsearch.aspx – search for Chicago) Best luck.
chocopuffeater is a junior. Her view has shifted as I observed her over the time. Her recent video about core curriculum is from someone who has finished the whole thing. I don’t believe she would have posted that two years ago.
Ahhh yes the old ABET, just so you know my undergrad is in EECS and never was I asked about ABET, also Cal Tech and Stanford have dropped there ABET accreditation for chemical engineering. Frankly having dealt with ABET its a self licking ice cream cone but necessary for those schools that lack a rigorous education, UChicago is not one of those schools. If your pursuing MechE or Civil then you should go to an ABET school, but those aren’t fast moving engineering programs.
"Chemical Engineering at Caltech will no longer pursue ABET accreditation
The undergraduate program in Chemical Engineering at Caltech is widely regarded as one of the most rigorous in the world. In our efforts to maintain that rigor in light of the rapid pace of change in this discipline, Caltech’s Chemical Engineering faculty have concluded that the process of engineering accreditation by** ABET limits our ability to offer the best possible education** to Caltech’s remarkable cadre of students. Consequently, we will not pursue continued ABET accreditation."
Frankly ABET is a joke when schools like DeVry can offer an online engineering degree that is ABET accredited. Schools like Stanford, Caltech, and UChicago clearly recognize its a waste of time. I think you might want to have your DS drop out of Brown and attend DeVry since its ABET accredited.
The key is internships. Would you be willing to share your DD’s internships so far and specifically for an undergraduate, what kind of job is available for “Molecular Engineering” graduate? Any name of the company you can obtain from the placement office which is hiring “Molecular Engineer”? Comparing UChicago’s engineering with schools such as CIT or Stanford is the funniest thing I heard today. Thank you for sharing the joke.
We have indeed. Closing thread for devolving into OT debate.