<p>china and japan maybe, but singaporean universities are quite lousy which is why most top students go overseas.</p>
<p>Singaporean unis have a long way to go in academic quality (other than NUS Med and Law schools), but if you're talking "intense" as in strong and intense competitive atmosphere - then yes, Singapore unis qualify.</p>
<p>Deep Springs sounds pretty scary, too (or wonderful - depends on your perspective). You'd better be fond of academics (and manual labor) 'cause there's nowhere to escape to. The price is right, though. </p>
<p>Here is the link - its worth a peek if you are male and on the Chicago page:</p>
<p><a href="http://www.deepsprings.edu/%5B/url%5D">http://www.deepsprings.edu/</a></p>
<p>Deep Springs students are similar to Chicago students, apparently, as the vast majority of students there end up transferring to either Chicago or Harvard.</p>
<p>Illinois Institute of Technology is tough? the place just north of Hyde Park?</p>
<p>I thought she was referring to the The Indian Institutes of Technology.</p>
<p>meow360,</p>
<p>Oh. The OTHER IIT.</p>
<p>Yes - that one (lol)!</p>
<p>For what it's worth, though - many of the engineering institutes (including publics that are rarely discussed on CC) are VERY difficult. </p>
<p>And if we want to talk about majors ... architecture seems to require an ungodly number of studio hours (maybe its just as well that UChicago doesn't offer it). Chicago IS a hard school - it just doesn't have a lock on it.</p>
<p>Again, a lot of how hard you work is a function of what courses you take and what you do outside of the classroom. I have a friend who is a journalism major at a non-elite school. Sounds easy, right? Not when you realize that he's in classes, writing for the newspaper, and partly responsible for an entire section of it.</p>
<p>I have another friend who is a dual education/ English major who works three or four part-time jobs and another friend at Princeton who is also working obsessively hard. When I see how much they work, they put me to shame.</p>
<p>What it really comes down to is your attitude. I happen not to stress over work (though I stress about plenty other things) and I also don't hold myself to certain expectations gradewise. I've found my first year at Chicago to be surprisingly laid-back and freeing in this regard, and though I will be spending more time on work this year (due to a harder courseload), it's work that I enjoy. Therefore, when others characterize Chicago as "crazy intense" or "pressure cooker" or what have you, I respectfully disagree.</p>
<p>On the other hand, if you have incredibly high expectations for yourself gradewise, if you don't know how to close a book and let off steam, or, if you're not good at prioritizing and consistently pull all-nighters to get simple assignments down, you might find yourself in a bit of a pickle. Most people get into that state a few times a year. At the same time though, you're fooling yourself if you think that the kids in other elite schools don't have those same feelings at times over a problem set or a paper.</p>
<p>And, ohio_mom, totally agreed... the architecture kids, the artists, and the engineers work so, so, so, so hard. A friend of mine who's doing Rice architecture told me her sleep and study schedule.... yeow.</p>
<p>I would add two things:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>JHSs commentary is right on the money. I would say one of the things I noticed most at Chicago was how many people were not in anyway involved in what one would describe as striver / leadership activities. The fact that Chicago just started in the last few years its first undergraduate investing club is a huge testament to this fact. To the extent that people are involved in formal extracurricular events, and it is certainly to a lesser degree than elsewhere, it is usually out of some genuine interest. The vast majority of people at ACLU meetings care about civil liberties, not padding their law school application. </p></li>
<li><p>Loving to learn is not a sufficient condition to do well at Chicago. It is certainly a necessary one, but the people who tend to wash out or barely hang in there are the ones that love books but cannot handle a seriously structured learning environment. At some point you are going to find yourself swearing your assignments up and down no matter how intrinsically intellectual you are, but that is when you are going to need a strong managerial approach to kick in and get things done.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>I must warn you unalove... if you're entering your 2nd year at Chicago... be prepared for the worst year of your life. :/</p>
<p>Just know that it gets better.</p>
<p>The thing about UChicago is that it has a reputation for admitting statistically less impressive students than many of the other top universities in the country, who show holistic promise in other non-quantitative areas of their app. Thus a large part of the student body is less academically prepared for an intense academic environment, and the result is the "UChicago is the hardest school on earth" hype.</p>
<p>I'm not saying UChicago is easy. I agree it's amongst the tip top of the hardest academic instutitions. But it's not impossible, as some say.</p>
<p>Thanks for the heads-up. Susan Art (Dean of Students) sent us a letter that more or less said that second year can be hard. I am expecting an increase in work and EC involvement (I'm taking more classes directed towards my major, fewer electives, and I have more responsibilities EC-wise), though at least I won't be as concerned with my social/environment adjustment, which, for me, was a HUGE stress first year even though everything turned out quite well.</p>
<p>Hmmm... chris... that's not my impression. You're right in that 80% of us that had a class rank were in the top 10%, compared with higher percentages for most of the ivies (don't know them offhand). Fewer of us might have gotten top grades in high school, but, at least for my own situation, my lack of straight A's was due to the fact that I didn't particularly think it worth my while to study extra hard for every point, whereas other students did... the A- or the B+ was just fine for me. I would also say that the typical Chicago kid is smarter than the typical "A" student at my high school... or has more interesting contributions to class discussion, at least.</p>
<p>Maybe the real shock comes when students realize they have to work for their grades and that they can't really hide all that much in class. Or maybe there's some sort of perverse pride in saying that our school is the hardest, most oppressive, most unimaginative school in the country ("Where fun comes to die," anybody?). I do agree, though, that the work here is not necessarily harder than it is elsewhere, but the students who end up coming are more or less in control of their work situation, as long as they reconcile the fact that their grades aren't going to be the same as they were in high school.</p>