So story is, I’ve attended a rigorous college prep high school. In my junior year I was able to maintain my 4.0 and relax on Friday nights while getting 4 hours of sleep+a short nap.
For college, I don’t want to spend all my time on academics. I want to pursue extracurriculars and LEARN but not have to constantly stress about grades as I’m learning. I want to have time to pursue personal passions like drawing and writing creative narratives.
TL;DR I’m ready to jump in the deep end, but not a sinkhole. What’s the undergrad workload like (how many hours do you spend on academics and class work a day) and is the experience less jarring for those coming from a college prep school?
Also, is there a close-knit/welcoming community? Everyone sounds so smart and ambitious, it’s kind of intimidating.
Well there are at least two different ways to pursue personal passions and avoid constantly stressing about grades. One is to choose a school where academics are less demanding and/or grading is more forgiving and the other is to decide that your focus isn’t going to be on your GPA; it’ll be on what you’re learning (inside and outside the classroom).
UChicago is certainly not a school that falls into the first category – and coming from a rigorous college prep high school doesn’t change that. Standards are high, the pace of the quarter system is relentless, and you’ll have classes where you pretty much have to teach yourself the material. Unlike high school, the people who will be teaching/grading you haven’t been chosen based on their teaching ability (or experience) – in fact, they typically haven’t even been taught how to teach.
So it comes down to how comfortable you are with Plan B. If your self-definition is kid with a 4.0 who only sleeps 4 hours a night, it might be a hard transition. Or maybe it’s one you’re ready for. In which case in comes down to what your post-collegiate plans are (and whether your less GPA-oriented self ends up with a mix of As and Bs, mostly Bs, or a mix of Bs and C’s).
UChicago is a wonderland of intellectual and creative opportunity. And my kid’s experience has been that her classmates are smart and fun and friendly, as well as hard-working. Not intimidating or cutthroat. But it’s a “so much to do, so little time to do it in” experience – at least initially. My take (having studied and/or taught at a few), is that other highly-regarded colleges make it easier to strike the kind of balance you seem to be looking for.
@JAvocado I’m currently a first year here so I might be able to help! In my experience and from what my friends have said, the workload will vary depending on a number of factors: which classes you take, the level of difficulty of those classes (i.e. regular vs. honors), how many classes a quarter (3 or 4, which can really make a difference), what professor you have, etc. Having mostly test/quiz classes is a different workload than having paper-heavy courses. Honors Calc IBL (inquiry based learning), for example, is reputedly one of the most work-intensive courses here (Honor Analysis even more so, though only a handful of people place into it first year) and people can spend 20+ hours a week on it. HUM’s (all first years have to take HUM as part of the core) also vary in workload: some people have to read 100 pages week, while for my HUM we only read maybe 20ish pages of articles each week. Taking HUM and SOSC together is a lot more work than just taking one of those in the quarter. In addition, taking 3 classes rather than 4 may be less work (it really depends on the classes), but if you come in with enough AP credits and reqs out of the way you should be able to almost never have to take 4 classes a quarter (though many still choose to anyway because there are sooo many interesting classes here and in general people have many different interests).
Like exacademic said, you can choose not to focus on your GPA so much and instead focus on LEARNING and enjoying the process, or you can spend every day agonizing over grades. It really depends on YOU. I’ve found that stressing about grades is a little harder, at least for me, because there are so few grades given, unlike high school. A class may only take homework, a midterm, and a final into account to determine your final grade, so it’s kinda hard to stress over that every week. Of course, near the actual midterm or final it can be very stressful, but if you take time over the weeks to really learn and understand the material and if you start reviewing for midterms a week or two in advance it is definitely less nerve-wracking than cramming the weekend before.
Honestly, I’ve found time for doing non-academic related activities, whether it be RSO’s or just down-time. Of course, it also depends on how much sleep you want to get, but I get around 8 hours a day and still manage to have some time for fun. It’s a little harder on weekdays, especially ones when you have a midterm or paper, but weekends are generally more free. There can and will be the feeling of “so much to do, so little time to do it” as exacademic pointed out, but usually you end up finding time for most, if not everything, you need to get done if you use your time wisely and don’t procrastinate (i.e. don’t start on your pset the day before it’s due).
In terms of community, I couldn’t of had asked for a more welcoming and friendlier student body. Everyone is willing to help each other and work on homework together and some classes (lots of math and science ones mainly) have a “bonding through struggling/crying” type of feel. I found a wonderful group of people to do math with and we’ve become good friends and regularly do homework together and go to office hours. Of course, every class is different, but in general I’ve found it to be not the least intimidating. You may be intimidated by those people that say they’re in four honors classes or placed into honors analysis, but they’re not going to rub it into your face or brag about it. You can definitely find your group of people if you come here.
Feel free to pm me if you have any more questions!