I’m a high school senior seriously considering University of Chicago. It’s been my “#1 choice school” for a long time and I visited it about a year ago. I want to go to college in a big city (also applying to UCB, UCLA, USC, Columbia, NYU) but I’ve recently been worried about whether UChicago is the right school for that. I know it’s in a huge city but it’s definitely more suburban than the others I’ve listed and I’m wondering if UChicago students really “feel” that they’re in Chicago, or if it’s got more of a neighborhood feel to it. I know a Cornell alum that complained about how students wouldn’t leave campus for months at a time there and would forget about the outside world, and that’s really what I’m afraid of. Current and past student input appreciated.
- "Suburban" is the wrong word to use for Hyde Park. It's relatively quiet and leafy, but not suburban at all. And it's a 20-minute bus or El ride to the middle of everything, with all Chicago undergraduates having a transit pass. The University of Chicago's neighborhood is not so different from Penn's or Columbia's, except that it's a little bit farther from other hip neighborhoods.
- My kids and their friends went all over the city, frequently, while they were there. A few kids hardly ever leave campus, but most spend time in the flashier parts of Chicago on a fairly regular basis. (How regular varies by personality and taste.)
- Chicago has a wonderful public transit system. When you are in Hyde Park, you are much less stuck there than you would be in a similar neighborhood in Los Angeles. Westwood has a lot more going on than Hyde Park, but getting from there to Silverlake is a no-go unless you have a car and a lot of time. Chicago doesn't have that problem as much.
- I think you ought to expand your idea of what a "big city campus" is. A city doesn't have to be one of the top five cities in the country to provide big city kicks to college students, and a campus doesn't have to be smack in the middle of everything, like NYU's. (Not that NYU's campus isn't cool.) There are lots of great urban universities, public and private, that are less reachy than some of your choices but that offer first-rate academic, social, and cultural experiences.
Chicago is a city of neighborhoods so it’s hard to escape that reality. Some are not as leafy as others and it really does change by neighborhood, and even within the neighborhood (for instance, some parts of Lincoln Park are more “bustly” than others). But each neighborhood is distinct and for a lot of them you tend to “feel” the neighborhood more than the “big city” unless you are super close to the Loop or Near North. The key to understanding you are in the “big city” after all would be the L weaving it’s way through your neighborhood. That’s how you get from one neighborhood to the other. Or bus. Or Uber pool. All of them work.
Some weeks during the quarter, you might well appreciate the ability to cocoon in quiet leafy HP w/o distraction. The option to escape to another part of the city for enjoyment or a break from the intense academic environment is always there. Plenty of people exercise that option but plenty of people also hunker down and stay put as necessary. It’s a great blend of both worlds.
I would not even compare to Cornell. Cornell is in a tiny city where you can pretty much see everything there is to see freshman year, and have no good reason to leave campus thereafter. Not a knock on Cornell, but it is NOT where you would want to go if you want a big city. UC absolutely is a place to consider if you want an urban experience. I would not worry about this. In fact being a bit off the beaten path, but having easy access to the city is probably the ideal middle ground. Hey, any city that has 2 MLB clubs, you should not worry about it being too suburban.
Can we say that Hyde Park is to the Manhattan-like parts of Chicago (the Loop, the near north side, the Gold Coast) as Brooklyn is to Manhattan itself? That is, it is a place where people live, not a place they come to from elsewhere for fleeting moments of entertainment, dining, lodging or to get the buzz and excitement of crowds of pleasure-seekers. However, unlike Brooklyn, Hyde Park does have a mighty and storied University, sans football crowds. The presence of the University creates a buzz in its own right and makes Hyde Park a destination of a different sort. That was how I experienced it, coming from a distant small town.
The University of Chicago has never felt to me like a suburban university, much less a small town one. Nor is that the feel of the varied housing (walk-up apartment blocks, row houses, high rises, semi-detached and stand-alone clapboard, brick and stone houses of another era, even robber-baron mansions), which surrounds it and are largely occupied by its students and faculty. You could call those buildings suburban only if the year was 1900.
It also has close proximity to working-class and really gritty neighborhoods, ones that you could actually live in if that’s a part of your idea of the urban experience. And, as others have said, it has the El and the Metra to get you to Chicago’s crowds and pleasures in a matter of minutes.
But you will want to spend a lot of time walking around HP and its environs. You will see lots to interest you both architecturally and as a people-watcher. You will be able to while away endless hours in bookstores of all descriptions. Suburbs have their virtues, but that isn’t one of them.
I shall be honest here. Hyde Park 30 years ago was boring, if not somewhat dangerous. It has improved a lot in the last 5 to 10 years. Make no mistake about it, however. 53th Street ain’t Michigan Avenue. If you want world class restaurants, hip bars and gorgeous condo towers with lake and park view, go to Gold Coast and Lincoln Park. Hyde Park has none of the glitz and glamor of downtown Chicago. You won’t find Alinea or Peninsula here.
But that is fine. Hyde Park is racially mixed and middle class. It is a vibrant, quaint, college town urban neighborhood. After all, you come to Hyde Park to study at U of C. You are not coming here for a 4 year vacation. Hyde Park is a great environment for students. There aren’t so many distractions that will divert from your study at a rigorous school but there are enough entertainment choices that you are not limited to a few restaurants (like we had in the 1980’s). It really provides an excellent backdrop for a world class university.
“After all, you come to Hyde Park to study at U of C. You are not coming here for a 4 year vacation.”
Well, OP, there’s one distinction. Columbia touts the student arriving to its campus as one who could really consider New York City the classroom.
I’ve got a kid who has said ‘No’ to a potential NYC school, but yes to UChicago, precisely for the look and feel of these respective locales.
My son is a first year and goes into the city quite regularly - to shop, meet up with friends, eat, etc.
I will say he is still a bit leery of the subway stop nearby as he has to walk past an “interesting” group waiting at the street entrance and says he gets called out to or yelled to every time…I’m sure he will eventually get accustomed to his surroundings and not be so bothered. He recently came home after midnight on a weekday, after meeting friends at another school north of Chicago and had success taking the train to the bus and then connecting to another bus that stops near North - I think this will be his new plan for heading home late at night.
So, yes, I believe if you enjoy the city, you will be able to have access regularly to it - but it will take time to figure out comfort level with transportation. Coming from a rural area, this has been an adjustment…it probably doesn’t help that his mom is worried when he is out late, especially after the incidents on Halloween…
Our oldest lives and attends school in Brooklyn so we’ve been there several times - totally agree with @marlowe1’s analogy. Brooklyn and HP both have a ton of history behind them and are fascinating in their own right. For those who love architectural tours and reaching back to other ages and exploring the immigration, industrial and other histories of this country, they are fantastic locales for that. Not everyone needs Bright Lights / Big City all the time. Very glad that HP isn’t the Gold Coast!
Agree with @85bears46 that the neighborhood - actually, a good part of Chicago - has improved since the '80’s. Not sure if HP was boring 30+ years ago since fun with friends at Jimmy’s or Thai 55 was fine for me most nights, but it seemed a tad run-down and gritty. Same with the university. I was stunned at how much the campus and most of HP - and even good portions of the SS - had all improved since I moved out in the early '90’s. I know it’s not just the passage of time and a sense of nostalgia that has helped with that. Oh - and there was no such place known as “South Loop” to live and eat back in those days - or attend elementary school, for that matter (like my brother’s kids did for several years). And I don’t quite remember China Town having so many students out and about on a Friday night.
The south side has Uchicago, IIT and a couple other uni’s and grad schools so lots of students from all over the place - including overseas. Driving through Bronzeville up through South Loop I noticed new buildings, moms with babies, young dads, older couples strolling leisurely about, young professionals, and LOTS of students. I really don’t think living in HP can be considered as isolating or suburban. And just in case anyone still needs convincing, the number of sirens you hear in HP on a given afternoon or evening should definitely remind you that - yes - you are indeed in The Big City.
Hyde Park is Brooklyn 30 years ago, not Brooklyn today. Brooklyn today is full of hip restaurants and stores, and for people under 40 it’s in many ways preferable to Manhattan. The parts of Chicago that are most like Brooklyn today are Logan Square, Bucktown, Ukrainian Village, Wicker Park, and other stuff on the Milwaukee Ave. corridor.
Ah, the many ages and faces of Brooklyn. As Thomas Wolfe said about it in the 30’s, you could live a lifetime there and never know it: “Only the dead know Brooklyn” (whatever that means).
Fashionableness had not yet arrived in Bushwick when my daughter lived there for 5 years. But can you say about Park Slope or Cobble Hill or Brownsville - or any of those fashionable Chicago north side neighborhoods - that they are echt-urban? Aren’t all these neighborhoods merely fragrant and comfortable springboards from which to launch yourself in to the city for serious business and recreation? We ought to have an adjective for these places midway between “urban” and “suburban”. Suggestions, anyone?
I will concede that Greenwich Village and Morningside Heights are the ding an sich of Manhattan urbanity.
If by “serious business and recreation,” you are talking about the Chicago Symphony, the Lyric Opera, or the Art Institute, or for that matter anything branded “Trump,” then you are right. But I think you will find if you look that there’s a lot of local business and culture in the neighborhoods of Brooklyn and Chicago. If memory serves, in Chicago, Steppenwolf and Alinea are about a block apart, and that block is in Lincoln Park, one of those “fragrant and comfortable” Chicago north side neighborhoods. And if you want to see work that the best local artists are doing right now, you are more likely to find it there than in the Loop. That’s a lot of ding an the sich.
My daughter and her husband live in Greenpoint. Both work in Manhattan, and it’s a pain in the butt to get from where they live to where they work, but they won’t even consider moving to Manhattan. Lord knows, it’s not because Greenpoint is some kind of fragrant and comfortable oasis. On TV and in the movies, it tends to stand in for Urban Hell. But a great deal of their social and cultural life is in Brooklyn. They have friends who hardly ever cross the river at all. Manhattan is for occasional high-priced outings that appeal to old people, often with parents and financed by them. Brooklyn is where what’s going on is going on.
Actually, that’s true that Brooklyn is uber-trendy right now with some very hip restaurants and night spots. Even the smaller non-fancy dining areas are great (like the sushi place across myrtle from my daughter’s apartment which is simply excellent food).
@marlowe1 I haven’t kept up with Brooklyn mobility but my niece told me a few years ago that Bushwick was where all the artsy people relocated after seeding then getting priced out of Williamsburg. It’s up and coming, if it hasn’t already arrived.
@Waiting2exhale Actually, U of C also advertises Chicago as part of attraction to the school. They will be foolish not to.
Still I think for most of the school term students will spend their time in Hyde Park. Chicago Loop and beyond is an excursion to break the monotony of academic pressure.
@caymusjordan I think your son is likely taking the el at the Garfield Green Line Stop:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garfield_station_(CTA_Green_Line)
That stop actually is outside Hyde Park. Honestly, I will be surprised anyone at Hyde Park will get called out at train station. But that Garfield stop is in Washington Park, which is not the nicest neighborhood by any means. Still this is a very popular stop for students and professionals coming from other part of the city. I drove by it just a few hours ago. It is clean and nice and CTA is doing even more upgrades. Also there is a #55 bus stop in front of the station. So it is really easy to take the bus back to Hyde Park.
I would still prefer No. 6 bus or the Metar Electric Line going directly from Hyde Park to the Loop. But as the younger generations like to say these days: you do you 
nvm
The City of Chicago famously called itself “The Second City”, a moniker that embodies the tortured attitude of the city towards New York, composed of belligerence, irony, envy and a recognition of the plain truth of the matter. In that spirit I am going to dub Hyde Park “Little Brooklyn”, a moniker we can share with a few other Chicago neighborhoods. As for the University of Chicago itself, we all know and proudly assert that it is “The Un-Ivy”. Is there a common theme here?
@marlowe1 re: the comment of “the second city” being compared to NY. Many of the cities tour guides will in fact say, most people think that is a knock on NY, however in reality it was due to the fire and subsequent rebuild.
It’s really named after the comedy theater. Learn your history.
@fbsdreams and @HydeSnark , both you weisenheimers are half-right, and I’m half-right as well (I think that math works).
I accept that the term originated at the time of the great rebuild following the Chicago Fire. That’s another Chicago trope for you: The fire burns the place down, you build it bigger and better; the first University of Chicago goes bankrupt, you replace it with a much bigger and better one. The Second City and the Phoenix become tags, respectively, of the mighty second comings of these failed institutions.
But I also accept that to the world “The Second City” means only the famous comedy troupe. Try googling for “The Second City”, and that is all you will get. Chicago has seeded the entertainment world with improvisatory comedy as thoroughly as it has seeded the pizza world with deep-dish pizza. It is a protean place and a protean term.
But somewhere between the Great Fire and the Great Comedy Troupe came the sense of the term that I remember - of its being said self-referentially by Chicagoans in implied comparison with New York. But not said in a hang-dog fashion but with attitude, with a chip on the shoulder. This may go back to a book written in the fifties by that quintessential New Yorker, A.J. Leibling, called “Chicago: the Second City”. The book was full of hateful comparisons of Chicago to New York. To this day we still get that sort of thing from New Yorkers. Chicagoans long to be respected by them and believe they and their city have acquired the right. Yet they have a sneaking feeling that Easterners will always think of them as minor league, of the city as merely the magnet for hinterland rubes (see “Sister Carrie”), a jumped-up sort of place more brash and boastful than sophisticated, city of crime and corruption, city of gangs and murders.
There is also this bit of schadenfreude buried in the term: at the zenith of the city’s rise from the ashes when it was bidding against New York for the Columbian Exposition it was often referred to by New Yorkers as “The Second City”. Well, guess which city won the bid for the Exposition and proceeded to create one of the wonders of the world right there in Hyde Park adjacent to that other newly created wonder the University of Chicago? The taunt was thrown in the faces of the New Yorkers by these Chicagoans.
Many years later we see a similar sort of attitude in the way U of C kids hang on to that old trope of “where fun comes to die”. Like “The Second City” it doesn’t quite mean what it seems to mean.
I like this girl’s Vlog, even though I don’t understand what she was saying in Chinese (but there is English subtitles) .
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxZmqfeTthc
Yes, she is just a sample of one in a population of 6,300 undergrad. Her experience may not even be representative. But I do like her personal story of an UChicago undergrad.
She used to stay in Campus North but now she is staying in Solstice on the Park, another Jeane Gang designed building in Hyde Park.