UChicago over the next 10 years

There is no agreement – express, implied, contractual, statutory or otherwise – that LLS kids cannot or will not go to law school. What is clear is that LLS is not a professional pre-law major. Many LLS kids do go to law school. Law schools respect the broad interdisciplinary nature of the major, its rigor and selective admissions.

^^Not surprising. It seems like the kind of major to which someone thinking of law school would gravitate. Not exactly sure what a “professional” Pre-Law major even looks (Isn’t Pre-Anything by definition NOT a professional program?) but if the College can do a Pre-Bus. major that fits within the Liberal Arts criterion, and obviously offers many possible Pre-Med tracks that do so, then Pre-Law should be a snap to achieve.

I literally don’t know a single LLS major that isn’t planning on applying to law school, regardless of Hutchinson’s ideals most people do it because it’s the ideal easy, flexible pre-law major. It’s also much closer to political science than philosophy.

I don’t know how the IOP could make a practice-focused major that would be any different from Political Science or Public Policy. Unless they do something that abandons the last pretense of academic legitimacy, like the Political Communications major at GW, they really can’t get much more preprofessional than the existing programs.

What is the implicit ranking that this discussion is converging on? Is it program quality? Is it reputation? If it’s the latter is it reputation by the general public, by a certain magazine, or what?

This discussion has a strangely constrained focus. Caltech and MIT are at the tippy top of American universities. Nobody has mentioned them. Why? How do they fall short in the list of tippy top colleges that Chicago is supposedly competing in?

Don’t get me wrong. I love UofC. My son graduated from there. I taught there for a semester (on loan from another university to fill in for a faculty member on sabbatical).

MIT and Caltech are sui generis and certainly only Stanford would be in their league in their areas… UChicago has no engineering . It is very strong in Math, Statistics and Physics , but nor life sciences. Apples and oranges. .

I’d keep my eye on MIT. The school is very prominent at the grad. level for some of the social sciences: Econ, Poly Sci and Psych are three areas that are ranked higher on USNews (grad. school) than UChicago. Its business is top 5 and of course it dominates in the world of science, including biological and CS. At one point it was “apples and oranges”. Not sure of that anymore although, admittedly, the social sciences are currently a very small part of the undergraduate program. If MIT wanted to expand its undergrad. program to include more econ, poly sci and psych majors, among others, it could easily do so and wouldn’t hurt its undergrad. reputation one iota (in fact, it would help). Not sure why they couldn’t dominate in sociology, history - perhaps even philosophy - as well. They currently offer some interesting grad. degree options in sociology and history that are interdisciplinary and related to science and economics. Social science is becoming less “writing” oriented and more “methodology” oriented, as evidenced by the new UChicago SSI Core options; MIT’s admission requirements and focus on a science-based approach make it well-poised to take advantage of methodological shifts and increased rigor in the “non-sciency” disciplines.

From the following, we can see the breakdown of undergraduates by major:

https://www.chicagomaroon.com/2016/05/17/breakdown-of-undergraduates-by-major/

So let’s create a quick summary showing UChicago enrollment percentage, and MIT’s graduate school’s USNWR ranking in those fields:

24% Economics (#1)
10% Biological Sciences (#1)
10% Mathematics (#2)
8.5% Political science (#9)
5.8% Computer Science (#1)
5.6% Physics (#1)
4.9% Psychology (#8)
3.3% Chemistry (#2)
3.3% Statistics (#3 - Applied Math)

So far we are up to 75% overlap, and I am not counting areas where USNWR has no ranking for MIT, which includes all of the humanities (MIT is very strong in some of those as well, such as Philosophy). So in terms of quality programs, MIT competes quite well with UChicago in the programs students actually major in.

That doesn’t mean that students who are a fit for UChicago are a fit for MIT, or vice-versa, but they are absolutely peers, and they do compete for some students.

hebegebe: I agree there’s overlap. But aren’t you overstating the overlap by using undergraduate information against graduate program rankings?

It’s just the best proxy I could easily get my hands on, as undergraduate programs are often not ranked. But if you have a source, please enlighten us.

I think that @hebegebe 's point is quite valid: When you look at which fields actual Chicago students are most interested in, MIT has among the strongest faculties (and graduate students) in each of those fields. That’s a good environment for learning. It also has high-quality humanities offerings and meaningful general education requirements. Chicago and MIT are often thought of as radically different, because of MIT’s engineering strength and Chicago’s abstention from all traditional engineering. But there’s a compelling argument to be made that many or most prospective Chicago students should give MIT serious consideration. (Many probably do already.).

Purely anecdotally, I have never heard of anyone applying to both schools.

@Chrchill, my math major kid with a strong interest in philosophy and loved the core, graduated in 2016 from UChicago. His top 2 application favorites were MIT and UChicago.

My son’s two top choices where he applied were Chicago and MIT.

We know a couple of kids same age as my S19 (not at his school but went to school with him at one point) who will be applying to both. One is shooting for Math or Physics.

@JBStillFlying said:

I didn’t see your response when I wrote post #47 above, but of course I agree, and not just because I’m an MIT alum.

With Harvard making a big investment into engineering, I would expect MIT to compete by pushing into humanities as well. They just received a #2 ranking for humanities worldwide from Times Higher Education, just below Stanford, and above Harvard, so they clearly have the chops to do so. If they do push effectively into the humanities, we could see a future where HYPSM becomes HSM where each is strong in just about every undergraduate field, with P and Y being part of a second tier that would also include UChicago.

The alternative is cede the humanities and let Harvard just attack them on the engineering over time, and why in the world why would they do that? MIT has a bit of a challenge in that their endowment is smaller than both Harvard and Stanford’s. On a per student basis it is about 30% lower, so they will have to be careful in their approach. One area where MIT will not compete is medical school, which is probably best because that can be a money pit.

My D applied to both, but UChicago was her #1 pick.

When Chicago and MIT were both unrestricted EA schools, it was pretty common for people to apply EA to both. And I think if you look at the “Results” threads on CC you will see a bunch of people who say they applied to both MIT and Chicago. It’s not unusual at all.

I believed that a lot of STEM students at Uchicago have shared some common grounds with MIT. I remembered the first time I set foot on MIT campus, I talked to a student that her brother just graduated from uchicago, and said that uchicago is very prestigious. In terms of the overall culture, I think most people thought MIT is just a tech school which is actually not very accurate. MIT is not just tech, but math, science and tech with strong fields in major social sciences.
Uchicago is famous in many fields, but economics is outstanding. However, when uchicago is talking about business econ major( I really doubt its effectiveness to be installed in the Econ dept), MIT already launched a three- in -one Econ program called Compsci-Econ-Data science degree. New candidates need to fulfil all major requirements in three different fields to be qualified to become a major. this tech school has already positioned itself to compete head-to-head with Harvard or uchicago peers.I don’t know much about uchicago culture, but the culture at MIT is very brutal. Recently an article written by a student posted on their admission blog about the difficulty to survive which finally catched much attentions from their parent group, many read it with a sinking motion, or even with tears, and made it as a must read for all parents.

I have also seen many cases that those students who applied to MIT are also considering Uchicago as alternatives.

Please share the link to that admission blog if you can.