<p>As I'm writing my college admission essays, I read through the thick red UChi viewbook that they sent us awhile back. The majority of it is formatted as documentary of various conversations inside and outside of the classroom.</p>
<p>To be honest, it intimidated me. I had a hard time fully comprehending everything that the students were supposedly discussing. They talked so... formally and about such grandiose things. I'm not nearly that intellectual in everyday life.</p>
<p>Am I alone in these feelings? And are these conversations a clear representation of daily life at UChicago?</p>
<p>Few students at Chicago are intellectual to the extent indicated in those books. There is a segment of the Chicago population that incessantly talks about academic topics, but this is approximately just 20% of the student body.</p>
<p>I think most of the “academic” conversations are not constantly occurring - they just randomly pop out of unrelated topics and are intellectually interesting as opposed to being seriously academic.</p>
<p>Not to sound like a jerk, but the dialogues they put in the viewbooks are seriously watered down. I remember looking at one they put out last year and thinking no one in their right mind would say something that superficial or obvious out loud (without being the kid people snicker about or the one professors simply pass over in discussion).</p>
<p>Trust me, you learn to think to speak and think differently very quickly. Elite research universities have their own lingua franca that, save for the hardest of the hard sciences majors, everyone must master less they be left behind in class (and the lunchroom).</p>