<p>I got accepted EA, and potentially will have to choose from a list of schools I got into with much more recognizable names. Recognition is important to a lot of people--people want to know their alma mater is well known and respected by many people (especially if it deserves to be, like U of C).</p>
<p>From what I have read and heard from people, this is U of C's deal:</p>
<p>In the academic and corporate world, U of C's name is huge and very well regarded.</p>
<p>In the average regular world, it is not known by many many people, but this could change in the near future with Chicago's rankings and switch to the common app.</p>
<p>In Chicago, people who live near the U really respect it and know it well, but others do not.</p>
<p>Anyone have other opinions, or corrections to my interpretation?</p>
<p>What you said is basically correct. I started applying to Chicago, but after I got into Stanford ad visited Chicago's campus (think cold, dreary, cigarette butts everywhere, just generally unpleasent) I decided that even for econ Stanford's name recognition (among EVERYONE) outweighed the possible benefits of Chicago's slightly higher rankign in the field of economics.</p>
<p>Interesting, I had the opposite reaction. I found the dry, brown, isolated Stanford campus to be off-puting (it was in the summer). I felt much more at home in the glorious grayness that is the U of C. I liked the people at both, however.</p>
<p>Booklet, recognition only matters if it matters to you. Since anyone you want a job from, your coworkers there, and likely your friends will know and respect the U of C, I don't think it matters much if the guy at your favorite coffee place knows how good a school the U of C is. That's just me. Some people, particularly those with low self esteem, need and crave constant recognition and validation; those people may not love it here. I do love it here. I love stepping outside into the cold air, heading through the gates on campus, walking the paths on the quad surrounded by trees and Gothic buildings, passing friends, housemates, classmates, and acquaintences in their scarves and Northface jackets. I find it envigorating. </p>
<p>By the way, in my experience, many of the people who do know the U of C respect it more than any school in the country.</p>
<p>hehe, I guess I do have incredibly low self esteem, thanks for that one corranged. To top it off, despite my EA acceptance to U of C, I got deferred from the University of Michigan today--does a lot for my confidence considering I hear back from Penn (deferred), Yale, Brown, and now Mich in April (4 thin letters, ahh, its gonna suck).</p>
<p>But you got me all wrong--excellent schools deserve to be recognized. I actually don't understand what U of C has done so that its name is not as widespread... in that case, among average joe people, I guess MIT isn't well known, and for that matter, Penn gets mixed up with Penn State all the time... but still, even in Chicago more people should know about it--what sort of stuff does it do in the city, shouldn't it have more of a prescence--if not people just seeing ads in public transport for participating in U of C research projects?</p>
<p>It's not unusual. Many people in my hometown haven't even heard of Davidson, and it's 15 minutes away. Consider this quote by Barbara Mertz, for instance.</p>
<p>
[quote]
When I was in fourth grade we moved to a suburb of Chicago and I discovered the public library. I read everything I could get my hands on, but didn't begin writing until I was in high school. Oak Park-River Forest High was one of the finest public schools in the country. I was majoring in history, but I had a minor in English and among the courses I took was one in creative writing. It may well be that the first seeds of a desire to write were planted during that course, when my teacher called me out of another class (a definite no-no in those days) to ask whether I had--unconsciously, of course--plagiarized the sonnet I had handed in the day before, That sonnet is the only thing I've ever written that has appeared in a respectable literary magazine. We sent it to Saturday Review, asking readers whether they could identify it. They couldn't. It was my own--such as it was. </p>
<p>I didn't want to be a writer, though, I wanted to be an archaeologist. After graduating from high school I went to the University of Chicago--not because it had a world-famous department of Egyptology, but because it was close to home and I had received a scholarship.
[/quote]
I hadn't heard of Chicago until I noticed that she'd gone there. I remember thinking that it was a random public university in Illinois. :p</p>
<p>I live about a half hour from it and people have no clue what the University of Chicago is.
Everyone gets it mixed up with University of Illinois-Chicago. There really is no use in explaining the difference. A smile and nod tends to be simpler.
When people tell me they went up there last weekend to party with some friends.. I KNOW something is off.</p>
<p>Chicago is located in Hyde Park and is very active in that area, running schools and the largest private police force in the country. Chicago is a huge city with a lot of schools, and the University's largest presence is in their area. There was a thread on here once with the statistics, but an enormous number of people in the city of Chicago went to the public University in the city, and a lot of people from the area get the two schools confused since such a large number of people did go to the state school.</p>
<p>I would say there are a lot of possible reasons why the U of C doesn't have the name recognition of other top schools. A lot of name recognition comes from sports teams, and U of C athletics don't exactly draw crowds. It's not an Ivy, so it doesn't gain attention from being a part of that group. In the past (and currently), many more grads stay in academia than grads from other schools, so the U of C hasn't had the help of having lots of graduates saturating all different areas. The undergraduate college also used to be very small, and it has expanded significantly from it's earlier years. You'll find that smaller schools, particularly smaller liberal arts colleges, aren't nearly as well known as larger schools, probably due in part to the simple fact that there aren't as many alums to spread the word. Looking at the US News top schools, you have Princeton, Harvard, Yale, Caltech, Stanford, MIT, Penn, Duke, Dartmouth, Columbia, and Chicago. You have the Ivy League; Stanford and Duke play sports; MIT has fame in its area. Caltech doesn't have much name recognition, and it's a small school whose graduates tend to work in specialized fields. Penn gets mixed up with Penn State despite being an Ivy, as you said. There are a lot of other potential reasons, but those are at the top of my head.</p>
<p>I wasn't trying to take a dig at you at all, Smirkus; I apologize that it came off that way. I was more thinking about how Vissanik said she decided Stanford's name recognition outweighed Chicago's superiority in her proposed field and so chose Stanford; I don't think name recognition in a case like this should play much of a roll, since the people who matter all know the school. Good luck on your other schools; don't worry about being deferred from Michigan--you should come to Chicago, anyway! Remember, being deferred from one school doesn't change your chances with any others.</p>
<p>One very important factor about name recongnition that many are leaving out of their calculations, is the Asian factor. Being Chinese living in different parts of california, from one of the richest area (Bay area) to the poorest (stockton); I can tell from personal experiences that many love, and I mean the top of their conversation topics, to brag about where their S or D goes to college. In a way, it's a summery of all the extreme sacrifices they made in the 12 years leading up to it. </p>
<p>Now the problem? Even in a richer area like Fremont and San Francisco, many don't feel UChicago carries the "weight" that a HYP and especially a Stanford person carriers. While I completely agree with many current students that UChicago matches those schools in terms of quality, I'm afraid, I cannot convince all the people I know to think the same. They are very focus-minded on where they want to go, and of course the ivy league and Stanford's name gives an addicting influence at a very young age. In fact, my dad didn't even let me apply to Uchicago EA until he opened up a lot! In some of the poorer (and less educated) areas like Stockton, UChicago absolutely gains no respect at all. One day at church, a parent was being a jerk over how his D got the ELC for the UCs (garentee acceptance to at least one UC); my mom was very ****ed, but knew she couldn't fight back with UChicago, nor wanted to (I actually got the same letter). </p>
<p>The wise know enough not to care for name recognition, but I think the OP was right to say that respect and presteige adds a tremendous bonus. Back to the Columbia example I keep using. If a person was accepted to both Columbia and UChicago, he would use the name Columbia to brag and recieve praise and respect. I'm afraid that in many areas, that cannot be said for UChicago. Sometimes (or many times depending), the heartfelt praise will be enough to sacrifice the heavenly environment of UChicago, for a more prestigious, but perhaps less caring Ivy League.</p>
<p>Thus, if name recongnition is a factor, which I think it is. Chicago admissions and general alumni must give the name more weight among even the "common" population, because it is the common pop. that influences the overachiving ones to their college decision. When Chicago's influence spreads like MIT and gains respect from many, then all these threads about presteige and name will disappear for good.</p>
<p>I understand caring about what a parent thinks, but it is a mistake to think that U of C does not carry a very special prestige that is not based upon name recognition by the masses nor athletic prowess, but on its history as America's intellectual powerhouse. This is not to say that the people there faculty or students are smarter than elsewhere, it is about the school's almost obsessional commitment to inquiry above all else. I have posted this before, but realize there are continually new visitors so I don't feel too repetitive. This is a quote by Robert Pippen, who served as faculty representative on the presidential search committee"
[quote]
"As we traveled... we would ask for what the view form the outside was of The University, and we would hear... The University is the purist of universities, dedicated to research, creation of new knowledge, and education more than any other, that it is a kind of intellectual hothouse, that the value of ideas and the life of the mind mean more here than anywhere else. We heard this so often that I was tempted to ask, 'So what is it you do?'"
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I have also found this to be true.</p>
<p>One could always print this out for parents to hand out to friends and relatives:</p>
<p>
[quote]
...many of us connected to this university feel that we might just as easily have been there—that going back to the University in its early days, or in fact at any time since its inception, we would know unmistakably that we were at the University of Chicago. </p>
<p>Why is this? The University of Chicago, from its very inception, has been driven by a singular focus on inquiry—with a firm belief in the value of open, rigorous, and intense inquiry and a common understanding that this must be the defining feature of this university. Everything about the University of Chicago that we recognize as distinctive flows from this commitment: our belief that argumentation rather than deference is the route to clarity; our insistence that arguments stand or fall on their merits, not the background, position, or fame of the proponent; our flexible organization that fosters rigorous and imaginative analysis of complex problems from multiple perspectives; our education that embeds learning in a culture of intense inquiry and analysis, thereby offering the most empowering education to students irrespective of the path they may ultimately take; our commitment to attract the most original agenda-setting faculty and students who can most benefit from and contribute to our environment; and our recognition that our important contributions to society rest on the power of our ideas and the openness of our environment to developing and testing ideas.
<p>As usual, idad (my favorite poster on all these boards) has nailed it. Corranged has done a great job, too. But let me just add a summary, if I may.</p>
<p>It is true that fewer people on the street have heard of the University of Chicago than have heard of Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, and Duke. I suspect that even Northwestern is more well known. But understand that among people who really know universities, a University of Chicago degree is greeted with very special esteem. People who really know universities know that one can go through most universities, even the elite ones, without learning much. It's possible. But it's not possible at the University of Chicago. It is to academia what the Marines are to the military. It's elite. It's boot camp. Not everyone is cut out for it.</p>
<p>I wish I had gone there for undergrad. I really do. If I knew then what I know now, that's what I would have done.</p>
<p>Thanks to Tarhunt, iDad, Corranged, and JM8879 for you very thoughtful posts. One thing I would like to add, my neighbor has a phD, and went to Harvard business school--he is a very smart guy, and very successful. He loves the U of C, and holds a LOT of respect for it (and wanted to go to business school there, but decided Harvard was not his style so wanted to challenge himself by doing what he's not used to).</p>
<p>In one of our conversations, I remember he told me that at Harvard and Yale, sure its really hard to get in, but once you are there, you really can just coast. Not at U of C. A U of C degree I guess is held with its own prestige.</p>
<p>
[quote]
But understand that among people who really know universities, a University of Chicago degree is greeted with very special esteem. People who really know universities know that one can go through most universities, even the elite ones, without learning much.
[/quote]
Exactly. Many people haven't heard of Caltech, Swarthmore, Reed, or Johns Hopkins either, yet the same holds true for them (and many other rigorous colleges). </p>
<p>Lest heads get too big on this board (as they quite frequently do), I must also point out that it's possible to challenge yourself at most places. I'm a sophomore taking classes intended for graduate students. It just takes initiative.</p>
<p>"our belief that argumentation rather than deference is the route to clarity; our insistence that arguments stand or fall on their merits, not the background, position, or fame of the proponent;"</p>
<p>And now I really understand why the University of Chicago is THE place for my argumentative son. He rarely defers, and the position of "parent" is definitely not sufficient to earn deference.</p>
<p>"People who really know universities know that one can go through most universities, even the elite ones, without learning much"</p>
<p>Touche. My husband is a professor at a flagship public. Just this week he was lamenting that so many students get all the way through an undergraduate program without really learning much. While our son is not the kind of student to spend four years learning nothing, it my fervent hope that he gets to spend those years with others who like to learn.</p>
<p>I agree that idad has been a great source of information about UChicago, and has helped maintain my enthusiasm about the prospect of my son attending. (He has been accepted EA. If only those who hold the purse strings agree that he is worth some kind of merit aid...)</p>
In the average regular world, it is not known by many many people, but this could change in the near future with Chicago's rankings and switch to the common app.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Sorry, this is off topic - but is UChicago really switching to the common app? </p>
<p>They're switching to the Common App, but the unique essays will be part of the supplement. I think applying via the Uncommon App will still be an option, though.</p>
<p>I really don't want this thread to turn into another common app. debate, but I never understood why the switch is bad for the "culture" or he "soul" of the school. The only thing different between the common app and the uncommon app is the common app essays (which have to be done anyway if your applying to another school) and just a different layout in filling in information. The unique essays will still be part of the process, and the thinking and creativity will be the same. </p>
<p>Granted, I really don't like the layout of the common app. Instead, I vouche for UChicago to use the system Stanford and Columbia has for their app, which makes things so much clearer and faster.</p>
<p>I don't see why not. Every college my children have ever applied to have had a supplement requiring answers to unique essay items. Why should Chicago be any different?</p>