<p>Columbus Day weekend is a (short-lived) tradition of Open House at UChicago. My husband took S1 there four years ago, which was probably the 1st or 2nd time UC formally had this event. From H's perspective, it is completely different and MUCH more organized. The upside of this weekend is less traffic because of the government holiday, the downside is it's the weekend of the Chicago marathon and the city was packed with people. </p>
<p>Over the three days, I often thought that I could easily believe we were secretly transported to a Hollywood movie set of the quintissential classic university. It is that beautiful.</p>
<p>Saturday. Our alumnus friend had told us to go to campus, walk walk walk, go to Seminary Coop bookstore and Medici's. The bookstore is absolutely amazing, I could spend way more than I could afford in there. It's in the basement of the UCh Seminary, and is a rabbit warren maze of alcoves and dead-end halls full of books, floor to ceiling, and is the textbook vendor for the core humanities and soc sci courses. I wish there was one in Baltimore. Went to Medici's, the avowed local hangout, for lunch. On weekends filled with prof emeriti types and visitors mostly, the students are there during the week. It is the absolute ultimate in intellectual college type hang-out, sort of beatnik (if any of you are old enough to understand that term). Brick walls covered with graffiti, as were the wooden tabletops. I could easily imagine Friedman, Rand and Grinstein hanging out here debating free markets. No kidding. S2 MUCH impressed.</p>
<p>Sunday. Went downtown after the serious part of the marathon was over, took a Chicago architecture walking tour, looked at all the things that had appeared since we lived there 20 years ago. </p>
<p>Monday. UCh for the day. The introductory welcome presentation was very interesting--a senior faculty member (Soc/Anth) spoke about the essential character of the Chicago core, and how it differed from other universities. It was, in a funny way, very reassuring to parents especially. He made it clear that this is not a technical or career prep school, but yet offered more flexibility than the 'great books' campuses. After the welcome there were lots of panel discussions on various topics to choose from, plus tours, repeated throughout the day, followed by a final student panel for questions only. The kids had a chance to sign up and attend a class of their choice. The campus is pure gothic revival; most buildings have spires and gargoyles, and many have adjoining cloisters and hidden courtyards. They are beautifully planned and well maintained. The dining hall where we lunched looked like a chapel and turned out to have originally been a gymnasium(!). Although the dormitories are mostly huge buildings, they are internally divided into "houses", and every house has tables reserved for them at the main dining hall. There are a few more modern buildings inserted here and there, but with the exception of a large dormitory complex they were true to the original architecture. As we walked around, we agreed that the setting, in and of itself, was enough to inspire academic industriousness.</p>
<p>On the main undergraduate campus, the reality belies the statistics for undergrads outnumber graduate students about 2:1. We were vehemently reassured that 85+% of classes were taught by professors, and that all the graduate teaching assistants were ABD, and had been especially trained and mentored for teaching. They told us that there was ALWAYS a professor in charge, and that they had office hours. I verified this with a student I stopped on campus. She told me that in fact she had had a TA from China she couldn't understand, but that she had just gone to the professor's office hours, and that he was delighted to see her (so much so that she wound up hanging out there). They claim the classes are kept small, and in fact the Humanities Core class that S sat in on only had 6 students.</p>
<p>The student panel was full of light-heartedness, and the audience asked hard questions. As I remember, the first was "What should we make of the UCh reputation that it is 'the place where fun comes to die' ?" The response from the panel was bemusement, as in "What we do here IS fun". This was in direct contrast to what H & S1 got 4 years earlier where the panel members acted as if they were trying to scare off potential applicants through horror stories. Every member of the panel answered forthrightly, saying how much they studied and how they relaxed. It was clear that this was no party school, but at the same time group interaction and entertainment would be found everywhere. It didn't need a football game or frat party to happen.</p>
<p>The waves of students we saw between class periods seemed to us to include just about every sort of person, and they were mostly dressed in jeans and sweaters. Less "punk" than a lot of places, but not preppy at all. We stopped a few students at random to ask questions about safety, if it was hard to get the classes one wanted, and got helpful and honest answers (not really an issue and not at all, respectively).</p>
<p>This has been very long--if anyone has specific questions just ask & I'll try to answer.</p>