<p>I’m not putting down Harvard, but I’ve noticed a definite difference in the nature of the threads here on CC and I’ve been reading them on and off for several years. Harvard has a long standing tradition of looking for leaders - they look for academic/intellectual leaders too, but I don’t think it’s really the primary goal of the admissions committee. I’ve got nothing against Harvard, my oldest applied there, but not to U. of Chicago. For my younger son I think U of Chicago would be a great school - Harvard probably not so much.</p>
<p>Rereading this thread I saw no one here putting down any school. It strikes me as odd that if one says that HYP is a notch above Chicago that is considered just a simple statement of opinion, but when one suggests, at least in some important respects, it may be otherwise or the reverse, it is considered bashing.</p>
<p>Re: Works too hard/ introvert concerns</p>
<p>I can relate on the introverted scale. What I’ve found at Chicago is a broadly based acceptance and appreciation for who I am-- something I didn’t feel as much in high school, something I don’t think I would have felt at another college. (Not that the kids aren’t nice, but rather that I’d be too intimidated to feel comfortable.) I will also point out that most Chicago kids aren’t exactly super-quiet; it’s just that I think you’ll find a larger group of quiet, inward types than you might elsewhere. But that’s all conjecture. Some of the grad students at Chicago who did HYP undergrad strike me as inward and quiet as well.</p>
<p>Chicago’s great if you love to work, not quite as great if your academic sense of self is wrapped up in your grades and a need of attention and reward. I think Chicago can help socially harness the workers by providing them with the opportunities to meet those like them and provide productive, wonderful class discussions. </p>
<p>Where I’ve seen Chicago bust people up, though, is the kind of person who insists that he/she is an A student and is receiving a B+. Chicago is academically challenging and doesn’t abide by the “special snowflake” or “grade-inflated indifference” schools of education. It’s up to the student to keep his/her head in check-- not too downtrodden, not too pompous.</p>
<p>I suspect that there are a lot or reasons that individual applicants could choose Chicago over any place on earth. A lot of those reasons may be expressed in their “Why Chicago?” essays: they like the core, they like the economics (or math or bio or linguistics) department, they appreciate the sense of humor, they want to explore an new and interesting city, they want to stay close to a familiar but interesting city, they appreciate the sense of humor, they like it that the focus is firmly on academics. All credible reasons. </p>
<p>Several posts in this thread have suggested that Harvard, Yale, and Princeton are the absolute best. They would probably be great schools for almost everyone at Chicago. But best for everyone? I doubt it.</p>
<p>Well, duh! No place is best for everyone, and Chicago is certainly best for some. But – and this is at the heart of a lot of discussions we are having – if the Chicago undergraduate student body were comprised only of those for whom Chicago is “best”, I believe (a) it would be a very different student body than the one it has, and (b) it would be less interesting and attractive to the faculty.</p>
<p>^Amen. Once again, JHS has wise words.</p>
<p>CUE7,</p>
<p>With what HYP can spend per student (add Williams to the mix…) I would hope they do some things better than Chicago, whose endowment yields far less, and from which far less is spent on undergrads. So I grant you that HYP should have better clubs (ECs to you…), better fin aid and such. Heaven help them if they don’t. </p>
<p>So yes, if these things are important to a student, then the weight should go to HYP.</p>
<p>HOWEVER, please don’t fall for the marketing hype about “connection to avenues of power.” I would agree if you stated that the HYP marketing and alumni machines sing this matra all the time. I would also suggest that you would find little real evidence that this is true. And interestingly, when I lived in Boston and worked at one of these elite institutions, I had many a discussion with Harvard and other elite alums about this issue. While the “connection” issue is largely true for HBS grads, most Harvard College grads thought it was waaaay overblown, that most of the supposed connections came from family networks that existed before college. No surprise here. </p>
<p>On close examination, one can see that much of the success of HYP grads in getting coveted NYC internships etc. is just geography in action. And I would suggest that UofC grads have very good luck getting internships at Chicago firms if that’s their interest (lest we forget that Chicago is the home of a good number of alternative financial institutions).</p>
<p>Look Cue7, if you want a “search for truth”, do it off the Chicago section of these boards. I doubt very much that anyone on this section of CC needs a reminder of how “wonderful” HYP are. You can’t avoid their PR machine. They have the best in the business. UofC does not, so what’s wrong with a bit of alternative PR? Contrast your comments with JHS’s just above.</p>
<p>Sigh. Newmassdad, you should be coming after me, too, because I am agreeing with Cue7 here.</p>
<p>I should report that my recent-graduate daughter and her friends believe strongly that Chicago lags the Ivies in creating an employment network. They think the difference is much greater than I do. Part of that has to do with the fact that many of them are un- or underemployed, of course, but they DO have that perception, despite being very satisfied – smug, even – about their undergraduate experience at Chicago.</p>
<p>My point has little to do with what attracts students, the reason for attendance, or if one would attend another institution if given the opportunity, but what happens once one is at the University, its culture of inquiry, and its approach to the pursuit of knowledge above all else (though, of course other things are pursued as well).</p>
<p>Newmassdad - I don’t really have much more to say here. You seem to be getting quite worked up about my basic contention - that HYP are wonderful schools that outpace Chicago in several areas. From what I can tell, and from what JHS has even said quite bluntly in his post above, JHS more or less seems to be agreeing with me on many fronts. </p>
<p>I don’t know why my posts - which I think are actually pretty reasonable - irk you. Also, maybe it’s just me, but when conducting a “search for the truth,” I have confidence that a Chicago discussion board might be a good place to go. Sure, people could be biased on the Chicago board, but outside of your somewhat angry posts, I think there have been some good observations made here. What I really like about Chicago, and what is evident here, is you can get wide-ranging views, but the discourse itself usually ends up being quite provoking and worthwhile. </p>
<p>Finally, like JHS, I strongly disagree with you about the strength of Chicago’s networking in comparison to HYP. I’m not going to get into an argument about this, lets just be clear that we obviously stand on opposite sides of the fence regarding this. All I can say is, as a Chicago grad who knows lots of other Chicago grads and a fair number of HYP grads, from my view, the Chicago network doesn’t function in the same way at all.</p>
<p>Chicago networking lags HYP, but it also lags Northwestern, USC, Michigan and a host of other larger schools who have a more preprofessional aspect emphasized in their curricula. In Academe, Chicago may or may not have an edge, but it certainly doesn’t suffer. This is not to say the Chicago network is absent. S1 has a great job offer for next year after graduation as well as great grad school opportunities as a result of being a student at Chicago combined with his own initiative. He is not an econ major but is in the social sciences/humanities.</p>
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<p>As a current student at U of C, that’s simply not true. No here particularly cares about Harvard, Princeton, Yale. It’s not that we think we’re superior or inferior to them or any such thing: it just isn’t an interesting thing to talk about. Sure, there are ‘If I wanted an A I would have gone to Harvard’ shirts but, much like ‘Where Fun Comes to Die’, they aren’t supposed to be taken seriously. Honestly, we’re all too busy re-writing papers and arguing about Marx to spend time worrying about what people think of other institutions half a continent away.</p>
<p>Back to writing. (It’s fun here, I promise!)</p>
<p>Dman-e: That’s good to hear. I’ve talked about this many times before, but Chicago now is considerably different than when I attended. In late 90s, Chicago was still very, very much a safety school for elite ivy hopefuls, and with a 60%+ accept rate, lower ranking or whatever, and a much larger gap in talent between Chicago and HYP, the atmosphere was just different. Chicago then probably had more of an atmosphere of an insecurity complex than Chicago now.</p>
<p>^^^ </p>
<p>My dad told me that his school was once made fun on in a Doonesbury comic, where the protagonist receives rejection letters from Yale, Harvard, etc.</p>
<p>“Oh well,” the protagonists thinks. “There’s always _____!”</p>
<p>(This school is now a hot ticket school. Shows you how things can change!)</p>