<p>I just cant decide which one to go to....both are great schools. Any ideas guys?</p>
<p>Yes. i just posted in the other thread to respond to you, but I will do it again here. Maybe I am tainted by living in Atlanta. Maybe not. But just know that that exists before you taking my opinion on its own.</p>
<p>Emory is a great school, yes. It has a lot of great perks: great profs, good academics, great location (yes, it does. Atlanta is a good place to be a college student), nice campus, etc. It is a very high quality college.<br>
However, what exactly are you looking for? Are you looking for a high quality college, or something completely different and unique from a typical college, albeit, a good one? UChicago is different from a typical college. It focuses on different things. It focuses on a much more "learning for the sake of learning, thinking b/c that is what I want to do most" atmosphere. Most other colleges, and indeed, this is not a bad thing, are preparing you with as much of a high quality education for your future. When I think of college, I am not necessarily thinking of the future. Emory can take me whereever I want to go. But I want a certain atmosphere when I go to college. I want my college experience for itself. I want it for its intellectual promise, for the amount I can learn and gain from those around me, for the little things, basically. I am not making a mass judgement call that tramples on every other college experience, I am just saying, you are talking about two entirely different experiences here. This is an individual thing.</p>
<p>My advice, is that if I gave you advice, you took it, that would be bad. Go visit. I am not you. Maybe Emory is better for you. Maybe Chicago is. I don't know. They are just so totally different to me. I can't really compare them except in considering other non-educational/experience things like financial aid. </p>
<p>That said: I would choose Chicago :) Good luck kiddo.</p>
<p>My daughter had this choice to make last year. She liked Emory and it was her second-choice school after UChicago. She attended Emory Scholars weekend and came away with a feeling that she did not fit in at Emory. Her scholar weekend host didn't seem focused on academics, and many of her fellow scholar finalists seemed more interested in finding out about the party scene than the academic scene. She also felt that quite a few of them were wealthy (and somewhat snooty) students from the northeast who were attending Emory because they didn't get into Ivies. Now, granted, that is just her opinion. My advice is to visit both -- my daughter is very happy at UChicago and did not think Emory was a fit for her.</p>
<p>I'm in the same situation as elpresidente. Right now, i'm trying to decide between uchicago and emory. This is a very tough decision! Which one do you think has a better reputation with regards to academics and the social scene?</p>
<p>Yeah ive heard lots of different things about these schools. I really want something inbetween the two, but I don't seem to have that option open. Socially I would prefer Emory, not because I am a partier but because it seems to be more open and less strenuous. I like the UC campus a lot better and prefer the academic setting and the quality of education. Does anyone know which ones grad schools prefer? They are both highly ranked. Its a really hard decision.</p>
<p>Right now, I think that my decision will rest primarily on which school gives me the better financial aid package. I'm at the Emory Financial Aid Office right now trying to negogiate my financial aid package although Emory gave me a decent financial aid package. However, I haven't gotten my package from the University of Chicago because my financial aid counselor is currently bombarding me with millions of questions before she'll give me any money. How good are the financial aid packages from the University of Chicago usually?</p>
<p>vtoodler, they're pretty stingy, but they're open to negotiation</p>
<p>sillystring7,</p>
<p>"She also felt that quite a few of them were wealthy (and somewhat snooty) students from the northeast who were attending Emory because they didn't get into Ivies."</p>
<p>--This is a very strong statement that you've made, and I want to know your warrants for making such a claim. How would your daugther know the socio-economic background and the ivy preference of the scholars from just a weekend with them? I'm currently at the Emory campus, and I get the feeling that the focus here is moreso on academics than on anything else. The teachers teach fervently, and students study agressively. The intensity of academia is not as pressured here, which I think is good because I don't like pressure. I agree, the social scene at Emory is more bustling than the University of Chicago. However, the students are very academic, and from what I observe, the students put school above anything else. As for the kids being snooty, I think that most of the top25 schools have a lot of snooty kids. I'm sure that the University of Chicago will not be any erent; you will see a lot of snobs there as you would anywhere else. All in all, I think that both schools are great, and I'm glad that your daughter is enjoying herself at the University of Chicago.</p>
<p>As I said in my message, that was my daughter's impression from the weekend. She came away thinking that she didn't quite fit in. Her student host (an Emory scholar) blatantly told her that classes weren't hard and she spent as little time as possible studying. </p>
<p>For several weeks after the event, the Emory scholars e-mailed back and forth with things like: "I didn't get into (Ivy), so I'm going to Emory" or "I got into (Ivy) so I am turning Emory down." I am from the south, so I would have preferred that she choose Emory over Chicago, but she did not for the reasons I described. </p>
<p>BTW, the reason she knew that there were quite a few northeasterners among the scholars is because the school provided a list of students and where they were from. As for the wealth issue, there were a lot of designer clothes, handbags, etc., that gave her that impression. </p>
<p>As I concluded my message, </p>
<p>"Now, granted, that is just her opinion. My advice is to visit both -- my daughter is very happy at UChicago and did not think Emory was a fit for her."</p>
<p>After all, aren't all decisions about colleges based upon personal impressions and likes and dislikes? Sorry, but that's the way she saw it. No reason to get defensive about it. The poster may visit Chicago and Emory and decide Emory is just right.</p>
<p>I'm not getting defensive. I just felt like you kept me hanging there. You said a lot of things about emory and chicago, and I wanted to know why your daugther felt the way she did about each school. I wanted specifics. I'm considering going to either schools, and I want to know what people who had visited thought of each schools, and why. You mentioned a lot of things about each schools, but I posted not to get defensive with you but to incite more information from you.</p>
<p>btw, what did your daughter initially think of chicago when she visited there?</p>
<p>vtoodler -- Sorry if I misread the intent of your post. I will answer any questions you have. And, if you PM me, I will give you my D's e-mail address and she will answer directly. I promise that she won't mind.</p>
<p>OK -- here is the long version of D's college decision. She was really looking hard for merit aid, so she selected financial safeties, as well as schools that she felt would be academically comfortable. When all the acceptances were in, the schools under serious consideration (for financial and other reasons) were:</p>
<p>WUSTL -- half tuition, plus another $3,000 per year
Emory -- full tuition as an Emory Scholar
Chicago -- full tuition as a College Honor Scholar</p>
<p>As you can see, she was one of the really lucky ones who had several financially acceptable choices (still can't say why it worked out so well, it just did). She spent part of the summer before her senior year in a summer program at Emory, living in the dorms, etc. She liked it a lot. </p>
<p>But for some reason, the Emory Scholars weekend turned her off. She liked the professors very much -- and actually felt guilty about not attending because a couple of them really reached out to her. But, frankly, her scholar host acted like having her and another girl in the room for the weekend was a real pain in the a**. My daughter is quite independent, so it didn't bother her that the girl didn't want to be best buds, but she did feel like, "What the heck? This girl, who has a major paper due Monday and hasn't even started researching it -- and isn't interested in promoting her school as an Emory scholar -- is considered a stop student?" </p>
<p>Also, as for the snootiness factor, she just thought that a lot of the female scholar candidates were pretty full of themselves. (This was less true of the male candidates, she said.) Because she would have been an Emory Scholar -- and Emory has a lot of "togetherness" events for their scholars -- she had to weigh them as a peer group. And she just didn't feel comfortable with them. </p>
<p>That said, I can tell you that after touring Chicago, it was her clear number one choice. She just felt comfortable there from the start. However, she knew that without merit aid she could not attend, so she was mentally prepared to go elsewhere. </p>
<p>She recently told me that, after the Emory Scholar experience, she preferred WUSTL to Emory. (Emory was her second choice until the scholar weekend.) She said that if her dad and I had refused to pay for WashU and the Chicago scholarship had not come through, she might have opted to go to Fordham, which had offered her full tuition and room and held the promise of four years in NYC.</p>
<p>So, the bottom line is, Emory just wasn't for her. As for the snootiness issue, someone else said the same thing in another thread. I'll find it and tell you where it is. Also, again, this was just my daughter's impression. You might get a totally different feel if you visit. Oh -- one more thing -- Emory, despite a large number of students from the northeast -- has a distinctly southern feel. That might or might not be for you. There is also a lot of sorority/fraternity action, which my daughter was not interested in.</p>
<p>Edit: This is post #20 in UChicago vs. other schools (I did not post it.) The question was, "Chicago or Emory?" You might want to contact the poster for more detail:</p>
<p>"chicago! that is an easy one. my friends who visited emory thought that the kids were all snobby and rich. i've never been, but there is a trend...people from my school that go are all like that too. what am i supposed to believe? (and you can go into law no matter what you major in or what school you go to, provided you do well etc.)"</p>
<p>Thanks for the information. I need all the info that I can get to make this really tough decision.</p>
<p>I understand that U Chicago isn't for everyone, but man, this would be an easy decision for me -- UC all the way. I just think it has a lot more special qualities to offer than Emory, and I don't think they're in the same league as far as the intellectual atmosphere or across-the-board academic challenge.</p>
<p>That being said, it is definitely legit to feel that you need more work-life balance in college than most UC students experience.</p>
<p>Hanna,</p>
<p>Why would you choose UChicago over Emory?</p>
<p>As I said, I don't think they're in the same league as far as the intellectual atmosphere or across-the-board academic challenge. UChicago is a brainiac school, for better or for worse, and in my book, that's for better. I found Emory to be rather nondescript when I visited. Great school, but I don't think it has a lot of features that make it special and distinguish it from all the other great schools. UC, with its unique culture, does. I think there's something phenomenal about a school where kids are so openly psyched about working their butts off -- and they really do. It's like MIT for the humanities.</p>
<p>That being said, because UC feels so different from comparable schools, not every kid is going to like it there. You need to be excited about the main focus of college being intellectual.</p>