UChicago Parents Thread

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of Chicago ✅
101

<p>To my knowledge, Residents of Snell and Hitchcock had a mandatory house meeting with Resident Heads, Resident Masters, members of the Housing office, as well as the chief of the UChicago police department. The meeting was taken very seriously and consdiering how the students are in college and technically adults, contacting parents wold have been superfluous. A full investigation is going on and the security locks/mesures have been updated and reinforced. Carpenters, locksmiths, and mechanics were all brought in to assess and fix the situation.</p>

<p>I think it was fully recognized by the school and handled in a sufficient manner.</p>

102

<p>sa0209,</p>

<p>Thanks for your input. Obviously, you are not a parent. In all the visits pre-admittance (we had 4) and in all the parent meetings and information sessions, UChicago took great pains to address safety concerns of the parents. Even the student tour guide on our first visit made sure to spout the safety propaganda. Yes, we were told many times about UChicago having the second largest private police force in the world! And we were shown how very difficult it is to gain admittance into any dorm on campus. We were shown all of the blue lights on campus. We were reassured time and time again that UChicago took our parental concern on the safety of our children very, very seriously. So, If I get what you are saying, that now that their super security has been breached…it becomes between the university and the student only? All of a sudden parental concern is superfluous? You have got to be kidding me.</p>

<p>As far as the meeting, there was one housing rep there, and one rep from the police dept. No chief.</p>

<p>And to my absolute certainty, the carpenters, locksmiths and mechanics brought in to assess and fix the situation put a BANDAID on the breached door. I know. I saw it last weekend. </p>

<p>Yes, my daughter is an 18 year old adult. But after all the reassurances on safety by the college to US, her PARENTS, over the last two years, wanting an email from the administration to address the issue is so totally NOT out of line.</p>

103

<p>Sorry, I wasn’t meaning to put down your opinion. I was just trying to point out what had been done since it wasn’t mentioned. </p>

<p>Locks have been replaced. More than just a band-aid</p>

<p>Again, sorry about my post. “Superfluous” wasn’t the right word.</p>

104

<p>And you are right about one thing sa0209, one lock has been replaced. The one that was broken during the break-in. And it was only half of the lock, the plate that covers the female half that was torn off. There was also a strip of wood installed to cover the gap between the two halves of the door. And a new kickplate on just the right half of the door to cover up the splintered wood. The old wooden door and most of the hardware remain. They need to replace the entire door. Hopefully they will, but I won’t know unless they tell me they are, will I?</p>

<p>I know that you are a student and I feel that in no way can you have a valid opinion on this, in a parent’s thread, unless you were directly involved in the break-in. My daughter was really freaked out by this and I think she feels good knowing that her parents are concerned enough to ask questions.</p>

105

<p>Well, I am a parent, although both my children have graduated. And I think you are crossing the line, fairly significantly. The University does not owe parents communication about this incident. (Which is not to say that it would be a bad idea for the University to communicate about it, but I don’t think it’s required.)</p>

<p>Your daughter went to sleep with her door unlocked. Someone took her computer that night. It was probably an intruder, but could easily have been another student. She wasn’t harmed at all. In the process, a security problem with the dorm was identified and addressed. </p>

<p>These things happen at every college: Students feel a bit more comfortable than they should, they are sloppy with security, and stuff gets stolen. College campuses tend to provide easy pickings for thieves, some of whom (many of whom) are indeed fellow students, not hooded intruders.</p>

106

<p>Well to be fair, in no way did I say that a response from the university was required by me, only that I was hoping for communication. So what line did I cross, exactly?</p>

<p>So then, JHS, if what you are saying is true, then the university should stop all of the reassurances given to parents regarding safety. Then when an incident happens, they can say that it is between them and the student. Do you not see that it cannot be both ways on this?</p>

<p>Yes, she did fall asleep with her door unlocked, which is a big no-no. I do not believe she will forget to lock her door ever again, nor will most of the other kids in Hitchcock who didn’t lock their doors.</p>

<p>And Thank goodness no one was harmed, but I really feel that the security problem was NOT identified and addressed. I am telling you that they put a band aid on the door. I saw it before the break-in, and I saw it after. It is still breachable. There are a number of things that can be done with the security system in that house, for very little money, to secure that exit only door. Maybe they will do something other than add a strip of wood to the door, maybe they won’t. But wouldn’t it be nice if either us, or my daughter, were informed of any steps they planned to take? Thats right, besides the house meeting on the subject, my daughter has received no further communication on this.</p>

<p>JHS, how nice it must be to live in your world. To send your children off to college and then just totally step out of their lives. How very progressive and mature. Well I must be in the weak minority. Just because my kid is 18 does not mean that I will turn a blind eye to her safety/living conditions. Yes, her room door was unlocked, that was her fault. And there was a witness to the intruder, the boy on the third floor who’s room was also entered. He woke up and saw the intruder clearly, that is where the description came from. And I witnessed the actual damage to the door, the intruder used force to gain entry and broke the door in the process. Why did the person at the desk not hear what was going on in the hallway directly behind him/her?
That had to have made noise, it was 3am and quiet. were they sleeping? You sound like the kind of person who blames the victim when a crime occurs, which I think just stinks. And also the kind of person that likes to opine without having all of the facts. I am familiar with your posts and you are an intelligent and thoughtful poster who usually has good information/advice. But not this time. I feel it is you who crossed the line.</p>

107

<p>[The</a> 20 Smartest Colleges In America - Yahoo! Finance](<a href=“http://finance.yahoo.com/news/20-brainiest-colleges-america-164400109.html]The”>The 20 Smartest Colleges In America)</p>

<p>Think there’s a difference between the most selective colleges and those with the smartest students?
That’s what Lumosity, a cognitive training site run by Lumos Labs, sought to find out with a series of games designed to test America’s leading higher education institutions.
After realizing that national and global rankings for colleges each year were based almost solely on standardized test performances and information about the school’s resources (including endowment per student, student-faculty ratio, and graduation rates), Dr. Daniel Sternberg at Lumosity took it upon himself to discover which institution really had the smartest individuals.
He and his team tested 60,000 students at over 400 colleges and universities to play games that measured various cognitive skills including attention, memory, speed of processing, problem solving, and flexibility.
The study even broke down the college rankings by cognitive area, finding that Dartmouth College performed the highest on attention, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology was the best with memory, Harvard students ranked highest at speed of processing, and that Yale students performed best on flexibility.
The overall winner was the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the school with the best problem solvers. MIT has consistently ranked highly on best-of-schools lists, and was recently named the top university in the world by the QS World University Rankings list, beating last year’s winner the University of Cambridge as well as Harvard, Yale, and Princeton for the title.
The top 20 schools are below. Click here to view the complete Lumosity study.</p>

<ol>
<li><p>Massachusetts Institute of Technology </p></li>
<li><p>Harvard University</p></li>
<li><p>Stanford University</p></li>
<li><p>Northwestern University</p></li>
<li><p>Yale University </p></li>
<li><p>Washington University in St Louis</p></li>
<li><p>Dartmouth College</p></li>
<li><p>Wellesley College</p></li>
<li><p>Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology </p></li>
<li><p>Duke University </p></li>
<li><p>College of William and Mary </p></li>
<li><p>University of Pennsylvania </p></li>
<li><p>University of Portland</p></li>
<li><p>University of California-Berkeley</p></li>
<li><p>Vanderbilt University</p></li>
<li><p>University of Chicago </p></li>
<li><p>Carnegie Mellon University </p></li>
<li><p>Macalester College </p></li>
<li><p>Worcester Polytechnic Institute </p></li>
<li><p>University of California-Los Angeles</p></li>
</ol>

108

<p>Interesting. Too bad there wasn’t a metric for common sense. Then again that would have affected the scores equally and it wouldn’t have affected the rankings. Oh, well.:)</p>

109

<p>Such a stupid, mindless study. The Nobel Prize is a better measure of intelligence and is perhaps more highly regarded than Lumosity. Maybe if the students at MIT and Stanford spent less time playing games and more time studying they would have as many Nobels as UChicago, Cambridge, and Columbia.</p>

<p>UChicago alums have won about four times as many Nobels as Stanford alums.</p>

<p>And does it surprise you that the researcher is from Stanford:</p>

<p>Daniel Sternberg
<a href=“http://■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■/pub/daniel-sternberg/4/397/b23[/url]”>http://■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■/pub/daniel-sternberg/4/397/b23&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Shows the intelligence level of most venture capitalists… But, yes, do believe every marketing press release put out on the internet.</p>

110

<p>Peter Salovey, another Stanford alum will be Yale’s next president.
[Yale</a> University appoints Provost Peter Salovey as next president, touting innovation, reform - The Washington Post](<a href=“http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/higher-education/yale-university-appoints-provost-peter-salovey-as-next-president-touting-innovation-reform/2012/11/08/fc610b92-29ec-11e2-aaa5-ac786110c486_story.html]Yale”>http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/higher-education/yale-university-appoints-provost-peter-salovey-as-next-president-touting-innovation-reform/2012/11/08/fc610b92-29ec-11e2-aaa5-ac786110c486_story.html)</p>

111

<p>Good news for the UChicago, with such a big EA number, over 10,000, it is becoming more and more popular.
[Early</a> Action applications to UChicago set new record | UChicago News](<a href=“http://news.uchicago.edu/article/2012/11/13/early-action-applications-uchicago-set-new-record]Early”>Early Action applications to UChicago set new record | University of Chicago News)</p>

<p>If total application pool is increased to about 28000, keep the class size at 1400 level, expect a 50% yield, then admit rate should be lower than 10% for the first time in its history.</p>

112

<p>What an exciting news for Chicago community!</p>

<p>UChicago graduate students win the most Fulbright grants by a wide margin</p>

<p>[$3.2</a> Million in Grants Awarded for Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad | U.S. Department of Education](<a href=“U.S. Department of Education”>U.S. Department of Education)</p>

113

<p>Thanks Jennie for sharing this. This is indeed exciting news for the University of Chicago community. When I looked at the data provided by the Dept. of Education, it just boggles my mind a bit. </p>

<p>How amazing it is that Chicago got more awards than that of Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, Penn, Brown and Northwestern, combined.</p>

114

<p>The Rhodes Trust selected 32 students on Sunday as Rhodes Scholars, who will receive full tuition to study at the University of Oxford for up to three years. Yale University students received the most scholarships with seven total, followed by Harvard University with six. U.S. Military Academy, U.S. Naval Academy, Cornell and Stanford universities received two.</p>

<p>Winners list:
<a href=“https://s3.amazonaws.com/rhodesscholars-fileshare/US_winners_list_11_17_12.pdf[/url]”>https://s3.amazonaws.com/rhodesscholars-fileshare/US_winners_list_11_17_12.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

115

<p>

</p>

<p>Chaudhuri, this may seem like “good news” to you, as your kids are already into the school. It is lousy news for all students who aspire to attend, IMHO. Don’t forget that parents of kids who wonder what the community is like are also reading this thread. Cheering about pulling up the ladder behind yourselves is quite disheartening.</p>

116

<p>Intparent,
Several folks in this forum have been predicting Chicago’s further decreasing admit rate since last year. I am, IMHO, not that powerful, to pull the ladder to affect the falling admit rate, actually no one is that powerful. Dropping admit rate only means the success of strategy of current admissions office. My niece is applying the current year, and my two nephews will apply too in several years…
Good luck to all.</p>

117

<p>Obviously I did not mean that you personally were pulling up the ladder, but I am not sure this is “good news”. I know there are other threads dealing with this, but I will be interested to see a graph of U of C’s Nobel production over the next 40 years. My guess is the number will go down… their current flood of applicants make it harder to find (and even continue to attract) that “genius” element that has been the spice of U of C for so long. It reminds me too much of CEOs working to drive their short term stock price upward. Anyway… as I said, other threads for that discussion.</p>

118

<p>intparent, your complaint seems a little like the old Woody Allen movie line about the food being lousy… and the portions are small too. </p>

<p>I mean if UChicago is really poised to lose its genius edge and all, then maybe it’s not such a sad thing that it’s getting harder to get into. If as you suggest UChicago’s stock is at its market peak, then maybe finding it hard to buy shares of it isn’t such a bad thing after all.</p>

119

<p>Nope, I think you are missing my point. I think it will lose its genius edge BECAUSE it is getting harder to get into. I think they are going to end up taking the same kids every ivy wants to take now… and lots of them are grinders and strivers, not geniuses/Nobel types. They will still find some of them, but it is hard to cull out which are which when you have 30,000 applications to sort through. And regarding the stock reference, I am saying that is a short sighted approach. It isn’t always so good to be like everyone else (read, top Ivies). U of C was something special. Not so sure now… Again, not trying to turn the parent thread to this, we can continue this on another thread if you wish.</p>

120

<p>I think that people are voicing legitimate concerns re: UChicago’s pursuit of the “big numbers” applications game. Not many people would disagree that kids develop at different rates and stages in their lives. Some kids show outstanding talents at an early age, others don’t blossom until much later in their lives.</p>

<p>I think that UChicago has always appealed to the late bloomers, the kids who don’t fit conveniently into conventional metrics and it’s this group that may be the losers in this numbers-driven process.</p>

<p>Ted O’Neill, the former head of admissions at UChicago, was a firm proponent of keeping the school self-selecting in this regard. The students who went through the program back then were very bright, but they often didn’t fit neatly into the Ivy League mold. Many found a welcome home in Hyde Park. The Susan Sontags and Carl Sagans of the world often times march to a different drummer than the typical ambitious, “over-achieving” Ivy League applicant. </p>

<p>I hope that UChicago’s admissions office, in its pursuit of Ivy League lay prestige, doesn’t lose sight of UChicago’s unique and core strenth.</p>