UChicago housing for incoming students?

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of Chicago ✅
121

Comments about the differences between Admissions, Academics, and the Administration are not uncommon anywhere. While all are important to the running of the institution, they all have slightly different goals. Admissions goal is to make the University look like it is Heaven, and to present to the University the very best class it can get. The academics are focused on furthering the Body of Knowledge and sometimes that conflicts with teaching undergrad courses (although it sounds as if it might be well above average for the undergraduate experience at UChicago), and the administration has the non-glamourous task of making sure resources are allocated appropriately to accomplish the goals of the other groups (and Athletics, Arts, etc.).

Often times people struggle with the course of actions that admins take. They don’t often have the same level of “customer service” that the admissions group has. I know when I went to Kellogg, year one was all about the institution making it great for us, and that fell off greatly in year 2. They already had us committed and we were going to finish, but in year one, in order to protect their brand they went all out with events, mixers, etc. to make us want to return. The second year was just “grind-it-out.” My fellow cohorts often commented on how after the first year, we were pretty much forgotten. It is just the way it is. Once you are in the door and the switching cost is high, the amount of energy spent on maintaining their customer, is going to be lower.

122

People should see some of the other university dorms that are offered. Really cramped spaces, where students are tripled in a double, etc., or where some universities cannot even accommodate all incoming 1st years, and freshmen had to scramble to rent nearby apartments, and this at expensive private universities. iHouse is a beautiful dorm, but I can see how disappointed incoming freshmen would be at not getting their choice dorms. Give it a semester, and I’ll bet they’ll love it.

123

Comparing Chicago’s housing options in 2018 to Purdue or Harvard or what you went through in the 80s is such a juvenile tactic. Apples to apples I-House is awful, it’s always been awful, it’s now even more awful with the modern dorms, and social kids never get “used to” or “appreciate” the 1.4 mile round-trip journey to food and the main quad. With regard to Purdue, they gave substantial discounts to freshman placed in those cramped dorms. Further, Purdue is a public college that costs barely $20,000 all-in. Chicago is a private college tangoing with big boys and costs upwards of $78,000-80,000.

I also don’t appreciate the dismissive tone about campus crime, as if we’re paranoid loons for … studying up on the area’s very real issues and being wary our daughter has to walk 1.4 miles to food while others never have to leave their dorm? The was literally a murder not even a week or two ago on the route I-House kids have to take to their meals. I know this is a Chicago forum, so it’s full of rah-rah alums, parents and university staff, but try to be SLIGHTLY impartial. I love the rationalization of the recent murder too. Oh it was JUST a gang hit, no big deal. My gosh.

124

coldbrew22 - Parent of a recent graduate (male) who the first two years in I-house. I for one am not dismissive of your concerns. In fact, I completely understand them. I had many of the same concerns you have. But I was maybe a little more understanding because my son was an RD admit with a late deposit. I hope your daughter has a great year and that you come to view I-house with affection, as I have.

125

@coldbrew22 are you basing your opinion on how I-House is awful on personal experience? There are people who have lived in it who say exactly the opposite.

The distance from I-House to Cobb Lecture hall is .6 miles where the distance from North to Cobb is .5 miles. The only thing I mapped, but it isn’t the farthest building in the Quad from North, and definitely not the closest to I-House. I suspect there are buildings on the East Side of the Quad that are actually closer to I-House then they are to North. I also suspect there are things closer to I-House then South on the North side of campus like the field house and Ratner. And no dorm is closer to Rockefeller then I-House.

The walk to food is definitely bad to Cathay from I-house. No argument there. And it really isn’t on the way to/from class.

While Purdue is a state college, the price you put down only applies to Indiana residents, so your back-handed retort only works for native Boilermakers. And last I looked Harvard is one of the tangoing big boys, so isn’t that fair to reference?

I also realize that nothing on this message board is going to make you feel better. I hope you give it a chance and you are pleasantly surprised.

126

@coldbrew22 “Comparing Chicago’s housing options in 2018 to Purdue or Harvard or what you went through in the 80s is such a juvenile tactic”

Realize you are upset, but no reason for ad hominem attacks, especially when the poster you refer to is one of the more thoughtful and knowledgeable posters on this forum.

Since you frame this as a customer satisfaction problem (paid 70-80K and haven’t got what I want), you are always welcome to stop being a customer and demand a refund.

127

@BrianBoiler Hyde Park’s violent crime index is 3x Cambridge, Mass. A person was just murdered on her route to eat. Harvard is Harvard, the most prestigious university in the world, and on the eastern seaboard. U of C is prestigious, and we’re proud of our daughter, but she, like I assume all of her U of C classmates who applied, was rejected from Harvard. Bringing in other schools’ dorms is apples to oranges in an attempt to patronize us and dismiss the validity of our issues. Apples to apples is International House (and Stony) vs. North, South, Max, BJ, Snitch. Thanks.

128

A certain perennial mind-set is being exemplified here - the kind that can say, “she, like I assume all of her U of C classmates who applied, was rejected from Harvard”. Admissions needs to do a better job of identifying those kids and permit them to avoid crime-ridden Hyde Park, avoid living in older residences that thousands have lived in and found satisfactory, avoid walking anywhere more than .3 miles from their dorm room - most of all, avoid all that foldarol about the aims of education when what they are really seeking is comfort and prestige.

The trouble with Chicago’s recent surge of popularity and its many glossy new amenities is that some kids and their parents are now being attracted by those things rather than the ones that attracted students of past years. I’m utterly unsympathetic with the disappointment these types feel about these dorm assignments, but I think I see well enough where it’s coming from. They ought not to be at Chicago with values like that.

129

@Coldbrew22 I know you don’t believe this, but the people on this board are not trying to patronize you (at least I’m not). Maybe this will help you feel better. The data appears to be fairly recent, but it is a map and crime by location off of Trulia.com and the I-house to campus and Cathay appear to be in the safe zone where the NE and NW areas of Hyde Park appear to be where the violent crime occurs.

www.trulia.com/real_estate/Hyde_Park-Chicago/2918/crime/

I also have a son who is starting at UChicago this fall and I am concerned about his safety. If my daughter was going, I’d probably ramp that concern up a level as well. That being said, I believe the murder two weeks ago was the second homocide on UChicago’s campus in 20 years. My other son goes to UMD and in his two years they’ve had two homicides on campus (I know Apples and Oranges, but those are my two data points).

My son also got his first choice dorm (Campus North), but paid his deposit on his first day possible (he was ED1). I’d be curious to know when your daughter’s deposit went in. I suspect in the RD round if she was also waiting on Harvard. I think if there is anything to blame here it is college housing that said it is rare to not get one of your first three choices. When every student lists their top three choices that are the same, it is impossible to meet this requirement without excess capacity. They could have cut demand as suggested above, but then maybe you nor I would be discussing this right now.

130

It’s nine years ago, not last week, but nothing remotely like this has happened in a Chicago undergraduate dorm:
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2011/4/20/copney-amabile-cosby-jiggetts-harvard-kirkland-shooting-closing/?utm_source=thecrimson&utm_medium=web_primary&utm_campaign=recommend_sidebar

Hyde Park isn’t Disneyland, but it’s not significantly dangerous for students in an absolute sense, and it’s also not significantly more dangerous for students relative to many/most of its peers in urban areas, certainly including Yale, Columbia, Penn, Hopkins, Duke, MIT, Berkeley, UCLA, Washington, Wisconsin. There’s less street crime at Cornell or Dartmouth, but a lot more drunk driving, not to mention passing out in a snowbank and freezing to death. Or a dearth of Michelin-starred restaurants. Harvard is lucky to have first-class urban amenities and relatively low street crime, but it’s far from perfectly safe for students there, too.

International House has been housing undergraduates for only 5 or 6 years; it doesn’t have anything like a long history of being horrible. The grad students who lived there tended to like it a lot. It had a great sense of community and really interesting events. It’s integrally part of the University of Chicago campus. It’s closer to everything than my house is to the commuter train station that serves (and defines) my neighborhood. Unless your standard is never having to walk anywhere, it qualifies as “close” to everything that matters. It’s not beautiful, and if the doubles there are no bigger than the singles in which I have stayed a few weekends, that’s a problem. But the complaining that’s going on is, for the most part, pure and simple entitled whining.

Singles are not a problem. Halls of singles occupied by college students are very social places. Keep your door open, and you have roommates, the best kind or roommates. The ones you don’t have to share a bedroom with. Shut your door, and you can go to sleep if you want, and no one can sexile you. Best of all possible worlds for most people.

131

@coldbrew22 - My son chose UChicago over all other schools he visited (including Princeton and Columbia - didn’t have any interest in Harvard) and applied ED1. He also paid his deposit the first day possible (Dec. 18). In his housing application specifically stated he preferred a single anywhere over a double. He was placed in a double. He would have preferred a single in I-House rather than the double in North - so to say no one wants I-House over North would be incorrect.

Nothing we can do about it - he’s over it, I’m over it…I don’t think housing read his application, I think the applications were sorted by dorm and placed without much, if any regard, to the other information he provided. My only hope is that they will better explain the housing process for next year’s applicant’s so that they don’t have the same experience that my son had.

I don’t see how Housing can give money to one group of students and not others - shouldn’t we pay less since our son is in a double not a single? The list would go on-and-on…

Not much to be done - I’m sure your daughter will be fine and will find a way to make it all work…if not, I believe there will be quite a long line on week three with students looking to make a room change.

132

To the crime concerns:

https://www.chicagomaroon.com/article/2018/1/23/hyde-park-crime-rates-hold-steady-slight-increase/

Hyde Park saw 1,703 crimes in 2017, including 331 violent crimes and a single homicide.

http://www.cmap.illinois.gov/documents/10180/126764/Hyde+Park.pdf

As of 2015, Hyde Park had a population of 26,893.

This puts the crime rate at 1 per 16 residents, and the violent crime rate at 1 per 81 residents. I’m no math major, but I’m pretty sure the homicide rate was 1 per 26,893 residents. That’s about 3.7 per 100,000, on par with such hells on earth as Seattle, WA; Portland, OR; and Virginia Beach, VA.

Make of that what you will.

133

re#129:
FWIW I am not aware of any huge “drunk driving” problem at Cornell. At least historically, since the most utilized bars were in Collegetown and everyone walked to them. There are tons of house parties where alcohol can be found, but again most of these are also near campus and are walked to. Even to the extent there is some, and I’m sure there is, I’ve no idea if it is “worse” than Chicago. Except in Chicago the culprits are less likely to be students, and more likely to be high on something else, I suspect.

I have not heard of anyone at Cornell “passing out in a snowbank and freezing to death”…
The winter weather there is not much different than in Chicago. When I lived in Chicago, there were incidents where people were killed for taking the street parking spaces that someone else had shoveled out. These were in the news. I am not aware of anything like this happening in Ithaca.

Ithaca has a lot of restaurants, and a lot of them are affordable to college students.
Most college students cannot afford to eat at Michelin-starred restaurants.

134

@coldbrew22 Re: #122 – I don’t think it’s “juvenile” to realize that things could be worse. (BTW, when I mentioned the Purdue situation it was with tongue in cheek.) Having perspective and realizing that things often turn out better than you fear are life lessons that young adults need to learn. As is learning that folding your arms and stomping your feet usually don’t help. I have been focused on helping our daughter keep an open mind about I-House. In this respect, even my example from “the 80’s” is relevant. It’s unclear to me how your daughter feels about her housing assignment. Is she as unhappy as you are? If so, my offer still stands to connect her with the group chats that have helped my daughter feel optimistic about the interesting and vibrant students she is about to meet.

Like you, I am concerned about safety, but only marginally more than I would have been if she ended up in BJ (her first choice) or North (her second choice). This was one of the factors we weighed during the decision-making process as she was looking at the pros and cons of all her options. For UChicago, IMO safety is definitely a con, but the city of Chicago is a huge pro. I’ve been reading with interest the various perspectives about safety from CC posters who have real life experience with the campus and surrounding area, and we will continue to engage in serious discussion with my daughter about how she can be as safe as possible at UChicago.

And no, she did not apply to Harvard - no interest.

135

@monydad , good points, but you may be taking #129 a bit too literally. I do not set up as @JHS 's dramaturge, but I believe he is speaking with a rhetorical flourish in order to make the point that unlikely as those events are at Cornell, it is even more unlikely that a kid walking west on 59th from I-House will be gunned down. And the point about the absence of Michelin-starred restaurants must be that deprivations come in many forms, and some aren’t to be taken very seriously. I forget now whether this is the trope of metonymy.

136

@monydad: I was too cavalier about Cornell, vs. Dartmouth. I agree with what you say about Cornell – not so much driving (at least by undergraduates; I know some grad students who drove a lot more, and drove drunk). And I don’t know specifically about anyone dying in a snowbank there, or for that matter at Dartmouth, but it did happen with dismaying frequency in the community where I grew up, which sent a fair number of kids to both places, and also in the exurban community where my wife went to high school. That, and drunk driving issues, were consequences of living in a rural/suburban setting where it was cold and people drank a lot. It’s cold at the University of Chicago, but people simply don’t drink as much as they do many other places (although they certainly do drink). My general point is that there are plenty of dangers in places with no street crime to speak of.

But no one dies in parking disputes in Hyde Park. Even if they did, it would not likely be Chicago students, very few of whom, even the really rich ones, keep cars there.

As for Michelin-starred restaurants, OK, hyperbole. But both of my foodie kids found ways to check out a lot of hot restaurants in Chicago. Most are happy to let college kids get drinks and order a couple of appetizers at the bar.

137

@coldbrew22 The only thing that you can find to be fact here is Harvard DIDN’T WANT YOUR KID, and here is another fact, mine wanted UChicago, so try not to make assumptions about things you don’t know about.

138

Well, it’s silly to assume that your kid’s classmates must have been rejected from Harvard simply given the significant portion of ED1’s . . .

139

Chicago was my kids top choice. Didn’t apply to Harvard…or any other Ivy. He was smart enough not to conflate admission percentages with academic rigor.

140

Reading all this, I’m reminded of Godwin’s Law. It’s a general principle of the internet, and states: “As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Hitler approaches 1”

The UChicago/CC equivalent would be, “As a thread grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Harvard approaches 1.” Call it Zimmer’s Law, since our dear president has not one but two degrees from you-know-where.

Since the comparisons have started, I will say this for the record: the fact UChicago was distinctly not Harvard was a point in its favor when I applied to the former and not the latter.

To some of the above points.

The risk of gun violence for a twentysomething black man from the South Side who works with current/former gang members is as relevant to safety at UChicago as the chance of rain on Saturn.

I have spent two years in Chicago, and done lots of campaign work in poor, nonwhite neighborhoods. National media outlets don’t talk as much about the 99.97% of Chicagoans who weren’t shot last year, but they exist. Which in no way means the violence isn’t an issue worth solving, or devastating within some very specific subgroups. If you are a 20-year-old black man in Englewood, your risk is many times the citywide homicide rate, and the effects of repeated trauma and violence in these areas are devastating. But Chicago isn’t Caracas, Hyde Park is not Chicago, and UChicago students aren’t exactly a vulnerable population.

A story that’s short and fun, but mostly short:

I applied to some UK schools. This being the UK system, every university I applied to saw the same personal statement. I got an Oxbridge offer. I also got an outright rejection from a mid-tier school. The latter’s decision letter stated, verbatim: “Unfortunately your personal statement was neither as impressive nor as appealing as the personal statements of other, successful applicants. The statement was also a little clichéd in places.”

I think about this whenever people bring up rankings and Prestige™.