UChicago=Ivy League?

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of Chicago ✅
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<p>Unalove - You raise some fair points, and I realize the position I’m about to take will not at all be popular on a board that espouses education and development, and after having attended a school which places an absolute premium on scholarship. Nevertheless, when deciding between schools, I absolutely think that strength of brand of a school should be taken into account and become a factor in the decision making process. </p>

<p>You may have encountered a few situations where a school’s strong brand can be a “setback.” Despite this fact, I strongly doubt that many Harvard or Yale grads often feel as if they could attain a certain job or internship, except their Yale or Harvard degree is “holding them back.” </p>

<p>At the same time, I don’t think Chicago grads feel the same way. Indeed, at times, I’m sure Chicago students felt they were just as qualified as their compatriots at Harvard or Princeton, but employers/professional schools clearly had a preference for taking graduates from more prestigious schools. </p>

<p>For long stretches of its history, Chicago snubbed its nose at the idea of brand strength and awareness. Now, however, I think the school is taking a more vested interest on this front. For most students, I don’t think there are many advantages to going to a “sleeper” school as opposed to a school with a clearly stronger brand. It’s why - again perhaps to the consternation of some - I defer a bit to HYP’s brand strength, and more often group Chicago with schools such as Duke, Cornell, etc. in terms of its strengths in aspects OUTSIDE the realm of education offered. </p>

<p>(Again, for strength of academics, Chicago is much more on par with HYP and stronger than schools such as Duke or Brown. As I’ve said before, however, in reading more of the relevant scholarship on universities and the roles they play, a leading univ. is about much, much more than the academics it offers.)</p>

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<p>Cue7, you may have a beef against UofC, but please, this statement is a bit over the top. How can anyone make such a sweeping generalization, especially since UofC tends to enroll a student different from “more prestigious schools”. For instance, if one is looking for engineers, one might well pass on UofC students and take an MIT grad. But this is not a preference for a “more prestigious” school. It’s a preference for a skill UofC students don’t have. </p>

<p>Then there’s the issue of prestige. What does that mean? Am I to give a preference to a Duke student because I heard they’re good in basketball? </p>

<p>The little understood side note of “name” schools is that it can work against you, too:</p>

<p>If you went to Harvard, you are far more likely to be interviewing with someone whose kid was rejected by Harvard or its peers than to be interviewing with an alum. IMHO, that interviewer is as likely to be hostile to the elitism you represent as a Harvard grad as to be impressed. I’ve been on enough interviewing committees to have seen this in action many times, especially when you get out of the Northeast. </p>

<p>Chew on that thought.</p>

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<p>Newmassdad - you’re right, I may defer too much to the weight given to a HYP degree. At the same time, I don’t want to make it seem like I have a “beef” against the U of C. I received a great education and great exit options, and it was a good fit for me. I just think, though, that overall, HYP are better schools. Outside of academia, Chicago doesn’t hold much of an edge over these schools. In my past, if I’d gotten into Chicago and Yale, I’d have gone to Yale in a heartbeat. I was not, however, a Yale-caliber applicant, and I had no hooks. I still don’t really look at Chicago as one of Yale’s peers, overall. I’d heartily endorse Chicago when in a conversation comparing Chicago to Cornell or Duke or Brown, but when it comes to the HYP schools, I just sort of shrug and look at these places as Chicago’s superiors. </p>

<p>Again, from what I know, and in thinking about the fields most students of elite colleges enter, I just don’t see a HYP degree as any sort of hinderance whatsoever. As with most classes at Chicago, my year, finance/banking held jobs a lot of kids in my class wanted. I think overall, they were pretty happy w the level of interest given to Chicago grads, but I don’t think most held the notion that Chicago grads were more coveted than their peers at Princeton. In academia, Chicago was probably toward the top of the heap, but I think thoughtful grads from HYP have great opportunities in that realm too. </p>

<p>Maybe outside the northeast, you’re right, it is a disadvantage to go to Harvard or Yale. I dunno tho - from what I’ve seen, graduates from these schools seem to do quite well, and I rarely have heard the complaint that these places hinder their grads in some way. </p>

<p>It seems like on this board, posters ask how Chicago compares to Harvard or Yale or whatever. Outside of academia, I just don’t see that much of a comparison. </p>

<p>With prestige - all I really meant was there seems to be a gap between HYP (and MIT Cal Tech for science types) and everyone else. That’s all. If you’re selecting between any other roughly similar schools, brand strength doesn’t really come into play - but I do think HYP have established a stronger brand than pretty much everyone else out there. To me, distinctions between Duke and Chicago or Cornell and Rice or whatever are pretty much irrelevant. I’d still see a gap, though, between HYP and the rest. </p>

<p>Again, all I was really doing in my original post was deferring to the HYP schools. Maybe I defer too much, but especially after graduation, I’ve only become more impressed with the strength of brand surrounding those schools. Maybe I’m way off base, but, even after attending Chicago and enjoying my time there, I just don’t see U of C on the level of a Yale or Harvard. Maybe that’s crazy, but I just don’t see it.</p>

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<p>Cue7, </p>

<p>OK. Peace. :)</p>

<p>Please don’t misunderstand, I did not mean to imply that a Harvard degree is a negative factor overall in job hunting. In many cases it is not. But not always. In some settings, there are real biases against these grads. And we must keep in mind that the places that value a HYP credential, such as consulting and I banking don’t have room for everyone that wants to head there. Some folks do, indeed, end up in more traditional roles for a variety of reasons. </p>

<p>Another reference point: I lived in the Boston area for many years - a place crawling with Harvard grads and a good number of grads from other elite colleges. The people that seemed to care the most about having a HYP degree (throw MIT into the mix too…) were fellow HYP/M grads. Granted, if they’re the hiring or admissions decision maker, maybe these biases matter. But even in Boston, most hiring managers graduated from “lesser” colleges like BU and UMass. Guess what they value?</p>

<p>I agree that UofC is not a HYP. Heck, it does not have the endowment $$, and its fin aid shows it. So do the SAT scores (the best, albeit imperfect, proxy, and the only publicly available one, for student quality).</p>

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<p>Not long ago S1 and I were sitting at a table with a mix of students from a variety of schools including HYP. At the table was a well known Harvard scholar who quite nicely asked each student about themselves. After each said their piece, he would smile nod his head and go one to the next student. When he got to S1 and heard he attended Chicago, he sat back in his chair smiled, turned to the others and said, “We have a genius at the table.” “Now there is a school.” After being out in the world for many years, this reaction is more common than one might imagine. I have many many more such stories ranging from academic settings to powerful hedge fund managers and founders of wall street investment firms. Chicago has considerable prestige (perhaps more than HYP), particularly as newmassdad suggests, for what Chicago is good at, graduating people who can think, argue, and revel in inquiry.</p>

<p>Interestingly, this is not a recent phenomenon nor the result of increased admissions marketing. Here is quote by William James not long after the University was founded:

As far as I can tell, little has changed.</p>

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<p>idad - Yah, Chicago occupies a strange place because in some circles, it commands more respect than ANY other school. Many today still talk about Chicago being the BEST american university. </p>

<p>Having said this, I think a Harvard or Yale degree is more universally recognized and respected in a wider range of circles. Sure, as others have mentioned, it may cut the other way and place certain connotations on the specific graduate, but overall, HYP are well known, strong brand degrees. </p>

<p>You are always going to get the types that strong value a Chicago education or a Reed College or St. John’s College background. Overall, though, I think HYP has a significant edge in terms of strength of brand and the benefits the brand can offer its graduates.</p>

<p>Again, I’ve said this before, but I still look at a place like Yale as Chicago’s superior. I don’t mean for this to detract from my alma mater, its just more of a pragmatic nod toward the established pecking order amongst top schools.</p>

<p>(Also, on a random note, I’ve also had the U of C rep work completely the opposite way. As in, “Oh, you went to Univ of Chicago? The really weird school on the south side?” or “U of C? I hear the undergrad has an… odd reputation.” Has no one else seen this side of things? I think a lot of people - and probably some employers - see Chicago as just kind of a weird, nerdy place)</p>

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<p>I can go with HYP more prestigious for some things, more well known in general, and perhaps better for pre-professional preparation, but I would not equate that with superior. Chicago is superior at what it does, H & Y are superior at what they do. Hopefully Chicago will not try to do the same thing, and remain Chicago. The nation (world) has enough HYPs, it only has one Chicago.</p>

<p>An amusing excerpt from a 2005 Atlantic article:

</p>

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<p>idad - my only contention for what you say is, right now, Chicago (The College) does not (and I believe, should not) exist SOLELY as a training ground for future intellectuals. I thought the original poster was asking about Chicago - The College in comparison to Yale College or Harvard College. If I was picking a PhD program or thinking about taking a professorial position somewhere, then yes, Chicago is right up there with HYP.</p>

<p>As I’ve said before, on the undergrad level, a college is about more than just the academics it offers. Chicago is on par with HYP on the academic level, but certainly not in other areas.</p>

<p>Finally, I think there is considerable overlap in what Chicago “does” and what HYP “does”. These are all large research universities with a vested interest in scholarship and learning. Yes, Chicago may be “more pure” in certain instances, but Harvard, Princeton, etc. have an exceptional collection of outstanding academic departments. These schools are - at the least - comparable to Chicago in their academic offerings. They may not have the same culture of intensity, but I don’t think Chicago is clearly superior to Princeton or Harvard on the academic dept front. I think it’s more of a toss up in this regard.</p>

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<p>I don’t know what we are fighting about. What Cue7 has been saying makes perfect sense. Chicago is a great university, no question, but to argue that its undergraduate program is academically superior to HYP is a little silly. It isn’t clearly inferior, either, but if you think HYP is awash in anti-intellectualism you have another think coming.</p>

<p>Comparing our children’s experience at Chicago with our own at Yale, my wife and I see the following differences:</p>

<p>– Academics: very comparable, which is a good thing. The quarter system theoretically allows one to take more classes, but the Core eats a lot of them up. Neither of our kids has ranged far from his or her main areas of interest other than as required by the Core. We stretched more, and were encouraged to do that. (We both were in Directed Studies, by the way, so that the differences vs. the Chicago Core were not so pronounced.) But these are minor differences.</p>

<p>– Advising: I know newmassdad’s daughter had a great experience at Chicago, but my kids’ experience with their advisors has been mediocre, very cookie-cutter. Our advisors at Yale were mainly full faculty members, and important mentors for us. (Except that my wife clashed a lot with her advisor in the Psychology Department, whom she thought was anti-feminist: Judith Rodin, later president of Penn and now the Carnegie Foundation.)</p>

<p>In general, both of us had closer relationships with faculty than our children have had. Some of that is just luck, and some personality. My son’s major is in a smaller department than my daughter’s, and his emerging sense of really knowing the faculty and grad students is much closer to what we experienced. I think the Math Department at Chicago does an incredible job of this, though, and of providing undergraduates opportunities to work closely with faculty.</p>

<p>– Career help. People at Yale felt very connected to the business and political Establishment; I think people at Chicago feel more ivory-towerish. Both of us got neat paid internships with a lot of university help, and outside of our comfort zones. Mine was with a Wall St. bank, my wife’s with the NYC City Planning department. Neither of us continued on that career path, exactly, but the experience really broadened our sense of what we could do, and definitely bent our trajectories. Chicago’s internship programs seem very linear, not quite as cool.</p>

<p>– Student life. The residential colleges at Yale were wonderful, special. The Chicago house system is OK, but really pale in comparison. Chicago is far from anti-social, but Yale was very social – all the parties you could want, if that’s what you wanted. Extracurriculars at Yale were both higher quality and more robust, especially in the arts, but also, well, everything. Compare the Yale Daily News to the Maroon, the Whiffs to whatever the best Chicago a capella group is called, the Political Union to . . . nothing. Points to Chicago, though, for Scav, and Kuvia’/Kangeiko, and Off-Off, and for being in Chicago with all that has to offer (but also note that you have to leave Hyde Park for almost anything).</p>

<p>Chicago has been improving in all of these areas, and will continue to do so. I don’t think it’s at the point yet where it gets a lot of students turning down HYP to go there without either a strong financial motive (i.e., full merit scholarship and EFC > $50,000) or idiosyncratic personal reasons (e.g., don’t want to be more than two hours from Milwaukee). If I recall correctly, even newmassdaughter would probably have gone to HYP if one had asked her nicely (by saying yes). The great thing, though, is that HYP misses enough newmassdaughters to allow Chicago to have a vibrant, impressive student body, and that’s great.</p>

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<p>I am definitely an ignoramus here: my S is just a freshman and I never attended U Chicago.</p>

<p>That said, I would venture to add my two cents (maybe literally only worth 2 cents: I claim no expert knowledge or professional quality opinion here!) </p>

<p>In terms of the “overall package”, I, as a “lay person”, would say Chicago is below HYP and on par with the other Ivies and Ivy equivalent. After U Chicago gave him EA, he did not bother with safeties and matches and other Ivies for RD. If any one of the HYP trio accepted him, he would not be in Chicago. So, his actions reflect very clearly where he put Chicago. </p>

<p>By Spring while he was waiting for the HYP RD outcome, we all became very aware of the strength and weakness of Chicago. One thing that became abundantly clear to us all is that U Chicago will give him unsurpassed quality education (“unsurpassed”, not “unparalleled” - you get my drift here), but when it comes to professional and career networking, he will have little baby sitting or hand holding with ready made professional networking opportunities and access to the inner sanctum of the field he wants to be in (Investment Banking) at a comparable level rumored to be available in HYP. It is this awareness on his part that put him on an overdrive to be his own rainmaker. </p>

<p>I honestly believe that if he had gotten into HYP, he might have had the drive to hunt for the summer internship at Wall Street between high school and college. He felt that he was already in a disadvantaged position for Wall Street internship and such compared with his future competitors in HYP, and would need a head start and more aggressive approach and he got himself into an “overcompensating mode”. If he had gotten into HYP, there is a very good chance that he might have sat on his laurel for the whole summer - a few of his friends did sit on their laurel for the whole summer secure in their knowledge that soon they would have their key to the kingdom handed over to them in a silver platter as soon as they start their school year (OK I am being half facetious here and exaggerating things :wink: )</p>

<p>His summer Wall Street experience turned out 100 times better than what he expected in his wildest dream. Not only in terms of the work experience, but access to some really key movers and shakers in the industry (the senior executives he worked for AND their spouses and friends in other key Wall Street positions, etc). He is very actively managing his professional network now, and became very good at it, especially for a kid his age.</p>

<p>So, all in all, I think the end result is really ideal for him: the best education at Chicago and all the professional networking and access he drummed up on his own. </p>

<p>Moral of the story? Anyone who comes to Chicago with burning ambition in a field outside of academia should be encouraged to become their own rainmaker if they want to be on par with the HYP type kids with similar ambition. I may be grossly underestimating U Chicago’s resources in non-academic fields for career minded kids, but I believe it’s better that the kids underestimate U Chicago’s resources and go into an “overcompensating mode”, rather than find themselves at the beginning of the 4th year that they have been greatly out gunned and outsmarted by their peers at HYP with far better institutional support and access.</p>

<p>By now, the only weakness of U Chicago for my son is the distance from home (I bet this is not the weakness “he” feels, it’s the weakness “we” feel). Yes, for this reason, I still would prefer HYP which are all within an easy (comparatively speaking) distance from home, but it really is a very small preference even on our part by now. I couldn’t be happier that S is at U Chicago.</p>

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<p>I know I should let this go and it is akin to the dancing on the head of a pin thing, but for better or worse I would argue that for undergrads, Chicago is currently academically superior to HYP etc. I did not say it was a better school to attend, has smarter students, has a better social scene, is more prestigious, or is a better career launching pad, it is just a different academic experience. Let me relate another story, since this is all we can do in a discussion such as this. I have a very old friend who is quite successful and visited college campuses at the invitation of various university and student groups. He loves undergraduate education for education’s sake and believes those who do make the best employees, though these were not recruiting trips. He told me that he was very disappointed with his visits to HYP. He would ask a simple question and often be met with absolute silence. He would even go around the room polling students in case he was being misunderstood. He would ask, “Tell me that moment in class or later in a discussion when you had your first intellectual epiphany, that aha! moment when you saw something in your world quite differently than the moment before?” He was astounded that not only did the students not immediately report any such event, some asked if he could explain what he meant. With a couple of individual student exceptions, this was a recurrent theme, until he visited Chicago. When he asked the question there, hands flew up, and almost every student had an excited story to tell. He has returned several times to each and experienced the same result. His comment to me was, “Either Chicago is doing something very right, or the others are doing something very wrong.” I tend to think it is the former. </p>

<p>Here is a link to some somewhat famous articles about H & P, Y has (perhaps rightfully) been spared. I doubt very much that this is everyone’s (or anyone else’s) experience, but I found them to be interesting nonetheless. I will try and refrain from posting further on this topic, there are only so many ways to say the same thing. :)</p>

<p><a href=“http://chronicle.com/article/Think-Tank-The-Veritas/48590/#[/url]”>http://chronicle.com/article/Think-Tank-The-Veritas/48590/#&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>[The</a> Truth About Harvard - The Atlantic (March 2005)](<a href=“http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200503/douthat]The”>The Truth About Harvard - The Atlantic)</p>

<p>[Lost</a> in the Meritocracy - The Atlantic (January/February 2005)](<a href=“http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200501/kirn]Lost”>Lost in the Meritocracy - The Atlantic)</p>

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<p>If I were to judge just by the students who post here on CC I’d give Chicago the nod any day over Harvard. (I’m a Havard grad BTW, as is my husband, my in-laws all went to U of Chicago - two graduated, two dropped out.) Harvard students seem boring, obsessed by numbers and prestige, and all too many of them seem very pre-professional. This is not the Harvard I attended! That said, I didn’t have too many intellectual epiphanies at Harvard, partly because I realized early on that I was much more interested in producing physical things (architecture in my case) than intellectual ideas. That’s my weakness not Harvard’s, but perhaps there were more of me than I realized. My friends there were mostly musicians and scientists. Last spring the U of C students posted their uncommon essays and they were a lot of fun to read. I haven’t seen anything comparable come out of the Harvard threads.</p>

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<p>JHS – S1 would absolutely agree with you on the quality of advising in the math department (and CS as well). The departmental advisors are his go-to people for everything. He has developed some good relationships with profs as well. S has not had any complaints about job opportunities, on-campus or off.</p>

<p>As far as academic rigor: S called yesterday to (happily) report that he is finally getting his %$#@ kicked in his classes (Honors Abstract Alg, Complex Analysis, Soc/Pol Thought and German). Is also a junior tutor (TA) for a calc class, which means he sits in that lecture with his students, runs the recitation and grades p-sets. Is also involved with a few ECs plus house activities. Is putting in long hours, doing well, and is reveling in the mind-expansion that’s taking place. He wanted to be busy this year – think he got his wish!!</p>

<p>I’ve said this previously, but S picked Chicago > MIT, believing Chicago would challenge him to grow more as a person and offer him the chance to study in fields with a level of seriousness not available at MIT (or most other places). He felt that undergrad was the best (and quite possibly only) chance he would have to attack things like the HUM and SOSC sequences and he has not been disappointed. I think his only regrets are some aspects of the social scene at MIT which he got to enjoy this summer while working there. Though he visited Harvard, Princeton and Cornell (and applied to H&C), he was never as enamored of them as Chicago – he is an academic through and through.</p>

<p>Had he wanted Ivy uber alles, he’s a double legacy at Penn. Neither of my kids ever gave it any consideration. (S2 considered Dart, Brown and Cornell but decided not to apply.)</p>

<p>I agree with mathmom and others that the quality of conversation on the Chicago threads is consistently higher than those of other school threads I’ve followed.</p>

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<p>S1 (freshman) called “happy and bubbly”. He said he got a scathing criticism from his sociology professor on his paper line by line (well turns out, entire class did, criticism all personalized based each kid’s submitted paper). He slept only two hours last night to completely rewrite it. In another class, though he got a better grade than all the other kids he talked to in his class, he still got only “B+” for the first paper he submitted. He said he was very glad that he was at Chicago, not the school that offered him a full ride, since he probably would not have been challenged and squeezed this way. He said he would have been just happy in other schools with ample free time to pursue life’s pleasures since he probably would waltz through the four years getting top grades without making much effort, but in Chicago, he will be happy AND well educated, and he will have truly EARNED it. He sounded like someone who is really enjoying a very tough workout - you know, the kind of exercise euphoria you get even though every single muscle and join hurts. </p>

<p>I am even more ecstatic than he is. I feel we are all getting our money’s worth. This is precisely why we decided to send him to Chicago full pay when we had an option of a full ride. I felt that his limits have never been tested in his life, and he needs an environment that challenges him as much as possible so that he can evolve to the next level, whatever it may be.</p>

<p>This is a kid who never had to life a finger to be a top student in a magnet school rated within top 5 by USNWR. Though we don’t have direct experience, based on what we heard from our friends whose kids are in the HYP+ schools, I have the feeling that he would not have been thus squeezed and stretched in those schools (I don’t know for a fact, just anecdotal examples). </p>

<p>Tuition $37000. Room and Board $11000, Four round trips to home $1400. Seeing a kid happy to have found an intellectual home for the first time in his life, priceless!!!</p>

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<p>My D picked Chicago over the elite Ivies/Stanford, in that she canceled those applications after she got into Chicago EA. I think she’d do it again, although she may have mellowed to the point of recognizing that she could have been happy at all of those schools.</p>

<p>I don’t think she’s in a Department that typicallly focuses on undergrads, but she’s had no problems getting as much attention from as many profs as she wants. If you show a little interest, they respond.</p>

<p>I agree with JHS on the general advisor. He’s a little worthless. But I think it’s mostly because she just doesn’t need him.</p>

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<p>

So if I withdraw my apps to the ivies after getting into to Wayne State, does that mean anything? No!</p>

<p>

How, might I ask? Because everyone here seems to think that Chicago is the only place where students take getting an education seriously? How ridiculous… As if it has a monopoly on students who “learn for the sake of learning”. C’mon, give it a break. 9 times out of 10, these are the students who would have been getting their stimulating educations in Cambridge, New Haven, Princeton, Palo Alto or New York or Philly, if given the opportunity.</p>

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<p>■■■■■, some of these students WERE given the opportunity to study in Cambridge, et al, and declined it. </p>

<p>As for the rest…QED.</p>

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<p>Maybe I’m having a knee-jerk reaction to all this, but when I attended Chicago, this general theme (why Chicago is better than Harvard, Yale, etc.) was a pretty popular point of discussion. All the kids who, at best, made it to the Yale waitlist would sit around talking about how Chicago provided a “real” education, and these other schools just didn’t. I even think there was a t-shirt at Chicago proclaiming, “The University of Chicago: Because if I wanted an A I’d have gone to Harvard.” </p>

<p>I always thought, if anything, when trying to rank schools based on ACADEMICS that this was silly. I’m sure you can get an astoundingly good education at Harvard, although you may need to seek it out more. </p>

<p>I think the situation would just be better if the comparisons between Chicago and HYP stopped. Academically, Chicago is on par - which is great - but I always hesitate to designate one school as clearly better than another when you have to quantify something as hard to measure as quality of education. On every other significant front that measures a undergrad’s worth, Chicago then falls behind HYP. </p>

<p>For the certain student that picks Chicago over Yale or MIT or whatever, great. If you want a great, well-rounded liberal arts education, you can’t get that at MIT, and if you want to be right in a big city, you can’t get that at Yale. There are always certain factors that lead a student to pick a certain school over another. At the same time, this doesn’t mean that Chicago is the better school in any particular regard, just that it fit a certain applicant better. Indeed, as I’ve said above, I think Chicago promoters should at least grant some deference to HYP when assessing schools on ALL fronts (and not just academics). </p>

<p>There is kind of a tradition at Chicago to snub their nose at HYP. Whenever I meet the kids who graduated from these schools (by merit, not tons of hooks - which i know means only about 65% of a class), I more often than not end up very, very, very impressed. HYP still does an outstanding job creating leaders across all fields, and they are all wonderful schools.</p>

<p>In short, I guess the HYP-bashing (implied or blatant) gets a little old for me, and I’d rather just tip my hat to these schools.</p>

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<p>

HYP bashing? You’re kidding, right? Your words speak for themselves:

</p>

<p>Cue7, </p>

<p>Can we just accept that (Econ 101 stuff) the preference set for kids varies? Some are less drawn the the “connections” and such that HYP purports to offer perhaps? Some are looking for a different academic experience? Some may have been rejected by HYP even though they are just as good academically, and want to celebrate their newly discovered home?</p>

<p>Sometimes, discussions in certain settings are not quite what they seem. For instance, this section of the boards, dedicated to UofC, is hardly a place where dispassionate comparisons of the quality of various higher ed institutions will take place. Nor should it be. It is, rather, a place where current and potential attendees discuss, and become comfortable with, their choice. In other words, these discussions are not (in subtle ways) about “finding the truth”, if indeed the truth even exists here. </p>

<p>So please, if some folks find it comfortable to talk about ways in which their choice might be better in their minds, let them do so. </p>

<p>To accuse these folks of “bashing” is blatantly unfair, and serves no purpose here. </p>

<p>JMHO.</p>

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<p>

I find it fascinating why this would be the case. Perhaps its a mechanism by which people cope with rejection? I don’t know. I just find it ludicrous when folks here suggest that

How ridiculous. What the heck is a “real” education!? </p>

<p>In sum, I think all this self-absorbed gloating about having gone to Chicago, blah blah blah and getting a true education, and learning “for the sake of learning” and “being academic”, and “self selecting” is a coping mechanism for insecure people. Many folks from other schools share this same disease/disorder. However, I do find it rampant on this board, much more frequently than others.</p>

<p>

Not too many…There is a reason why the yield barely cracks 35%…</p>